Render In to Out

I know some people are going to reply to this post with some form of "You need to learn to use Resolve the way it was programmed to work rather than try to make it work like other programs." And usually I agree with that.

But the times I'm forced to use Premiere to edit (and that's if a company I work for supplies me with a computer of its own because I have zero Adobe software in my Mac), as soon as I open it the first time I go to the keyboard shortcuts and I map this function to Shift + Enter: "Render In to Out".

Resolve has lots of render for this and that, but I can't find a simple way to set a section and render it in the timeline so I can play it back in real time. Most times the automatic render works, which I have it set to 1 second, but there are several times when I wait for the red line to turn blue, and I keep waiting and nothing happens.

So doesn't Resolve have a simple Render In to Out or similar? Anything that will basically force it to render the range I want.

There's no direct equivalent, no. Your best option really is to check the manual and learn how Resolve does Cache.

Have you read: Chapter 8 of reference manual:

Improving Performance, Proxies, and the Render Cache

"DaVinci Resolve is a high-performance piece of software designed to enable real time effects on a variety of workstations.

This section describes the various ways you can monitor your performance to make sure you’re maintaining real time playback, along with different methods of optimizing real time performance, including using on-the-fly proxies and the background Render Cache."

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If you haven't, I suggest you do. There are so many ways to skin the proverbial playback cat that it really pays to read it and configure resolve to work most suitable for your workstation, preference, media etc. To many to cover it all, and try to accommodate your specific needs. So I suggest you use manual and find the best solution for your situation.

But the times I'm forced to use Premiere to edit (and that's if a company I work for supplies me with a computer of its own because I have zero Adobe software in my Mac), as soon as I open it the first time I go to the keyboard shortcuts and I map this function to Shift + Enter: "Render In to Out".

Well, you can use Render In Place to get the same functionality. Even though this is a right-click function, it IS programmable with a shortcut using the Keyboard Customization panel.

What editing software did you use prior to Resolve or Premiere? The free Editing training Blackmagic has is actually pretty good, and will teach you all the basics in a few days:

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/produc ... e/training

you can use the render cache for this - select the clips you want to render and enable the render cache color output - then enable user render caching. it will render cache those clips in the background when idle.

you can use the render cache for this - select the clips you want to render and enable the render cache color output - then enable user render caching. it will render cache those clips in the background when idle.

Yes, that’s what I do. The problem is that it doesn’t always work. Like I said, having all these things enabled, sometimes I still wait for the red line to start turning blue progressively, and it doesn’t. Most times it does, but not always.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about. I have this section of about 12 seconds on a video I'm working on. The clip is part of a multicam track, and granted, it requires some heavy processing, because it's 4K, then it's zoomed in, position is keyframed, and added to that, it has 3 OFX, contrast pop, aperture diffraction and motion blur. And this is not just 4K, it's also 60 fps.

I patiently right clicked on that particular take 4 times, and enabled Render cache color output, and the 3 OFX filters. The line at the top shows in blue, which is the way Resolve indicates that that particular area of the timeline is fully rendered and ready to play, correct?

And for the most part, whenever I see the blue line, whatever's underneath plays fine with no hiccups. But in this case, this particular take just doesn't want to play smoothly. So that part is not rendered no matter how many times I delete the cache and re-render that, it never plays smoothly, while every other clip does, as long as the blue line is there.

The line at the top shows in blue, which is the way Resolve indicates that that particular area of the timeline is fully rendered and ready to play, correct?

Incorrect.

Blue only shows that Cache exists for those frames. There are many things which can be Cached. Blue does not mean all of them have been.

Fusion, for example.

The line at the top shows in blue, which is the way Resolve indicates that that particular area of the timeline is fully rendered and ready to play, correct?

Incorrect.

Blue only shows that Cache exists for those frames. There are many things which can be Cached. Blue does not mean all of them have been.

Fusion, for example.

OK, so I was wrong about that. Then what's the absolute, final way to render/cache a preview of a specific area, and by this I mean all the clips in all the tracks in a specific range? I didn't read the whole section on render cache in the manual because it's dozens of pages long (as much as I would love to read the whole manual, I simply don't have the time), but I went through it and got the basics.

In my project settings, I have everything set to automatically cache in user mode, background after 1 second. And yet, I can't find a way to have an absolute way to preview in real time playback some sections that have stacked filters and transform like the one I specified. I mean, other than exporting a file in the deliver page. But there has to be a way to fully render a preview inside Resolve. Every NLE I have used since 1997 has that, Resolve is the most advanced of all of them, there's no way it doesn't have that.

Like I said, there is no direct equivalent to what Premiere Pro offers. Personally, I think the Resolve Caching system is better, offering more nuance and control.

But it does help to learn that system. That's why I still recommend reading the Cache section of the Reference Manual.

Once you understand the Caching system, you'll be in a better position to know what best serves your needs for any given scene.

Personally, I think the Resolve Caching system is better, offering more nuance and control.

It may offer more nuance and control, but if it cannot do the most basic thing that every single NLE has done in the last 25 years, at least every single one I used, including Sony Vegas, then how is that better?

How I would approach this:

"Render in Place"
If multiple clips are used, make a compound, and render the compound. For a specific In to Out, make a cut at both points first if the range is only a portion of larger single clip. The option to "revert to original" will be maintained if needed in the future. This can mapped, I think, to a shortcut key.

Option 2:
Deliver Page with a selected range. You can set different ranges, one at a time, and add to render queue if doing multiple. The ones placed in the queue previously will remember the In/Out that was used when added to the queue. You have to manually place back into the timeline, however.

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How I would approach this:

"Render in Place"
If multiple clips are used, make a compound, and render the compound. For a specific In to Out, make a cut at both points first if the range is only a portion of larger single clip. The option to "revert to original" will be maintained if needed in the future. This can mapped, I think, to a shortcut key.

Option 2:
Deliver Page with a selected range. You can set different ranges, one at a time, and add to render queue if doing multiple. The ones placed in the queue previously will remember the In/Out that was used when added to the queue. You have to manually place back into the timeline, however.

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Both options are too convoluted compared to what you easily do in most major NLEs, set in and out points and render a preview with a shortcut, wait a few seconds, and just play it.

This is a serious oversight by Blackmagic Design, it's a state of the art NLE on most things, but terribly lacking in others that should be no-brainers.

Render In to Out is a basic, essential feature that many editors use all the time. Coming from the Avid world, even Xpress Pro (the long discontinued low-end version of Media Composer) had this feature.

