Optical Flow poor quality issue still in DR14.3

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Jeff Smart

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  • Joined: Wed Dec 06, 2017 4:12 am
  • Location: Malaysia

Optical Flow poor quality issue still in DR14.3

PostTue Mar 13, 2018 7:54 am

I recently and "happily" changed from Premiere Pro to Resolve for acceptable system stability - PR crashed 20x/day for large projects.. couldn't take it anymore. Resolve rarely crashes on the same system and projects :)
I'm use Resolve Studio v14.3.0.014 on a powerful mac High Sierra 10.13.3

I really love the new Resolve but I have a serious problem with poor Optical Flow quality in Resolve compared to PR and FCPX quality for the same source clips at 50% slow down and same process/timeline settings. I have correctly selected DR "Optical Flow" in clip Retime Inspector, and tried all combinations of global retime motion estimation combos with no improvement. I agree the clips are more than just someone jumping up and down against a wide static background, but PR & FCPX handle them well, producing acceptable quality.

What I see is:
1. Resolve Optical Flow creates blurred (looks like frame-blended ?) new frames at 50% speed slow down - played back, I see a pulsating sequence of normal sharp frames flashing with blurred newly generated frames. If I select Frame-Blended Retime Process than the resulting flickering is much more noticeable. Using PR & FCPX the new frames sharpness is similar to the original frames, so something in DR Optical Flow is not working properly ?
2. Resolve regularly creates artefacts - additional ragged trailing streaks on objects if the scene has both different speed background and foreground motion.

I tested these same clips with Last Nov 2017 PR and FCPX 10.4 where both "do not" have these errors.

Without resolving DR Optical Flow quality, I can only think to round trip to FCPX cause I really do not want PR anywhere on my machine :) I'd even fork out for Twixtor but no DR OFX support. Any suggestions ? A fix pre NAB would make many people happy :)

Again - love Resolve !
DR Studio 18.1.4 on 16GB M1 MacMini macOS v3.3.1
34" 5K Ultrawide MSI PS341WU P3 GUI monitor
TB3 -> SW RAID 4 x NVMe @ 5,700MBs
TB3 -> DeckLink Mini Monitor 4K -> 43" Philips HDR1000 wg monitor.
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Jeff Smart

  • Posts: 27
  • Joined: Wed Dec 06, 2017 4:12 am
  • Location: Malaysia

Re: Optical Flow poor quality issue still in DR14.3

PostFri Jun 22, 2018 4:21 pm

BMD DR Team,

UPDATE Optical Flow update in DR15B5 (Mac) adds a new problem.

Thank You for updating the Optical Flow feature in DR15B5 !

Overall the Optical Flow image quality is noticeably better than DR14 for more difficult clips ie: retimed (50% slowed down) from stabilised panned/walk thru shots, "however" the Enhanced Faster and Enhanced Better options now introduce some noticeable edge artifacts blobs that do not appear in the Standard Fast and Standard Better modes - ultimately the final result is not yet usable. This is the same error I get while patiently trying to use Optical Flow in Fusion as a workaround for re-timed /slowed down moving clips.

To test this problem, use a reasonably stable walking (gimbal) or panned shot - normally I will DR stabilise first, than retime to 50% speed for slower motion and use Optical Flow to smooth out the retimed motion estimation frames. I export (Deliver) the OF retimed clip to be sure it is properly rendered. The DR15beta5 monitors seem not 100% reliable to see these artifacts all times.
I tested the same clip multiple times with 50% retiming and I "always" get the artifacts with Enhanced motion Estimation, even if I select small, med or large motion.
Overall the improved DR Optical Flow quality is now similar to PR and FCP X but needs this fix to be usable.

I trust this helps. Love the DR progress ! Thank you.
DR Studio 18.1.4 on 16GB M1 MacMini macOS v3.3.1
34" 5K Ultrawide MSI PS341WU P3 GUI monitor
TB3 -> SW RAID 4 x NVMe @ 5,700MBs
TB3 -> DeckLink Mini Monitor 4K -> 43" Philips HDR1000 wg monitor.
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Uli Plank

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Re: Optical Flow poor quality issue still in DR14.3

PostSat Jun 23, 2018 1:35 am

I’ve seen that too in b15.
Unfortunately I was wrong, it's ReelSmart Motion Blur that works in Resolve, not Twixtor.
My disaster protection: export a .drp file to a physically separated storage regularly.
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MacBook M1 Pro, 16 GPU cores, 32 GB RAM, MacOS 14.7.2
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