Davinci Resolve 16 playback issue

I have been using Davinci Resolve for a while now without issue but since going from version 15 to 16 I have had issue playing back the timeline footage. it appears choppy and gets to about 10 fps.

my system set up is:

Processor - AMD FX(tm)-8350 Eight-Core Processor, 4000 Mhz,
Motherboard - GA-78LMT-USB3 6.0
Graphics card - Nvidia GTX960 4GB (latest driver installed, no studio driver for this card)
RAM - 32GB
running on windows 10

I have read other peoples posts who have had similar issues and tried several of the things suggested but cant seem to get a normal playback.

when I had been using Resolve on previous SW versions I had left a lot of the presets as they were and it just worked. when I moved over to 16 I initially had issues with the graphics card set up, I had this on auto before but with it on auto now I just have a greyed out screen when I try and playback. I then set it to CUDA and had the same issue, with it set to Open CL I finally got a the video, albeit choppy.

I have tried optimising the media, going into the settings and unticking anything I can that uses the GPU. I have reduced the Proxy Mode to a quarter resolution. I have gone into settings and changed the optimized media and render cache settings but nothing seems to work yet if I uninstall and re install version 15 it woks fine. I have now updated to 16.2 and am still having the issue.

Has anyone got any ideas how I can fix it before I go out and buy a better graphics card and probably motherboard?

Many thanks

[Dwaine Maggart]

What's the FULL Resolve version reported in About DaVinci Resolve?

I currently have DaVinci Resolve Studio 16.2.054 installed although most of the things that I tried was on the previous version 16.1 (I don't know the full number as I have installed the later version now) I have only tried to play back on this version and it still looks the same.

[Dwaine Maggart]

Download Resolve 16.2 again, and install it.

The build you download now will be 055. You can install this over build 054 without uninstalling the 054 version first.

If that still has issues, provide a Resolve log file and system information .NFO file.

Hi Dwain

I'm Still having issues, where should I send the log and system info to?

Regards

Ben

[Dwaine Maggart]

Move the display to the GTX960 card.

In Resolve Preferences - System - Memory and GPU, set the GPU processing mode back to Auto, save the prefs and restart Resolve.

We want it using CUDA, not OpenCL, and that's what the Auto mode should do.

Ahh yes, working fine now.

Thanks

I've tried all of that and i still have no playback. What is the issue? I want to purchase the studio version but why would I if I cant even get playback. This issue only occurs on Davinci 16. I dont have this problem in 15.

[Dwaine Maggart]

In a File Explorer window, go to:

C:\Program Files\Blackmagic Design\DaVinci Resolve

and run CaptureLogs

This will place a Resolve log file named similar to this on your Windows desktop: DaVinci-Resolve-logs-20181228_140434.zip (You may not see the .zip extension if your system is set to hide known extensions).


Then open Windows System Information and do a File - Save (Not a File Export), which will generate a .NFO file.

Place both those files on a file sharing site and provide links to the files here.

[Dwaine Maggart]

Are you only seeing this on the Edit page?

How does the playback look on the Color page?

[Dwaine Maggart]

By default, on the Edit page, audio playback is prioritized. So we'll drop video frames for smooth audio playback. This is selectable in the Edit page Viewer 3 dot menu. There is a "Show All Video Frames" selection. If that's selected, we don't drop video frames.

On the Color page, proper video playback is prioritized. There is no option for prioritizing audio playback.

So what you are seeing makes sense if your system doesn't have enough resources to properly play whatever video you have, at whatever project settings you have.

If you want assistance with that, send all the stuff I asked for above. Along with a Project Export .drp of the project you are having issues with.

[Dwaine Maggart]

You have a very low end MX150 GPU, so it's not going to have super performance in Resolve.

However, it's currently being forced into OpenCL mode, likely due to the very old NVIDIA driver you have installed. Which is not even as current as the current Asus Zenbook NVIDIA driver, which is still WAY TOO OLD, from March of 2018.

Go to the NVIDIA driver downloads site, and install the current MX150 driver, and see if that helps. That should provide better GPU performance than you are currently seeing.

Note that playing H.264 files with the free Resolve version utilizes CPU decoding, which is still going to have poor performance on your system.

I am having the same issue.
Ever since 16.2 upgrade, playback is choppy. Showstopper.
The exact same timeline, in FCPX, plays realtime.

???