There are times when you simply can't wait around for something to kind of play, especially when under a crushing deadline or having a bigwig looking over your shoulder.

Let me ask the more experienced users, for the right click menu item "Render Cache OFX Filter" which gives you the option to check every FX you applied, there's no option to just check all of them? Because if you leave it up to the system, many times it's not going to fully render a preview that plays back in real time. But take a look at this screenshot, and right clicking 5 times and going into a submenu to check each and every one of them is a bit of a pain:

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I started a thread on this myself, not knowing you had posted about this a few months earlier. I think by now you've learned that there's a not a direct way to do what we're used to, and I'd argue that we need. Anyway, here's the best workaround I've found:

Map a shortcut to toggle Show All Video Frames on, then Play In to Out, then toggle off the Show All Video Frames. This works, but it's 3 steps rather than the one that most editors have. But, If I can make something approximating it in 3 steps, why not just include it? Migrating editors would appreciate it.

Well, I did read as much as I could of the manual and training, but I still think the Resolve cache system is not that great. It's not just the lack of a basic render preview in to out that every NLE has; there are a list of issues that get in the way of getting things done fast.

For example, I just had to wait like a minute for Resolve to cache the timeline up to the point where I wanted it to cache to preview as quick as possible. Because you can set an in and out point and it doesn't matter, it's still going to render every-single-clip up to that point in the timeline. In my case, because it's a short timeline, this is not an excessive amount of time, but what if I'm editing a movie or even a short, and I'm working on minute 15 of the timeline.

Then, at least when it comes to EXR sequences, caching in Resolve is a disaster. If I render a sequence again from Blender to the same name and folder, overwriting the previous one, then open Resolve, it will still show me the previous sequence, even if it changed. It never checks against the file, date modified and so on. And it doesn't matter if you empty the whole cache for the project, because it will still show the previous one. The only way to make it load the new sequence is to right click and choose Generate Optimized Media.

But let's suppose we didn't render anything from Blender. You have a timeline with EXR sequences, and you wait for it all to cache. Save the project, close Resolve, and then later open the project again. The cache is gone. It has to cache the whole timeline all over again. Nobody will convince that's a good system. As much as I love Resolve, and I don't intend to switch to any other NLE, the caching system is quite broken, at least for EXR sequences.

As outdated and buggy as Premiere is (and the last time I was forced to work on it I was getting migraines), it gets at least one thing right, which is you set an in and out, and render the preview for just that, right there, at that moment, without waiting for it to cache other clips before it. And if I remember correctly, you don't even need to set an in and out, you select a bunch of clips, and in a menu choose Render Selection. In Resolve, you select a bunch of clips, then if you want them to cache for sure you have to right click and enable Render Cache Color Output, then more right clicks for each and every FX added to it. It's ridiculous.

And editor needs one thing always to be able to preview as fast as possible a certain range in the timeline, simple as that. Resolve makes that pretty difficult with the system it has.

I disagree. They system is very advance and works very well. Its the expectations that kill the experience, not the features. if you expect Resolve to be a clone of something you are used to somewhere else, no matter if its inferior or superior to resolve, you will be frustrated and disappointed. If you treat resolve as separate thing, its very rewarding.

I disagree. They system is very advance and works very well. Its the expectations that kill the experience, not the features. if you expect Resolve to be a clone of something you are used to somewhere else, no matter if its inferior or superior to resolve, you will be frustrated and disappointed. If you treat resolve as separate thing, its very rewarding.

But I don't expect it to work as a clone. I expect it to be what I expect any other piece of software to be: logical. I want software to have common sense. I haven't been a video editor for 1 year, I have been one since the 90's. And different software can have different ways of doing things, but in the end, the way they do those things have to make sense for someone who has been using that kind of software for long.

I'm not expecting anything super specific to one of the many functions that NLEs have. I expect to be able to preview a specific range of the timeline with a simple menu command or a keyboard shortcut. That's not too much to ask.

I'm not expecting anything super specific to one of the many functions that NLEs have. I expect to be able to preview a specific range of the timeline with a simple menu command or a keyboard shortcut. That's not too much to ask.

Its not how program is designed to work, because of the way caching works across pages and for differnt usage you have three separate caching mechanisms and with fusion and its collection of caching method, plus among all those there are varieties for pretty much every scenario and usage out there. User driven, smart one, fusion, color page, edit and cut page, than there is timeline playback resolution mode, proxies, optimized media, and variety of ways to caching anything you would need to cache. If you can't find one that works for you, its not the problem in the program. I assure you. If you adopt your workflow it should cover all the needs one would need for caching. The segmentation of caching methods is pretty extensive and sophisticated and if you don't swim upstream, you should have no problem getting real time playback for just about anything you would want. But if you want something its not designed to do, good luck finding anything other than frustration.

But I don't expect it to work as a clone. I expect it to be what I expect any other piece of software to be: logical. ... That's not too much to ask.

Really quite astonishing to read the defenses, offered over years now in this thread, by the same few parties, of a basic operational deficiency. As if there's some virtue in finding convoluted work-arounds to tasks solved years ago by the software on which Resolve Edit was itself based.

It's about 10 years now that folks have been asking for a render button -- mark in/mark out, render everything on all tracks, rather than clip based caching which leads to constant playback problems. But no -- it's gotta stay the way it is!

I'm not expecting anything super specific to one of the many functions that NLEs have. I expect to be able to preview a specific range of the timeline with a simple menu command or a keyboard shortcut. That's not too much to ask.

Its not how program is designed to work, because of the way caching works across pages and for differnt usage you have three separate caching mechanisms and with fusion and its collection of caching method, plus among all those there are varieties for pretty much every scenario and usage out there. User driven, smart one, fusion, color page, edit and cut page, than there is timeline playback resolution mode, proxies, optimized media, and variety of ways to caching anything you would need to cache. If you can't find one that works for you, its not the problem in the program. I assure you. If you adopt your workflow it should cover all the needs one would need for caching. The segmentation of caching methods is pretty extensive and sophisticated and if you don't swim upstream, you should have no problem getting real time playback for just about anything you would want. But if you want something its not designed to do, good luck finding anything other than frustration.

Well, let's talk about Fusion Studio for example. I know, not an NLE exactly, but it has the very basic functionality I expect in any software that deals with any type of video editing, meaning that has a timeline and clips, even if Fusion is a totally different beast. But in Fusion Studio, you can simply set an in and an out, and you can render a preview of that. I don't see any reason why Resolve cannot have the same basic thing. It can have all the rest, all the sophisticated things that you mention are great and useful, but at the end of the day, it needs to have a simple way to render a preview in to out.

