Yet Another Magic Mask Thread

Hey all,

I've only been on Resolve since middle of last year, and on Studio version since January. One thing I've had a lot of issues using is the Magic Mask feature in Fusion.

For me the biggest and most consistent issue (and by consistent I mean literally every time I attempt to use Magic Mask), is that after hitting track, no matter what happens I end up losing frames. By "losing frames" I mean, the mask just doesn't take affect for a random number of frames.

Beyond that, the minute I even look at a comp or attempt to do anything like add other nodes in the comp or do nothing and leave the Fusion page, Magic Mask will just disappear at random, for a random number and sequence of frames of the composition where it's being applied.

In other threads people have mentioned the use of caching (which I am forced to use for performance), and I've suspected that it plays a role. So I get into this game of disabling and deleting my render cache, disabling Fusion Memory Cache, hitting "track" and then re-enabling cache. I'll also clear the "Disk Cache" within the node's inspector itself before tracking.

What am I missing? It really feels like the tool, like a lot of things in Resolve, is fundamentally broken.

When I can get a render to "stick", it works great - but that's virtually none of the time and it wastes so much time, I can't help but wonder if rotoscoping the old-fashioned way wouldn't be less time-consuming?

The tool isn't broken. I use it all the time and have no issues.
What are your computer specs, in particular your GPU?
Magic mask is GPU intensive, so smaller cards can struggle.
If you're on a Windows PC, it's advisable to regularly check that your GPU drivers are up to date and that if using NVIDIA, you use the Studio drivers and not the Game drivers.
All of this can have a major impact on how well Resolve's GPU tools function and that their Neural engine is optimized.

The tool’s shortcomings are well documented all through this forum. While calling it broken may be a bit too far, it’s certainly difficult to avoid losing stuff in many situations.

Hey

I've been intensively using the MM in a 2 months project about to end, and try to answer about whatever hint I can help with...
Honestly, the main issues are very well targeted now, and since they are bound to the cache, a few workarounds are yet well known (render in place, exporting a matte, ...), along with kind of best practices consisting in potential nodes prior to the MM one to help it work the best it can.

I've seen non accurate frames because it's too much inside or outside the shape for a few frames, but losing frames during the track ? I never saw that.

So no, it's not broken at all, it has a limp but it works. I saw a lot of different situations, and - fortunately in Fusion and not in Resolve - I could fix it with complementary nodes joining the MM in a next matteControl, but when it tracks, everything is tracked accurately or not but track all the way long...
So specifically for this, I'd search another way (and the GPU may indeed be a first hint)

The tool isn't broken. I use it all the time and have no issues.
What are your computer specs, in particular your GPU?
Magic mask is GPU intensive, so smaller cards can struggle.
If you're on a Windows PC, it's advisable to regularly check that your GPU drivers are up to date and that if using NVIDIA, you use the Studio drivers and not the Game drivers.
All of this can have a major impact on how well Resolve's GPU tools function and that their Neural engine is optimized.

I'll grant that my use of the word "broken" may be a bit extreme, I guess being under the gun to meet a client's deadlines and having a tool randomly fail on me got the best of me.

I use both Mac and PC but my PC is my main workhorse. My specs are as follows:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5900x
RAM: 64gb @ 3600mt/s
GPU: Nvidia Zotac 2060 RTX 12gb GDDR6
OS: Windows 11

Huge thanks to your mentioning the Studio drivers - to be frank I completely forgot about their existence. I routinely keep things up to date but I've just installed yesterday's new driver updates and was sure to install the Studio version of them this time. Hopefully this helps!

The tool’s shortcomings are well documented all through this forum. While calling it broken may be a bit too far, it’s certainly difficult to avoid losing stuff in many situations.

I gotta agree, my use of the word "broken" is a bit of a stretch here to be clear, I absolutely love Resolve as a program and am 100% rooting for its continued success! I've just run into some issues and being under the gun I guess got the best of me.

Hey

I've been intensively using the MM in a 2 months project about to end, and try to answer about whatever hint I can help with...
Honestly, the main issues are very well targeted now, and since they are bound to the cache, a few workarounds are yet well known (render in place, exporting a matte, ...), along with kind of best practices consisting in potential nodes prior to the MM one to help it work the best it can.

I've seen non accurate frames because it's too much inside or outside the shape for a few frames, but losing frames during the track ? I never saw that.

So no, it's not broken at all, it has a limp but it works. I saw a lot of different situations, and - fortunately in Fusion and not in Resolve - I could fix it with complementary nodes joining the MM in a next matteControl, but when it tracks, everything is tracked accurately or not but track all the way long...
So specifically for this, I'd search another way (and the GPU may indeed be a first hint)

Being a novice compositor I'll grant that I'm certainly going to be making some glaring mistakes with regards to MM best practices (use of matte control could be an example).

But I'll add that these dropped frames can happen sporadically - even after a successful track!