B7 W10 Audio Playback issues

I have a pile of DNXHQX files rendered by premiere,(think of them as DVD chapters) pulled them into resolve to do a little more audio and color tweaking.

I have found the audio will drop channels when first played back on the fairlight page. The left will go, the right will go, then nothing until I stop and start the playback. The content is present, VLC plays it back as good as it can. ( a little jumpy but the audio is smooth) This behavior is new for me.

On the edit page jumping around slows the playback down to around 30 fps or so for about a second then smooths out, this will also occur if the timeline is zoomed in and the playhead is constantly triggering timeline refreshes. This behavior has happened to me forever on resolve, I've just learned to zoom the timeline out further. This behavior happens irregardless of the media location type. NVM, SSD, and RAID Mirror platters all do this.

For the most part Resolve plays these files better than any software I have, but when it glitches it's unbearable. The others are just consistently mediocre.

I'll continue testing updates, and provide further info if the final render out of this attempt doesn't go as expected.

[Peter Chamberlain]

Can you try with a HD timeline resolution?

It's currently 1920*1080 59.994p.

Aja system test rates my slowest drives at 350 write and 150 read.

Are you thinking if I switch to 30fps, I will see 15fps stutters or do you think it will be perfect?

I'd prefer to keep as many fps as I can until final render. Or is it now possible to throttle the timeline for editing purposes and then turn it back up for render? I did notice the timeline could be changed manually, hadn't had a chance to experiment yet.

[Peter Chamberlain]

AH, your clips are 59.94?

are they on the SSD or NV disk?

They are actually on the platters, transferring one file over to the SSD and NVM did show the reason for my hiccups. My raid controller was killing the throughput at periods down to as low as 2mbps.

I guess bigger SSD's are in my future.

On earlier versions this issue did occur on the NVM's and SSD's as well, so I quit doing the data shuffle and just used the platters as they have plenty of space.

That said my initial test so far was only one clip about 2 minutes and 20 seconds. The entirety of the project is nearly 2 hours. I send another post if the full project hiccups on the ssd/nvm.

[Peter Chamberlain]

You probably need 5 spinning drives min for RAID 5 at that frame rate.

I moved all to the nvm drives. Playback is great......unless you enable Clip EQ. Then it falls apart.

NVM is a Samsung 960 EVO 250 GB.

AJA System test claims that drive is capable of 1781 Frames Per Second Write and 2157 Frames/Sec Read. At the DNxHR HQX Codec. I doubt the drive is the problem now.

The fairlight accelerator is installed, maybe that's not quite right?

[Peter Chamberlain]

Ah, do u have a Fairlight Accelerator installed? You need drivers for that. If you need assistant please seek the local BMD Support office.

After I seen the physical hardware for sale at various places, I realized I did not need that utility.

Once I removed that utility all is well again.

May I add a suggestion for the DR installer - maybe add a bit that scans the installed hardware and only offers up the options necessary? Someone new would see the advertizing thinking fairlight is onboard and then think why not install the utility.

It could go like this, first the installer would ask if this was a standalone install, if yes Postgres is out. If no Postgres is in. Then scan hardware for panels and audio accelerator, if none found proceed only with the components necessary. But before installing, check for a prior version, if yes prompt to uninstall. Then, once that's sorted, scan the registry to verify that it's cleaned in all the right spots to assure a successful installation. Once that's done, Install or prompt for reboot first if necessary.

I realize supporting multiple OS's is rather nightmarish, so it's just a suggestion.

Spoke too soon. Even on the nvm with clip eq's disabled, stuttering still occurs far more often than it should. Cpu/gpu usage during these occurrences is less than 15 percent total.