I'm not saying this to throw crap at Resolve, it's still my favorite NLE. But I don't see why we can't have a discussion about what things work and which ones don't. I really think that Resolve needs to add a simple render cache in to out or for selected clips with priority over the rest that come before it. After doing that, sure, it can go back to background rendering the rest. But give me what I need to work on first, because time is money. And when it's not money, time is still the most important resource because we just don't have enough of it.

I just had to wait like a minute for Resolve to cache the timeline up to the point where I wanted it to cache to preview as quick as possible.

Resolve will start Cacheing on the clip under the playhead, then go back and finish earlier clips later.

You can also switch to User Cache and only turn it on the the clips you want Cached.

If I render a sequence again from Blender to the same name and folder

For now, that work flow does have issues.

New versions of assets should always be saved to storage with a new name, and then do a Replace operation from the bin.

later open the project again. The cache is gone.

That is not normal.

Are you working in a Local, Network or Cloud Library?

But I don't expect it to work as a clone. I expect it to be what I expect any other piece of software to be: logical. ... That's not too much to ask.

Really quite astonishing to read the defenses, offered over years now in this thread, by the same few parties, of a basic operational deficiency. As if there's some virtue in finding convoluted work-arounds to tasks solved years ago by the software on which Resolve Edit was itself based.

It's about 10 years now that folks have been asking for a render button -- mark in/mark out, render everything on all tracks, rather than clip based caching which leads to constant playback problems. But no -- it's gotta stay the way it is!

Exactly. The thing about Resolve is that it is a bit like Apple. In some things, years, even decades more advanced that its alternatives. In other things, years or decades behind. Forget about this specific render thing. Not having the simple ability that NLEs had since at least the late 90's of saving presets for VFX is absurd. How much more code and resources are needed for a basic function like that?

Even if you come into Resolve the first time from Premiere and you're used to the lame FX that come with it, and same for After Effects, and you see the tons of spectacular VFX that come with even the free version of Resolve, and you realize that it's way more advanced than the Adobe counterparts, and even Final Cut Pro. But in all those, you had the simple ability to save presets since decades ago, and I don't think there was even a version without that capability.

And just as I love Apple and most of their products, I don't like to defend it to death no matter what. Apple sucks in some things, but it's great in others, same for Resolve.

Well, let's talk about Fusion Studio for example. I know, not an NLE exactly, but it has the very basic functionality I expect in any software that deals with any type of video editing, meaning that has a timeline and clips, even if Fusion is a totally different beast. But in Fusion Studio, you can simply set an in and an out, and you can render a preview of that. I don't see any reason why Resolve cannot have the same basic thing.

Render how the preview of that? There are bunch of ways to do it and fundamental difference is that frame rate in fusion is for preview, frame count, meaning individual frames are treated as separate images. Not the same in resolve timeline. But that is also one part of reason why they work so differently. You can render a preview in many differnt ways in fusion because that is how it works to be what it is. Flip book RAM preview, ROI, DOD, GPU VRAM preview, background preview, actual rendering, proxy mode, cache to disk mode. Which of the modes in fusion are we talking about exactly? Be specific.

It can have all the rest, all the sophisticated things that you mention are great and useful, but at the end of the day, it needs to have a simple way to render a preview in to out.

You only really need to render effects in edit page, things that actually require heavy processing. For that you have verity of mechanisms. So you render the processor intense things and not the parts you don't need. And you have control over which elements you render in what way. There is a pretty big chapter in the manual on how and why caching happens in resolve so I won't quite it here. But if you pay attention to it, you can render everything separately that needs rendering in several ways. From fusion effects to open FX to transitions, to retiming effects, to color grading effects, which additionally happens in color page, and also on node by node basis. So you can tweak it in just about any way you want except in and out points, because of complexity of various mechanisms working in complex ways.

But if you can't cache individual bottlenecks for some reason, and you should be able to, than you can cache the whole thing in few more ways. I'll leave fusion out of it for now, since its own thing, but you have option to work with proxies, optimized media, user and smart caching, in verity of ways and render in place. You can combine that with other options or use it as its own thing. If you know what you are doing you can use the appropriate method at appropriate time for what you need.

You also have two criminally underrated options. Timeline playback resolution which only changes preview window, by rendering in GPU at lower resolution, so you get instant results and its just as easy to turn off, no waiting. Or you can leverage resolve resolution agnostic nature and move between timeline resolution format. Depending on what you need to preview and how you need to work, you have about a dozen options to cache in various ways. And I swear if Blackmagic gave people a hundred more ways to cache in just about every way possible, there would be someone on this forum who would complain its not doing it exactly as they want it.

I'm not saying this to throw crap at Resolve, it's still my favorite NLE. But I don't see why we can't have a discussion about what things work and which ones don't. I really think that Resolve needs to add a simple render cache in to out or for selected clips with priority over the rest that come before it. After doing that, sure, it can go back to background rendering the rest. But give me what I need to work on first, because time is money. And when it's not money, time is still the most important resource because we just don't have enough of it.

If you work correctly, you can cache things you need when you need them in a way that allows to do whatever you are doing at the moment. Editing, color grading, applying effects etc. If done in the right order and understanding, in most cases you only cache the thing that needs caching the rest you either already cached or its not needed because it can be processed in real time. Or you use one of options to avoid caching to disk altogether. Otherwise you would have to render whole thing. For what reason? Editing? It wouldn't work , since it invalidates the cache. Fusion or other specific effects? You can do that independently as it is now? Rending for playback of whole video? You can do that now by avoiding rendering altogether and reducing load on the preview.

So what are you rendering with in and out points that you can't render in current ways, and what would that accomplish? If you need to preview a segment you can easily do that by setting in and out points and deliver from a deliver page. Ready for preview. For working cache, and not invalidating it, current system is superior because it segments the process both by effects and pages, which means you can avoid re-rendering things you don't use and cache the things you do use, instead of having to render all of it all the time.

later open the project again. The cache is gone.

That is not normal.

Are you working in a Local, Network or Cloud Library?

Local. I set the projects folder to D:/DaVinci Resolve Projects so it's not all on the C: drive. Then for the project itself, I go even further and set it to E:\ResolveCache\CacheClip, that way I spread the love amongst all three SSDs so things are as fast as they can.

Should I set them differently?