Balazs, as Dwaine has said, you are not going to get the performance out of that computer. The Studio version will not help. Your computer is just not powerful enough to run Resolve properly.

Dean, what are your computer specs including OS, GPU, GPU driver, exact version of Resolve, etc? Are you using an up to date driver for your GPU?

Balazs, as Dwaine has said, you are not going to get the performance out of that computer. The Studio version will not help. Your computer is just not powerful enough to run Resolve properly.

Dean, what are your computer specs including OS, GPU, GPU driver, exact version of Resolve, etc? Are you using an up to date driver for your GPU?

MacOS 10.14.6 (18G3020)
AMD FirePro D700 6 GB

I sincerely do not believe it is my hardware.
Again, the same media is playing back in realtime in FCPX.
As it was in Resolve before updating.

[Dwaine Maggart]

@Balzaz,

1. No particular suggestions. Use whatever you think your normal workflow will entail.

2. With the driver update, Resolve is now using CUDA GPU processing. Shouldn't be an issue going forward, unless something changes with the NVIDIA driver. Or a Resolve update. Or a Windows update.

3. ASUS tech support is giving you generic info, that is not applicable to Resolve. Resolve is designed to use the GPU for all it's processing. Therefore, you need a reasonable GPU. With a reasonable amount of GPU VRAM. Resolve can't do processing using CPU resources. However, if the CPU contains an integrated GPU, as yours does, Resolve can use that. But no integrated GPU is adequate for decent Resolve performance. And in your case, the MX150 will certainly work better for Resolve processing, than the integrated Intel HD Graphics 620 GPU.

That said, Resolve DOES need CPU resources for some things. Like file decoding and encoding of some file formats. And the free version only supports H.264/265 decoding using the CPU resources, which are generally inferior to GPU file decoding, for those formats that support GPU file decoding, like H.264/265. Even with your low performance GPU, I would guess that GPU decoding would work better than CPU decoding, but you only get that with the Studio version.

4. See above.

5. External GPU support is not an option, unless you have a laptop with Thunderbolt ports.

[Dwaine Maggart]

@Dean: we'd need to see a Resolve log, a Mac System Info .spx file and a project export .drp of the project you are having playback issues with, to be able to comment.

@Dean: we'd need to see a Resolve log, a Mac System Info .spx file and a project export .drp of the project you are having playback issues with, to be able to comment.

Rolled back to 16.1 and it solved the issue. Well. Almost. Still had some odd audio playback issues.

>>>you would not need a .drp of the project. I could recreate the issue with a new project, with a single prores 1080p clip in it.

I will work on the logs.

@Dean: we'd need to see a Resolve log, a Mac System Info .spx file and a project export .drp of the project you are having playback issues with, to be able to comment.

Rolled back to 16.1 and it solved the issue. Well. Almost. Still had some odd audio playback issues.

>>>you would not need a .drp of the project. I could recreate the issue with a new project, with a single prores 1080p clip in it.

I will work on the logs.

How does one export this "resolve log" of which you speak?

In the Help menu.

In the Help menu.

I have uploaded my logs to my S3 bucket.
The system log was too big to attach:

https://robo-temp.s3.amazonaws.com/dean-logs


UPDATE:
16.1 rollback definitely did not solve all my issues. Audio Playback with many tracks is extremely problematic.
So, something is def broken...

[Dwaine Maggart]

You currently have 16.1.2 installed. Earlier in the thread, you mentioned 16.2 was problematic.

Have you tried 16.2.1? It would be helpful to have a log from that, along with the issues noted, along with a project export .drp of the project you observe those issues on.

You currently have 16.1.2 installed. Earlier in the thread, you mentioned 16.2 was problematic.

Have you tried 16.2.1? It would be helpful to have a log from that, along with the issues noted, along with a project export .drp of the project you observe those issues on.

I did try 16.2.1. And while it mostly solved playing back in real-time, audio continues to be an issue. I have to mute and unmute tracks in order to get playback that is not screeching noise. In other words, 16.1.2 is not the silver bullet I was hoping for.

Were you able to access the other logs I provided?

I will DM you the project export.

Same issue here, unfortunately. I was just testing a few clips from a Blackmagic Pocket 4K camera (ProRes422HQ), no nodes and no color effects in the color page, and I am getting choppy playback on this and other projects that were running fine before. Tried half and a quarter resolution but nothing seems to help.

