DaVinci Resolve 16 is slow

Hi,

I'm a Filmmaking student. While I usually use Premiere Pro, it is very expensive, so my lecturer advised me to download DaVinci Resolve to edit a film I'm currently working on. Therefore I downloaded the free version of the DaVinci Resolve 16 BETA.

However, I've found that editing footage is basically impossible, as the timeline playback of my footage is so slow and buffery. Is anyone else having this problem? The footage is 4K mp4, so maybe that's the reason; but I've been able to edit 4K footage previously on my computer on Premiere Pro without issue. If it's an issue with the BETA version of Resolve 16 that the developers just need to iron out, then by all means I'll download a previous version - however, I'm not keen to miss out on 16's new features (if there are any). Nor am I keen to return to Premiere Pro and waste a tonne of money, so if anyone knows a way around this it would be much appreciated.

All the best (sorry if this is in the wrong board - I'm new to the forum).

Without knowing the specs of your computer it's hard to give a definitive answer or make suggestions.

However, do note that the "free" version of DR does not include hardware (GPU) decoding/encoding of H264 footage so unless your CPU has plenty of grunt, things will be slow.

You can see the specs for my own system in my .sig and I find it perfectly adequate for occasional 4K editing (and near-full-time HD editing) using the Studio version of DR15.

4K MP4 is going to be slow unless your CPU is amazing.

You could tweak the Projects "Optimised media and render cache".

Go to file>Project settings>Master Settings>Optimised media and render cache

Try lowering the media resolution and depending on what OS you're on, changing the format. You'll probably find that premier was running 'fine' because it's defaults suited your system well.

I recommend using Optimized Media. Chose 1/4 resolution and Cineform YUV 10 bit.

Without knowing the specs of your computer it's hard to give a definitive answer or make suggestions.

However, do note that the "free" version of DR does not include hardware (GPU) decoding/encoding of H264 footage so unless your CPU has plenty of grunt, things will be slow.

You can see the specs for my own system in my .sig and I find it perfectly adequate for occasional 4K editing (and near-full-time HD editing) using the Studio version of DR15.

My specs are:
Processor: AMD Ryzen 3 2200U with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx 2.50 GHZ
Installed memory (RAM): 4.00 GB (3.46 GB usable)
System type: 64-bit Operating System, x64-based processor

However, I recently got a month-long free license for Adobe Premiere Pro, so I've been trying the same footage on that, and what do you know? The 4k is struggling on that as well. I'll use proxies and the 1/8 setting and still my computer can't handle the 4k. So yeah, nothing to worry about as far as DaVinci Resolve 16 is concerned. Looks like I've got to get a new PC.

Hi, my timeline preview does a lot of jump as the first message of the topic. I am trying to edit an 4k video 60fps made by drone however my specs are cpu: 10875H and rtx 2070 with 16gb 3200hz. I don't know why it is so slow. Thanks

I recommend using Optimized Media. Chose 1/4 resolution and Cineform YUV 10 bit.

Dominic, 4GB of RAM is simply not enough.