This is really to KrunoSmithy, I think everyone here appreciates the time you spent explaining the workings of Resolve and also the benefits this software gives us. But the question will always remain, why not just give editors the feature they've always had and relied upon? This is like the old reluctance Apple had to implementing right clicks. There was no reason not to add the functionality. Apple just didn't want to b/c they were hung up on the idea of streamlined simplicity and refused to admit that for many people this actually led to far more complex workarounds--including weird keyboard-click stuff that almost everyone hated.

Likewise, I've been editing for 20+ years and I can't always choose my workflow. Some projects work fine w Resolve's caching, but others are nightmarish in complexity and demand a Render In to Out kind of option. Currently I'm editing a live sporting event with 12-16 cameras running at 4k 60p. Even with proxies, it's nearly impossible to play back w/o rendering. I can't tell the producer and director to do things differently and they've even explained why the timelines are this way.

Now sure, you can tell folks to use other software if the suggested workflow doesn't do it for them. But, where do we go? Premiere is slow and buggy to the point of unuseable. FCP really stopped being a pro option since it became FCPX. Then there's Avid, but that's a whole different discussion.

So, again, if I can add a shortcut that approximates what many editors need but is still fairly awkward and slow, why have BlackMagic do something similar but more streamlined and better integrated?

Well, let's talk about Fusion Studio for example. I know, not an NLE exactly, but it has the very basic functionality I expect in any software that deals with any type of video editing, meaning that has a timeline and clips, even if Fusion is a totally different beast. But in Fusion Studio, you can simply set an in and an out, and you can render a preview of that. I don't see any reason why Resolve cannot have the same basic thing.

Render how the preview of that? There are bunch of ways to do it and fundamental difference is that frame rate in fusion is for preview, frame count, meaning individual frames are treated as separate images. Not the same in resolve timeline. But that is also one part of reason why they work so differently. You can render a preview in many differnt ways in fusion because that is how it works to be what it is. Flip book RAM preview, ROI, DOD, GPU VRAM preview, background preview, actual rendering, proxy mode, cache to disk mode. Which of the modes in fusion are we talking about exactly? Be specific.

It can have all the rest, all the sophisticated things that you mention are great and useful, but at the end of the day, it needs to have a simple way to render a preview in to out.

You only really need to render effects in edit page, things that actually require heavy processing. For that you have verity of mechanisms. So you render the processor intense things and not the parts you don't need. And you have control over which elements you render in what way. There is a pretty big chapter in the manual on how and why caching happens in resolve so I won't quite it here. But if you pay attention to it, you can render everything separately that needs rendering in several ways. From fusion effects to open FX to transitions, to retiming effects, to color grading effects, which additionally happens in color page, and also on node by node basis. So you can tweak it in just about any way you want except in and out points, because of complexity of various mechanisms working in complex ways.

But if you can't cache individual bottlenecks for some reason, and you should be able to, than you can cache the whole thing in few more ways. I'll leave fusion out of it for now, since its own thing, but you have option to work with proxies, optimized media, user and smart caching, in verity of ways and render in place. You can combine that with other options or use it as its own thing. If you know what you are doing you can use the appropriate method at appropriate time for what you need.

You also have two criminally underrated options. Timeline playback resolution which only changes preview window, by rendering in GPU at lower resolution, so you get instant results and its just as easy to turn off, no waiting. Or you can leverage resolve resolution agnostic nature and move between timeline resolution format. Depending on what you need to preview and how you need to work, you have about a dozen options to cache in various ways. And I swear if Blackmagic gave people a hundred more ways to cache in just about every way possible, there would be someone on this forum who would complain its not doing it exactly as they want it.

I'm not saying this to throw crap at Resolve, it's still my favorite NLE. But I don't see why we can't have a discussion about what things work and which ones don't. I really think that Resolve needs to add a simple render cache in to out or for selected clips with priority over the rest that come before it. After doing that, sure, it can go back to background rendering the rest. But give me what I need to work on first, because time is money. And when it's not money, time is still the most important resource because we just don't have enough of it.

If you work correctly, you can cache things you need when you need them in a way that allows to do whatever you are doing at the moment. Editing, color grading, applying effects etc. If done in the right order and understanding, in most cases you only cache the thing that needs caching the rest you either already cached or its not needed because it can be processed in real time. Or you use one of options to avoid caching to disk altogether. Otherwise you would have to render whole thing. For what reason? Editing? It wouldn't work , since it invalidates the cache. Fusion or other specific effects? You can do that independently as it is now? Rending for playback of whole video? You can do that now by avoiding rendering altogether and reducing load on the preview.

So what are you rendering with in and out points that you can't render in current ways, and what would that accomplish? If you need to preview a segment you can easily do that by setting in and out points and deliver from a deliver page. Ready for preview. For working cache, and not invalidating it, current system is superior because it segments the process both by effects and pages, which means you can avoid re-rendering things you don't use and cache the things you do use, instead of having to render all of it all the time.

Kruno, you know I hold you in high regard and respect your knowledge and advice, but you have to see what's the issue here. You're explaining all these different methods and workflows for rendering a simple preview, and while at times those more complicated workflows (not overly complicated, I mean, that go beyond the usual select a bunch of clips and rendering) might have their place, every editor will come to a point where they need a simple render this range right now, as fast as the hardware allows. Not wait until it finishes rendering something up to that point.

Again, I'm not saying this to trash Resolve. There is a thing called "constructive criticism", and products and services many times get better because of it. At some point the good folks at BMD have to see that they have to add an option to make it really simple to render a preview.

And I don't think FCP is a bad option, while I agree with Sam that it was a joke when FCPX was released, it has come a long way since then, and for a while it's been deserving of the "Pro" label. Premiere has become a joke for its lack of stability and because of the company that develops it, and Avid may sound like the bulletproof king of stability to us who never used it, but do a good search for Avid bugs, and you'll find hundreds of posts from irate Avid users.

Resolve may lack some basic things at times, but in my short experience using it, one thing I can say is that it doesn't seem buggy to me. I had an issue recently with the Fusion page and lens flares, but it seemed to be isolated to a specific Fusion comp that had to be redone easily. Or perhaps one of the many updates fixed it. Point is, if I was charged today with setting up the editing bays for a TV network without any regards to budget, I would still choose Resolve Studio and Fusion Studio, with Mac Studios to also have FCPX and especially Apple Motion.

This is really to KrunoSmithy, I think everyone here appreciates the time you spent explaining the workings of Resolve and also the benefits this software gives us. But the question will always remain, why not just give editors the feature they've always had and relied upon? This is like the old reluctance Apple had to implementing right clicks. There was no reason not to add the functionality. Apple just didn't want to b/c they were hung up on the idea of streamlined simplicity and refused to admit that for many people this actually led to far more complex workarounds--including weird keyboard-click stuff that almost everyone hated.