Tried cleaning all the cache files and updated DaVinci to version 16.2.1.017 but the issue remains. Any luck solving this issue so far?

System:
iMac Retina 5K, 3.6 GHz Core i9, 32 GB 2667 MHz DDR4, Radeon Pro 580X 8GB, 32 GB RAM.

Same issue here, unfortunately. I was just testing a few clips from a Blackmagic Pocket 4K camera (ProRes422HQ), no nodes and no color effects in the color page, and I am getting choppy playback on this and other projects that were running fine before. Tried half and a quarter resolution but nothing seems to help.

Tried cleaning all the cache files and updated DaVinci to version 16.2.1.017 but the issue remains. Any luck solving this issue so far?

System:
iMac Retina 5K, 3.6 GHz Core i9, 32 GB 2667 MHz DDR4, Radeon Pro 580X 8GB, 32 GB RAM.

Nope. Going to try rolling back to 16.1

Hello,
I'm entirely new to Davinci Resolve (and video editing software in general). I just downloaded 16.2.1.017 a week ago and have had issues with smooth playback on cut, edit, color tabs with what I would imagine are quite simple projects with only a few tracks and no special editing. I've tried researching and troubleshooting the issue, and I'm just not sure what exactly is causing these issues, whether it is my hardware limitations, the program itself or simply user error. I've tried clearing the cache, reducing to half/quarter resolution, and have noticed some improvement on quarter resolution, but problem still persists. Please help.

System:
ASUS GL502VZM
Intel i7-7700HQ CPU @ 2.80GHz
16 GB RAM
128 GB SSD (25 GB available)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060, 3GB

I've attached the resolve log. Also uploaded DxDiag and Systems Info document here in case you need more information: (https://drive.google.com/open?id=1kJwRy ... _viPVojCkD).

Thanks,
Chris

Check in Preferences/Memory and GPU that Use GPU Scopes is unchecked. As you only have 3GB of Vram this may be taking away resources from your system.

Check in Preferences/Memory and GPU that Use GPU Scopes is unchecked. As you only have 3GB of Vram this may be taking away resources from your system.

Hi Charles, thanks for the input. This didn't improve the situation much. I'm operating under quarter resolution playback, and trying to do simple edits like changing clip speed, and it's quite choppy still.

Check in Preferences/Memory and GPU that Use GPU Scopes is unchecked. As you only have 3GB of Vram this may be taking away resources from your system.

Would that only be the case when scopes are up?
In Edit mode, I do not see how that would affect playback.

Regardless, I unchecked that option, and no change. However, it does seem that maybe audio tracks may be the culprit.

Updated to the latest build 16.2.2 - cannot play back in realtime. Still.

[Dwaine Maggart]

Please send an updated Resolve log, and a drp of the project you are having playback issues with. And a System Report .spx file, as we never got that the last time.

Is the playback issue across the whole timeline, or only on specific clips?

If it's on a specific longer clip, and you can share the media for that clip, please send that as well, so we can fully attempt to reproduce the issue here. You can do that via PM.

Is the issue on the Edit page or the Color page, or both?

Exit Resolve and disconnect the UltraStudio Mini Monitor. Launch Resolve and go into Resolve Preferences and do a Save then restart Resolve. Did that affect the playback issue?

I do not know if this is any help, but my 10 cents:

When 'optical flow' is enabled = stuttering playback.

When disabled = smooth playback.

I am sure you all know this setting is set per project, but perhaps some of you have it ON by default?

At least check if it is ON for you.
If 'optical flow' is NOT ON when you get stutter, then simply disregard my post. I just wanted to mention it since that is the behavior I get on my system

Please send an updated Resolve log, and a drp of the project you are having playback issues with. And a System Report .spx file, as we never got that the last time.

Is the playback issue across the whole timeline, or only on specific clips?

If it's on a specific longer clip, and you can share the media for that clip, please send that as well, so we can fully attempt to reproduce the issue here. You can do that via PM.

Is the issue on the Edit page or the Color page, or both?

Exit Resolve and disconnect the UltraStudio Mini Monitor. Launch Resolve and go into Resolve Preferences and do a Save then restart Resolve. Did that affect the playback issue?

well, that did it. Disconnecting the UltraStudio Mini Monitor. Playback is now real-time. So that's great, but. Does this mean I must leave my UltraStudio Mini Monitor disconnected?

Also thanks!

