DaVinci Resolve Studio screen scaling on W10

Hi

just switched from Adobe Premiere to DaVinci Resolve Studio 16 (b6 right now)...

I use a 3840x2160 Resolution on my W10 machine (single display) with a 150% UI scaling setting which is very ok for all programs I use.

Now, DaVinci Resolve Studio seems to have a very big interface / all elements are very big for this resolution.

When I switch to 125% in Windows the DaVinci UI is scaling way too small for that 25% change - it looks like that DaVinci has nothing in between (looks more like 100% scaling) - and so it is not usable. Switching back to 150% of course makes the UI readable again but as stated - there's a lot of screen space wasted like this.

It seems like there is no inbetween setting / DaVinci does not scale correctly. A few years back Adobe had the same problem with their programs.

Can anyone confirm this as issue?

thx
Sandro

I use a 3840x2160 Resolution on my W10 machine (single display) with a 150% UI scaling

Don't do that. Always keep Display Scaling set to 100%. Otherwise you lose the screen real estate which is the sole purpose of higher resolution screens.

If things are too small at 100%, then you need a physically larger screen. I recommend nothing less then 32" for UHD.

This is really crap advice, sorry.

I have a 43'' 4K TV/ monitor. Just because Resolve doesn't play well with scaling and that should have been fixed many versions ago (despite the fact that I got into Resolve with 16) doesn't mean you should be telling people how to ease their eyes.
If I put my windows scaling below 175% I can't see anything at all. All the letters are like ants.
Users should be able to use the scaling they feel comfortable with and not have these kind of bugs--because it *is* a bug of sorts, as covered in the other thread started by Dave Dugdale himself; anything above 125% scaling and Resolve goes into 200% mode.

Let's not get into Apple mentality and say "Oh you're not supposed to do that. Do this instead (because it's the only way we know to make it work)"

If I put my windows scaling below 175% I can't see anything at all. All the letters are like ants.

I have to agree with this.

Jim I believe I've seen you post that response before and I'm not sure I agree with the part that the sole purpose of a higher resolution screen is for more real estate. I prefer using 4k monitors because the OS and GUI of apps are no longer pixelated like a 1080p monitor and I can view the full image with better resolution. I don't care for more screen real estate in this case, unless I was on something like an old laptop with a tiny 1440p screen.

And yes, to the OP, this is something that has not been addressed yet in DR and people have been asking since a couple versions ago. Some have used Windows Scaling under the Resolve.exe compatibility settings but this gives a slightly blurry GUI in Resolve. For me I went with 125% because the interface is just too large at 150%. Once I learned what all the icons were and more importantly the keyboard shortcuts relevant to my workflow, the interface being scaled to 100% was less of a concern.

I believe that 4K Monitors with 27'' or 32'' are standard nowadays: Better screen estate, sharper and better for viewing/editing high res videos or pictures. For these screens a scaling of 150% is recommended by Windows. Any professional application should support this resolution and scaling. Davinci resolve is supporting either 100% oder 200% and is therefore nearly unusable on 4K screens. Supporting a scaling of 150% has been requested by many users for years and I don't understand why they haven't fixed this. Obviously it is not a high priority item on the feature request list.

the OS and GUI of apps are no longer pixelated like a 1080p monitor

That's "Retina" reasoning. I find it...flawed.

For these screens a scaling of 150% is recommended by Windows.

That's true. Windows gets this wrong and the default setting needs to be manually changed.

Davinci Resolve...is therefore nearly unusable on 4K screens.

I'm using it one one. Works awesome! Loving all the room I have.

Has anyone tried the Qt environment variable QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR=1? I believe Resolve uses Qt for it’s GUI.

The other nice thing about scaling is that not only is the UI at a reasonable viewing size on a smaller monitor, but video and images (should) use the native resolution of the display. So with Resolve on a 4K monitor, you would be able to view a 1080p video at 25% zoom with every pixel of the image visible.

Found some more environment variables to try:

QT_HIGHDPI_DISABLE_2X_IMAGE_LOADING=1 or 0
QT_USE_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1 or 0
QT_STYLE_OVERRIDE=1 or 0

These were found in some of the Resolve dll files.

Davinci Resolve...is therefore nearly unusable on 4K screens.

I'm using it one one. Works awesome! Loving all the room I have.

@Jim: Do you use Windows or Mac? The Problem occurs only on Windows. Which size does you monitor have? The 200% scaling of DR on a 27 inch monitor is really huge: Icons, menubar, videotracks. When you have more than 3 video tracks and 2 audio tracks you have to scroll constantly because it does not fit on screen.

Yes I have this issue too on my Dell 4K monitor (27 inch) at 150% scaling and the app just looks awful. Seems this problem has been in Resolve for a few years and the latest beta shows no improvement. I totally disagree with changing scaling to 100% - many apps would be way too small and unreadable.

The other nice thing about scaling is that not only is the UI at a reasonable viewing size on a smaller monitor, but video and images (should) use the native resolution of the display. So with Resolve on a 4K monitor, you would be able to view a 1080p video at 25% zoom with every pixel of the image visible.

Totally agree!

This problem has been discussed in so many threads now and with many examples including printscreens. There are many Windows users with the same problem. And they are increasing with the popularity of 1440p or UHD Screens. Just because 100% scaling is OK for Jim doesn't mean the problem doesn't need a fix (no offense)
It would be really nice if BM could get involved in the conversation.

@OP: There are some workarounds in the other threads (like high DPI override on the resolve.exe), but no real fix.

Cheers

Has anyone tried the Qt environment variable QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR=1? I believe Resolve uses Qt for it’s GUI.

I am interested to know more about this as I am trying to fix the scaling issue I have with DR on my Surface Pro 7.

Surface Pro 7, Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1065G7 @ 1.30GHz 1.5GHz, 16GB RAM, 256GB Storage

Hi, I saw this in a reddit forum and worked for me.

If anyone wants to have Resolve scaled like that while keeping the rest of the system on the 150% scaling setting you just type that into PowerShell:

Code: Select all

cd "C:\Program Files\Blackmagic Design\DaVinci Resolve\"
$Env:QT_DEVICE_PIXEL_RATIO = 1
$Env:QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR = 2
.\Resolve.exe

Adobe has this problem solved for quite some time. They give an option to display different size fonts on their UI.

It is shame that such sophisticated program is unable to find a solution to relatively simple problem. Can someone from Davinci explain why this issue cannot be solved similar to how Adobe and several other programs have done it?

Lightworks does a good job too:

LWKSFontUI.png (24.53 KiB) Viewed 1670 times

Hopefully this will be a feature in a future release of DVR ...

I just want to pitch in here: this has just become a problem for us as well. We were forced to switch to Windows. On macOS we didn't have this problem, but now on Windows, we are basically stuck with an unusable UI for some of us. I can work with it in 100% scale on a 4K 32inch monitor, but for most of us it's too small, and switching to 150% is just .. well unusable too because it's the other extreme.