Thank you.

You will have to ask developers why they don't implement it. Personally, I've found most of their ways of implementing features pretty clever solutions. Much more than many appreciate. And generally speaking, other than flat out bug, I've not really found something that has no reason to exist. Everything I've seen exists for some good reason in the application. And when I investigated further, I started to appreciate it more because there is clearly some though put into it. Which is more than I can say for people demanding things. Which is often the opposite of developers way of implementing it.

Likewise, I've been editing for 20+ years and I can't always choose my workflow. Some projects work fine w Resolve's caching, but others are nightmarish in complexity and demand a Render In to Out kind of option. Currently I'm editing a live sporting event with 12-16 cameras running at 4k 60p. Even with proxies, it's nearly impossible to play back w/o rendering. I can't tell the producer and director to do things differently and they've even explained why the timelines are this way.

Curious. And please, don't take this as contrarian, just attempt to find a workable solution if you are interested.

What would happen if you drop timeline resolution to 1080p or use timeline playback resolution of half or quarter? If you are editing it should be enough to see what you are doing. It should speed up playback a lot, and its quick to turn on or off to check for details if you need to. No need to wait for render times or fill up disk space.

Unless at that moment in editing process 4K resolution is absolutely critical for something during playback, I would think its enough to see it at 1080p and get playback in order. And you said "even with proxies" so you are already using lower res. So lets say instead of 4K 60 you edit on 720p 60. Than change format of timeline back up when you are done editing. No quality lost. No rendering needed. You lose quality while you editing, but so would be with proxies. And speaking of proxies. this feature should work with proxies as well if I'm not mistaken, compounding the effect of offloading the processing. You can switch between 720p or 1080p for rough cut and 2K for more precise tuning. And if you combine some of the caching methods for most processor intensive parts and drop down the resolution of timeline, you should be able to edit quite smoothly I imagine.

And you can always use optimized media (not proxies) in combination with caching as well. Which has its own advantages. Or Proxy media (not optimized media) with combination of other methods I mentioned. There are quite a few options for virtually all situations. These would be more ideal than caching for editing process, and timeline resolution and timeline playback resolution modes always an option.

I just did a little test. I put 6K BRAW file and duplicated it four times and try to play on a potato machine. At original resolution. no way. I dropped timeline resolution to 720p and half the timeline playback resolution. I tested this on 10+ years old machine and it plays real time. No rendering. No caching. If I needed to use this machine for editing of this footage, I could. You could probably apply some of these methods to your project and speed up the process.

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Well, let's talk about Fusion Studio for example. I know, not an NLE exactly, but it has the very basic functionality I expect in any software that deals with any type of video editing, meaning that has a timeline and clips, even if Fusion is a totally different beast. But in Fusion Studio, you can simply set an in and an out, and you can render a preview of that. I don't see any reason why Resolve cannot have the same basic thing.

Render how the preview of that? There are bunch of ways to do it and fundamental difference is that frame rate in fusion is for preview, frame count, meaning individual frames are treated as separate images. Not the same in resolve timeline. But that is also one part of reason why they work so differently. You can render a preview in many differnt ways in fusion because that is how it works to be what it is. Flip book RAM preview, ROI, DOD, GPU VRAM preview, background preview, actual rendering, proxy mode, cache to disk mode. Which of the modes in fusion are we talking about exactly? Be specific.

You have a project in Fusion Studio, meaning the standalone version, not the Fusion page in Resolve. Your comp starts at 0 and ends at 680. You just started it, forget about caching nodes and more involved stuff that comes later (if it does, I had a bad experience with node caching so I just leave the loaders as they are). You want to preview at the footage intended frame rate, say 24 fps. You set in and out points by typing the numbers or moving the yellow delimiters in the timeline to where you want them, and press the spacebar. Or you do the right click on the node you want to preview, choose "Create/Play preview on..." then go into the submenu and choose which viewer you want it in. Then you get the Render dialog, click render and that's it. But normally I just go for the easy approach and just set the in and out, then press the spacebar and the first time it renders the frames into RAM then after that it plays the loop over and over. Is that specific enough?

It can have all the rest, all the sophisticated things that you mention are great and useful, but at the end of the day, it needs to have a simple way to render a preview in to out.

You only really need to render effects in edit page, things that actually require heavy processing. For that you have verity of mechanisms. So you render the processor intense things and not the parts you don't need. And you have control over which elements you render in what way. There is a pretty big chapter in the manual on how and why caching happens in resolve so I won't quite it here. But if you pay attention to it, you can render everything separately that needs rendering in several ways. From fusion effects to open FX to transitions, to retiming effects, to color grading effects, which additionally happens in color page, and also on node by node basis. So you can tweak it in just about any way you want except in and out points, because of complexity of various mechanisms working in complex ways.

But if you can't cache individual bottlenecks for some reason, and you should be able to, than you can cache the whole thing in few more ways. I'll leave fusion out of it for now, since its own thing, but you have option to work with proxies, optimized media, user and smart caching, in verity of ways and render in place. You can combine that with other options or use it as its own thing. If you know what you are doing you can use the appropriate method at appropriate time for what you need.

You also have two criminally underrated options. Timeline playback resolution which only changes preview window, by rendering in GPU at lower resolution, so you get instant results and its just as easy to turn off, no waiting. Or you can leverage resolve resolution agnostic nature and move between timeline resolution format. Depending on what you need to preview and how you need to work, you have about a dozen options to cache in various ways. And I swear if Blackmagic gave people a hundred more ways to cache in just about every way possible, there would be someone on this forum who would complain its not doing it exactly as they want it.

I read that whole chapter, and I still think that Resolve's preview system needs a fresh look to bring it down to what most people need. You just need to realize that not everybody uses Resolve in the way you use it, with the same type of footage you do, at least not all the time. And when working with EXR sequences, it's not a disaster, but it makes you waste time for no reason.

You seem to take every criticism of Resolve as personal and feel you need to defend it, when it's not necessary. I'm not an outsider that loves Premiere and comes here to throw crap at Resolve. I love Resolve and Fusion, I just think that I should remain silent in cases it has obvious flaws in design. I'm not even saying that the current caching system is a total mess, I'm saying it's great for some case scenarios, but it makes me waste time and I don't appreciate that.