I had problems with the playback too, recently, i was working on a project, closed it, and when i opened again i couldn't see anything. I tried exporting the project and importing for a new one, and also checked if Davinci was running with the right graphics card. Everything was fine but the playback still black.

I updated to 16.2.7.008 today and am having the same issue with choppy playback. Everything was working fine until the update. I have attached the log files for review. This is happening in the preview window for all clips. Audio is fine in video clips, but start choppy on audio only clips. The video is choppy in the timeline playback, but the audio is fine. Any help is greatly appreciated.

[Dwaine Maggart]

Resolve is using your GTX 1050Ti card in OpenCL mode. This is likely because you have an old NVIDIA driver installed.

Resolve 16.2.7 uses CUDA 11. We must use this for Ampere card support.

As a result of using CUDA 11, some older GPU's that worked pre-16.2.7 will no longer work in CUDA mode with 16.2.7 or newer. Compute Capability for NVIDIA cards has increased from 3.0 to 3.5. So anyone with a 3.0 card, is going to find that CUDA processing no longer works. OpenCL will work, but has much worse performance on NVIDIA cards. You can find the Compute Capability of any NVIDIA card on the CUDA Wiki:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUDA

But this is not YOUR issue, since your card has 6.1 Compute Capability.

The other thing CUDA 11 requires is a current NVIDIA driver. Older drivers are no longer supported in 16.2.7 or newer.

If you install the current NVIDIA 456.38 Studio driver, your card should revert to using CUDA processing, and it should work as before.

If you wish to check what GPU processing mode is currently being used, go into Resolve Preferences - System - Memory and GPU. The processing mode will be displayed at the bottom of the GPU Configuration area. Options for supported Windows and Linux NVIDIA cards are CUDA and OpenCL. CUDA is the preferred choice.

If GPU processing mode is set to Auto, but the processing mode being used is OpenCL, you either have a card that is pre-3.5 Compute capability and/or have an old driver.

same problem with the 16.2.7. I have a GTX 2080 Ti card and just updated the driver to 456.38. Source material seems to run ok but not treated material barely plays back at all. Even set the proxy to 1/4. Should I revert to an older version of DR ?

[Dwaine Maggart]

Look in Resolve Preferences - System - Memory and GPU, and verify that it says Video Card 1 is using CUDA processing.

If it is, then sure, revert to 16.2.6 and see if that really has an effect on performance.

yeah my card was in use using cuda / manual with the card selected. did a clean up on the pc but it was still not playing back properly. went back to 16.2.6 and its much better although still a bit jumpy even at 1/2 res.

i stand corrected. Not getting good playback even at proxy 1/4 on either the edit or color tabs in 16.2.6 now. How far back can one go ? Is this a problem many other then the folks expressing difficulty here are experiencing. In the middle of a grade and small edit and can't get anything done.

[Dwaine Maggart]

From a Resolve database standpoint, you can go back to 16.0.

I've been reading reports of a May Microsoft Windows 10 Update that slowed performance for many users. They just released a replacement to fix the issue. Details in the article at this link. See if this may be affecting you.

https://www.techspot.com/news/86817-mic ... -kill.html

@Dwaine,

I just upgraded to Davinci Resolve 16.2.7.010 on Windows 10 PRO version 10.0.18363.

I upgraded from DR 16.1.2026.0 which had smooth playback, but had issues with HVEC playback - randomly showing "media offline" before returning to footage playback.

I installed DR 16.2.7.010 which fixed the "media offline" issue, however playback became extremely choppy, and while monitoring the system resources, it appears that the cpu and system ram are doing a much larger share of the work (vs GPU) than before.

My system is a follows:

Intel 4790K CPU
MSI RTX 2080TI
Samsung 850 EVO 1TB SSD
32GB of DDR3


Any advice would be much appreciated

Make sure you have an up to date GPU driver as 16.2.7.010 requires one newer than 451.82 to take account of CUDA11.

Charles,

Thanks for the reply. I have installed nvidia driver 456.71 with the same results.

Same problem here whit 16.2.7.010
whit rtx 2080 playback problem on 1080p !!! (whit lot of node, ofx and some fusion work) smart cache on ! gui have some strange glitches and playback lag on color page whit all rendered! Some time start blinking white frame, i need to restart!
i have tried 456.38 and 456.71 same result! i have also trie using intel hd630 to drive the gui and rtx to only compute. slightly better but , problem still!
I'm going crazy to finish 3 project right now