HEVC Workflow for Resolve 19

Greetings to all. I am editing in h.265 primarily. I listed my PC specs in my signature area. I would LOVE to know any and all components upgrade recommends for performance. I am experiencing good fps in the playback window but I am seeing lots of "stuttering" (looks as if its playing in 15 fps or so (approximate guessing) in my playback when my timeline starts to get populated with video and audio clips.

currently I have about 150 video clips and 165 in small foley audio clips along with the music that plays the entire time. Generally, I can Optimize Media and it seems to clean up the playback display issue. I am not understanding how my FPS is so consistent but what I am seeing looks much worse. "Why does a video playing at 59.94 in the player window stuttering so much at the same time? Id love to know how and why this happens. Ive heard I'm getting bottlenecked. hence the post!

I use all of my video footage from a DJI mini 3 pro . It is in D-cinelike at 4k60 H.265
My audio music is from either my Uppbeat sub or my Epidemic Sound sub (I like the plugin enough to use it often)

I can afford to upgrade my RAM and storage. I am on a ddr4 motherboard and it also limits the RAM at 128 for all reading.

I look forward to responses, I would be more than happy to upload pics, logs, anything that could help, but I'm sure a upgrade in the right areas would be ideal as a first step.

In the future I will be adding a handheld camera of somekind and some Mics etc to start a YT Channel with my drone work. BEFORE I can get into all that stuff I really need to dial in my machine for this HEVC workflow.

It's not RAM or storage, it's your source. Your machine seems to have no hardware decoding for it.
Convert to DNxHR or CineForm, and it should be smooth. Or get a 5090 (expensive) or a Mac (cheaper).
Some background:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N91KnI ... share_link

So one video file with one audio additional audio track and no extra processing gives playback rate under 60?

Like this

Screenshot 2025-01-18 071609.png (41.05 KiB) Viewed 2084 times

The reason I'm asking like that is that previously people have said one thing and the culprit has been another, so we're eliminating likely candidates first.

My thinking was similar to Uli's. I have a Rule of Thumb which would probably help here.

1. If you shoot in H.264/5, edit with Proxies.
2. If you don't want to use Proxies, don't shoot H.264/5.

I cannot upgrade my cpu. I have never used a mac so that sounds like more time re learning just use Resolve smoothly in some basic footage.

resolve does not have a selection for 60fps. its technically 59.94 and that's what the video frame rate plays as on resolve. but my playback is stuttering when I get into a more populated project. I specifically sited a populated project and NOT one video file with one additional audio file.

Why does my project frame rate in Resolve remain correct and at the same time my video and audio playback struggle constantly? If it playing at 60fps, why does it look like its playing at 10 fps. shouldn't the Framerate in the timeline player directly reflect the playback frame rate? this is weird.

As pictured, the footage is reportedly playing at 59.94 fps this is correct.
Why does my playback lag if the frame rate is showing that? I am not understanding how the fps in the window (top left of timeline viewer) is accurate but the playback is stuttering so much? Maybe in Resolve the FPS I am seeing the video player window does NOT correlate directly to playback? Details on this would be a lot of help understand the system in general.

[Peter Chamberlain]

What is the playback rate on the color page?

If there is any difference between your clips frame rate and the timeline frame rate, but your retiming option is set to optical flow, that can cause such issues. DR can handle both 60 fps or 59.94, but you need to define the right speed before bringing anything into your timeline.

[Shrinivas Ramani]

It is worth checking the following:
* The Show all Video Frames in the edit viewer (or playback in the color page which defaults to this mode)
* If your clip is 60 fps, checking with the same clip in a 30 fps timeline.
* Transcoding your media to DNxHD and LPCM Wav.
to get an idea of what your bottleneck is.

The free DaVinci Resolve is limited to < 4K res and < 60fps projects and timelines (not sources). GPU accelerated decides and encodes are not available either. Please refer to the Blackmagic support page for comparison of free and Studio versions.

Just as a matter of interest I edit H265 59.94 fps with multiple audio tracks and sometimes multiple video tracks and mostly I have no problem at all with a system that looks to be less highly spec'ed than yours (see my sig). I do use (user) render cache when I change the speed of individual clips but otherwise very few problems - Using Resolve Studio.

Cheers Andrew

Your Intel CPU has the necessary hardware decoders.

This lagging issue and alot of others was solved simply by finding some sort of "sweet spot" in the zoom amounts on the timeline display. If I have my populated project too far zoomed out on the timeline, I experience a lag in the playback although my source, project and timeline fps are all the same and playing at that rate. If I zoom in a bit somewhere between apx70%-30% zoom the lags cease and the software is nominal. If I zoom in too much, say almost all the way in and playback, I also experience lag but its not as bad as zooming out on the timeline. Weird. after 19 update I've noticed this. I just updated to 19.1.3 hoping they fixed it.

Uli- I do not have an intel CPU I run AMD ryzen as listed.

Andrew- See above. this is an odd bug perhaps. otherwise runs fine on less populated projects.

I was responding to Andrew when mentioning Intel.

It's not RAM or storage, it's your source. Your machine seems to have no hardware decoding for it.
Convert to DNxHR or CineForm, and it should be smooth. Or get a 5090 (expensive) or a Mac (cheaper).
Some background:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N91KnI ... share_link

His drone records in H.265 420 10bit not H.265 422 10bit. The Representative said free resolve doesn't offer GPU decode at 60fps and above, the user says his timeline is 59.94fps, so if he is using free version does Resolve consider 59.94fps under 60fps or the same as 60fps. (I could have missed other important inputs I just skimmed thread)

It's not only about DR.
If the hardware doesn't support that specific 'flavor' of HEVC, the workflow is awful.

[Shrinivas Ramani]

Hi Bob

For clarity, 59.94 fps, 60 fps and UHD (3840 x 2160) are available as project / timeline options on the free version. Please look for the phrases "higher than UHD" and "greater than 60 fps" in feature comparison document.

Regards
Shrinivas

this footage was from a dji drone. it all comes in 59.94fps. that is the frame rate. and bobs ur uncle

I've not seen that you have acknowledged the problem with that media being long-GOP which is nasty stuff, and *requires* specific computer hardware to edit properly in any NLE.

Using an AMD CPU typically means you do *not* have the hardware kit to auto-process the stuff. At that point, your CPU and system need to decode and recreate/store to RAM/cache up to 50 frames or more for just basic playback.

DJI does some of the most ... intriguing ... use of long-GOP capabilities out there. Ahem

Sent from my SM-S908U using Tapatalk

He has a 4070. So he has the necessary hardware to decode 10 bit HEVC 4:2:0. If GPU decoding is not used, probably it's because of the free version or config issue.

The same 4070 could encode 4:2:2 footage to 4:4:4 losslessly, which it could than decode HW accelerated for editing. Simpler and faster than old intermediate codecs.

Even Resolve itself uses h264 for proxies these days and it edits smooth as butter. I edit DJI and GoPro H265 all the time. Heck editing that even works smooth on Android phones these days.

found strange solution to any lagging issues . don't zoom out too much on the timeline and don't zoom in too much on the timeline during playback. there's a 30-70% ish range that seems to really smooth everything out but fusion comps etc when I add several to a video.
Ddr4 is pretty slow considering how affordable ddr5 boards are these days, my plan is to update to that speed, and looking at diff CPU options. i would like to stick with PC , not mac savvy.