However, I don't get an "a la carte" NLE where I can choose the best features of Premiere, FCP, Resolve and the rest. I choose Resolve because to me is the best. I don't feel that I have to put a tape over my mouth and shut up if I see something that just doesn't make sense. Granted, I never used Avid, but I used more than just Premiere and FCPX over the years, including the classic FCP, which everybody knows was a completely different software than FCPX, Sony Vegas, Grassvalley Edius and a few others I can't remember. They all had some type of simple, I want to render this range right now before you do anything else. So I'm not some wacko with crazy expectations. I just want what every other NLE has and is basic function.

You can have a hell of a car, an absolute masterpiece of car engineering, but imagine if you just needed to go to the supermarket and to accelerate you need to do like 6 different things. Sometimes you just need to press the gas pedal and take off. The car can cost a million bucks and have all the features you can imagine, it can even drive itself. But you need that gas pedal, and a brake pedal. It's as simple as that.

We can go back and forth until the end of time, but the fact is, I'm not alone in this, and certainly I'm not saying BMD has to get rid of the current caching system and implement only one way which is render in to out. I'm simply saying that they need to add the basic function that every other NLE has, and they also need to add saving presets for all those awesome OpenFX it comes with, many of which are remarkable, and then you tweak it to your taste, and want to apply it to other clips, even in other projects. And that's when it fails miserably, because basically you need to copy that clip to another timeline, a timeline where you keep little clips that you used and tweaked it to achieve a great look in another timeline, but when you want to save that as a preset, you can't. So how is it that in 2025, the best NLE around still doesn't have basic functionality that pretty much all others that could be labeled "professional" had since the 90's. Does that make any sense to you? Can it be that time consuming to add the code to save a preset that can be recalled and it simply changes parameters in that VFX?

I mean, when you load a VFX, let's say the Film Look Creator, all those sliders are not all the way to the left. Some are, some are in the middle, and different places in the scale from 0 to 1. And where does it get that from? I'm not a coder, but I've seen a lot those things come from an XML file. It seems to be the format that is used to save presets. Well, how hard can it be to add a "save as preset" button or whatever, and it writes every single parameter to that XML file, then it shows in the list of presets? I'm not even asking for a full fledged thing with thumbnails and so on. Make it simple.

Hell, maybe it can even be the Fusion way. One of the best things Fusion has is that you copy a node, and you come here and you paste it into a code block, then somebody else copies that, pastes it into the node tree area, and there's the same node the other person had in their node tree! That blows my mind. Bryan Ray made a suggestion to deal with a render I had that was making some frames black, so he put a bunch of code that I selected, copied, pasted into my node tree, dragged the links and problem solved.

So how is it that saving presets for FX in Fusion Studio is so easy, and Resolve doesn't even have the choice? Unless of course it's a Fusion FX inside Resolve. But forget about the Edit page. And there are plenty of great FX in both the Edit page and the Fusion page. I know, you can save the code from the Edit page FX if you turn the clip into a Fusion comp, then go to the Fusion page and so on. Well, the Fusion page doesn't always work as fast as Fusion Studio. It's a bit clunky sometimes. Point is, the Open FX in the Edit page should have the ability to save as presets, it's about time.

You have a project in Fusion Studio, meaning the standalone version, not the Fusion page in Resolve. Your comp starts at 0 and ends at 680. You just started it, forget about caching nodes and more involved stuff that comes later (if it does, I had a bad experience with node caching so I just leave the loaders as they are). You want to preview at the footage intended frame rate, say 24 fps. You set in and out points by typing the numbers or moving the yellow delimiters in the timeline to where you want them, and press the spacebar. Or you do the right click on the node you want to preview, choose "Create/Play preview on..." then go into the submenu and choose which viewer you want it in. Then you get the Render dialog, click render and that's it.

This is similar to setting in and out points and rendering in deliver page if you are using resolve and want to see similar thing in edit page.

24 fps, is just for playback preview, not actual rendering, because fusion works with frame count not frame rate. And each node is a like a separate clip. So it can have its own set of settings. Just as each frame is its own image.

But normally I just go for the easy approach and just set the in and out, then press the spacebar and the first time it renders the frames into RAM then after that it plays the loop over and over. Is that specific enough?

Yes. Setting in and oout points, and rendering it is like rendering it with in and out points in deliver page. VRAM preview is similar as well,

"Every viewer in DaVInci Resolve exposes a GPU status indicator and a frame-per-second (FPS) meter, which appears in the Viewer’s title bar, which shows you your workstation’s performance whenever playback is initiated. Since DaVinci Resolve uses one or more GPUs (graphics processing units) to handle all image processing and effects, the GPU status display shows you how much processing power is being used by whichever clip is playing.

A green status indicator shows there is plenty of GPU processing headroom available. As the GPU resources is increasingly taxed, this green graph eventually turns red to show that the available GPU power is insufficient for consistent real time playback.

Eventually, as you add more and more effects and corrections, you’ll reach the limits of available performance, forcing DaVinci Resolve to either drop frames, or play video at a slower speed in order to maintain high image quality, shown by the red FPS indicator.

When real time performance falls short, DaVinci Resolve provides a variety of controls and options that let you enhance real time playback and effects. Each is useful for different situations, and all can work together so you can choose the best trade-off between image quality and performance while you work. All of these methods can be set up to have no effect on your delivered output."

I read that whole chapter, and I still think that Resolve's preview system needs a fresh look to bring it down to what most people need. You just need to realize that not everybody uses Resolve in the way you use it, with the same type of footage you do, at least not all the time. And when working with EXR sequences, it's not a disaster, but it makes you waste time for no reason.

Not sure I understand what you mean there. Are you talking about EXR sequance in fusion studio, fusion page or in the edit page?

You seem to take every criticism of Resolve as personal and feel you need to defend it, when it's not necessary. I'm not an outsider that loves Premiere and comes here to throw crap at Resolve. I love Resolve and Fusion, I just think that I should remain silent in cases it has obvious flaws in design. I'm not even saying that the current caching system is a total mess, I'm saying it's great for some case scenarios, but it makes me waste time and I don't appreciate that.

You misunderstand me. I don't defend blackmagic or resolve, I criticize people who feel either entailed to something they are not supposed to, or especially people who have a problem for every solution and not matter how many solutions you offer them they just want attention and because of that they defend their problem. Real or imagined.

Reminds me of a quote: “Neurotics complain of their illness, but they make the most of it, and when it comes to taking it away from them they will defend it like a lioness her young.” ― Sigmund Freud

There are few usual suspects on this forum who just insist their problem is the only problem in the world and no matter how many solutions you offer them or workarounds or explanations, they just won't accept it, and get annoyed or angry, because ultimately you are attacking their problem, on which they depend. They have no interest in solving it. And that is what I'm criticizing. I do it indirectly, by offering solutions. Which often proves my point, but to onlookers can look like I'm some kind of fanboy. I assure you, I'm no such thing. I just can't stand the type of people I just outlined.

I just want what every other NLE has and is basic function.

But every other NLE is not like Resolve, anymore than Resolve is like any other NLE. Hence the differnt approaches. I don't think any other NLE has three major caching mechanisms with many variations, and designed so you can work with all the differnt pages where also processing is not simultaneous or in order that is random. Same reason why there are differnt undo histories, seporate from each other and same reason why there are three major caching mechanisms , separate from each other. So you can continue working and not have to cache all the time all of it. If you want one, unified. You have that. You can use proxy, optimized media, or other options I mentioned. But I guess that is not enough.

We can go back and forth until the end of time, but the fact is, I'm not alone in this, and certainly I'm not saying BMD has to get rid of the current caching system and implement only one way which is render in to out. I'm simply saying that they need to add the basic function that every other NLE has, and they also need to add saving presets for all those awesome OpenFX it comes with, many of which are remarkable, and then you tweak it to your taste, and want to apply it to other clips, even in other projects. And that's when it fails miserably, because basically you need to copy that clip to another timeline, a timeline where you keep little clips that you used and tweaked it to achieve a great look in another timeline, but when you want to save that as a preset, you can't.

Yes you can. Power grades will do that with ease and much more. If that is the function you need, it can be done. But I guess you don't want it that way, you want it another way. Like caching. Hmmm. If I didn't know any better.

So how is it that in 2025, the best NLE around still doesn't have basic functionality that pretty much all others that could be labeled "professional" had since the 90's. Does that make any sense to you? Can it be that time consuming to add the code to save a preset that can be recalled and it simply changes parameters in that VFX?

If this is what you consider to be barometer of professional or not professional, preset in openFX filter, than we probably won't agree on the concept of professionalism. Because presets can be saved and used, its just not to your liking. Not only its possible to save presets, but also presets with keyframes, more than one filter in various combinations, and they can be used across timelines, across clips and copy with ease and carry over to other projects and shared with others. They can carry over tracking information and other things. So yes, you can save presets, they are just not the kind you are used to.

I mean, when you load a VFX, let's say the Film Look Creator, all those sliders are not all the way to the left. Some are, some are in the middle, and different places in the scale from 0 to 1. And where does it get that from? I'm not a coder, but I've seen a lot those things come from an XML file. It seems to be the format that is used to save presets. Well, how hard can it be to add a "save as preset" button or whatever, and it writes every single parameter to that XML file, then it shows in the list of presets? I'm not even asking for a full fledged thing with thumbnails and so on. Make it simple.

If you are coming from other programs, I can see why you would want that. Its reasonable request. Not sure why developers made a decision not to include presets in that way, but if you need presets, there are ways that can do that and more, just in resolve kind of way.

Hell, maybe it can even be the Fusion way. One of the best things Fusion has is that you copy a node, and you come here and you paste it into a code block, then somebody else copies that, pastes it into the node tree area, and there's the same node the other person had in their node tree! That blows my mind. Bryan Ray made a suggestion to deal with a render I had that was making some frames black, so he put a bunch of code that I selected, copied, pasted into my node tree, dragged the links and problem solved.

Yes, power of lua. Unless off course you have media than you can't copy it that way. Not in only text format, anyway. its only for things you generate inside fusion with its tools. Resolve doesn't work like that. It needs the media, but you can save in differnt formats. Even media. There is format for each part of resolve. For projects, for timelines, for power bins, for power grades and stills, for luts of coursee etc.

So how is it that saving presets for FX in Fusion Studio is so easy, and Resolve doesn't even have the choice? Unless of course it's a Fusion FX inside Resolve. But forget about the Edit page. And there are plenty of great FX in both the Edit page and the Fusion page. I know, you can save the code from the Edit page FX if you turn the clip into a Fusion comp, then go to the Fusion page and so on. Well, the Fusion page doesn't always work as fast as Fusion Studio. It's a bit clunky sometimes.

There are many reasons for this, and some are justified and some are not. But its a discussion for another day.

Point is, the Open FX in the Edit page should have the ability to save as presets, it's about time.

I can't argue with that.

Its not much of a handicap if you are using other methods, in fact its not handicap at all, but I can't argue that adding it would be nice thing to have and I'm unclear as to why it was not made in the first place. Someone made that development choice at some point and its been done that way for a long time. Maybe there is some technical reason for it, I don't know of any, so I can't argue against it.

I know third party OpenFX filters offer preset saving. The main difference I was able to find is that openFX filters in resolve are supposed to be specifically optimized to get real time playback or as much as possible, unlike many third party filters which may be more about function.

Also I am not sure, but I think DCTL's also don't have option to save presets. Or even categorized them by groups, would would be in my view more useful feature. If there are many DCTL's which can be very powerful, there is only a drop down list of all of them, and if you have 100 of them, it can get a bit hard to find each time the one you need. Unlike presets that one cannot be solved by change of workflow, at least not to my knowlage.

You will have to ask developers why they don't implement it. Personally, I've found most of their ways of implementing features pretty clever solutions. Much more than many appreciate. And generally speaking, other than flat out bug, I've not really found something that has no reason to exist. Everything I've seen exists for some good reason in the application. And when I investigated further, I started to appreciate it more because there is clearly some though put into it. Which is more than I can say for people demanding things. Which is often the opposite of developers way of implementing it.

I hear you and I'm glad what Resolve does meets your needs. But you also have to consider that it does not in some peculiar ways for many other editors. The peculiar part comes in b/c what we're asking for and many have requested for many years is not hard to implement. Again, I figured an awkward workaround, but there's no reason to keep it awkward.

I also appreciate what you say about ways to speed up a timeline. But, it will ALWAYS be a problem to play back certain timelines. I work in documentaries and unscripted shows, so I have a lot of not-ideal footage. Accordingly, I often have to use plugins that are not real-time, like Neat Video Noise Remover. That often takes a ton of rendering different versions to get to the final product. Playing back real time w stuff like that isn't possible, and that's just one plug-in that I use regularly. If I have parts of the timeline that Resolve wants to render other stuff from first, then I'm waiting for nothing. If I'm with a client, that's unacceptable and makes me look unprofessional. That's just one scenario.

The way FCP7 used to work, and my understanding is many of the FCP7 software engineers folks left when FCPX came out and went to work w/ BlackMagic, was to render parts of the timeline after a certain amount of time of inactivity passed. That's great and would be very appreciated, but editing software telling the editor where and what to render 1st is very much the tail wagging the dog. May fit great for you, but it's an avoidable disaster for many other folks.

Or, in a nutshell, if parties A or B don't understand why a long-standing NLE feature is necessary or desirable, maybe parties A and B shouldn't assume from the outset that it's others who need educating. And of course there's the developers own words, in the Feature Request stickie. They don't find criticism of feature requests helpful.

This thread, if more temperate than some others, thanks to the patience of the editors, perhaps illustrates why.

Should I set them differently?

I like to spread things out myself.

Is E: an internal drive? (It should be.)

Is E: the first entry under Preferences>System>Media Storage? (It should be.)

I also appreciate what you say about ways to speed up a timeline. But, it will ALWAYS be a problem to play back certain timelines. I work in documentaries and unscripted shows, so I have a lot of not-ideal footage. Accordingly, I often have to use plugins that are not real-time, like Neat Video Noise Remover. That often takes a ton of rendering different versions to get to the final product. Playing back real time w stuff like that isn't possible, and that's just one plug-in that I use regularly. If I have parts of the timeline that Resolve wants to render other stuff from first, then I'm waiting for nothing. If I'm with a client, that's unacceptable and makes me look unprofessional. That's just one scenario.

You should be able to render just the individual open fx filters you need, than you can cut if you need to or apply it after the cut on edited clips for less time.

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There are so many differnt options to choose from that depending on your skill level and needs, you should be able to work efficiently, and only render things you ultimately must render. But with minimal redundancy.

Again, I appreciate that, but the above situation is just one of many that editors encounter where rendering in to out would be useful. And here, it would still be better for me to use my workaround. Politely and respectfully, I ask you to please just accept that there are many such situations that other editors face. We know our work and the workflows that we have to use, often for reasons beyond our control.

Given this situation, I ask again why anyone wouldn't want this feature that so many are requesting. Is there some reason to deny it to folks? And why is this a hill worth dying on to keep it from us?

why anyone wouldn't want this feature

I think what we have now offers much finer control and is actually better.

(When you understand how to use it effectively. )

I think what we have now offers much finer control and is actually better.

(When you understand how to use it effectively. )

As was explained above, repeatedly, exhaustively and patiently, to no effect, the experience and needs of the editors asking for this feature may differ from yours. And by your own past admissions, you have very limited experience, having never edited a dramatic project. That perspective may not be the ideal one on which to judge NLE design, much less one to dictate that design, as you seem to wish to do, by persisting in this matter.

Instead of suggesting that feature requests you don't like must spring from other people's ignorance, how about granting those who have far more experience than you do the presumption of basic competence and the benefit of your doubt? I know, an utterly strange and foreign notion.... But perhaps worth trying? It really is possible to remain silent on occasion, exactly as the developers have asked in the matter of feature requests.

If this post gets me in trouble, well....

+1

+1

Resolve ABSOLUTELY, UNQUESTIONABLY, NEEDS a better caching system. Far too fiddly and time consuming. It's not 100% reliable either. Then you have to go back and turn all the darn switches off again so it doesn't re-render whenever you "cough, sneeze or blink your eyes"

For me a "Force render In to Out only" using the internal cache is the most practical solution.

Reminds me of a quote: “Neurotics complain of their illness, but they make the most of it, and when it comes to taking it away from them they will defend it like a lioness her young.” ― Sigmund Freud

I think it's beyond pointless by now to keep this argument back and forth. Especially if you label me as neurotic, which you can say "I didn't say you were neurotic", but you clearly implied it.

It seems me to that you think you know better than everyone else, and in some things perhaps you do, but you're also very close minded to accept that not everyone sees things the same way you do, and can't understand something as basic as doing an in to out preview, in full quality and frame rate, is a feature that all NLEs should have. I mentioned to other editors that Resolve is super advanced in many things but doesn't have a simple render in to out, and they all told me "I couldn't use it". You say that what I want is in the deliver page, and it's not. I don't want to have to render out a file to just preview sections of the timeline as I'm working on it. It's as simple as that, and you just keep beating the dead horse on the same arguments.

So I'm done arguing about this.

Its the expectations that kill the experience

I almost fell off my chair with ironic laughter at this statement. I know what you are meaning (expecting Resolve to work like other NLEs), but I don't think that's what the OP is asking. He wants a result, not necessarily for it to be the exact same way other NLEs do it. And he wants it to be simple. These are not outlandish expectations. I had the same experience recently. No matter what I tried, I could not get my 4K timeline to play smoothly in one section. I had fixed scaling/warping on a clip by using a warp node in fusion. This on top of a LUT and other color correction. I had stuttering, stopping, audio out of sync from video. I tried all the same cache settings plus quarter playback quality and quarter cache resolution. I finally had to change the timeline resolution to 1080 HD instead of 2160 4K. Is that what my expectation should have been?

Your statement reads like we should be adjusting our expectations to expect out of sync audio and video, not being able to preview any video while editing, not being able to see color and effects in real time. Really? I do not think I will be happy with my experience adjusting my expectations like this.

I think it's the experience that's killing the experience, not the expectations.

Its the expectations that kill the experience

I almost fell off my chair with ironic laughter at this statement. I know what you are meaning (expecting Resolve to work like other NLEs), but I don't think that's what the OP is asking. He wants a result, not necessarily for it to be the exact same way other NLEs do it. And he wants it to be simple. These are not outlandish expectations. I had the same experience recently. No matter what I tried, I could not get my 4K timeline to play smoothly in one section. I had fixed scaling/warping on a clip by using a warp node in fusion. This on top of a LUT and other color correction. I had stuttering, stopping, audio out of sync from video. I tried all the same cache settings plus quarter playback quality and quarter cache resolution. I finally had to change the timeline resolution to 1080 HD instead of 2160 4K. Is that what my expectation should have been?

Your statement reads like we should be adjusting our expectations to expect out of sync audio and video, not being able to preview any video while editing, not being able to see color and effects in real time. Really? I do not think I will be happy with my experience adjusting my expectations like this.

I think it's the experience that's killing the experience, not the expectations.

Finally, someone who gets it.

A video mixdown function (like Avid) would be handy, as would render in to out (like Avid, Premiere).