switched from 2013 imac to 2020/2021 alienware desltop

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murfilein

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switched from 2013 imac to 2020/2021 alienware desltop

PostWed Apr 14, 2021 8:58 pm

until recently, i was using a 2013 imac to make videos. i5 processor, 32gb ram, geforce gt755m, sata ssd

now i switched to an alienware r10 - ryzen 5800x, 32gb ram, geforce rtx 3060ti, nvme ssd. a very performant gaming/workstation pc.

but in resolve... its slower than the imac? i'm dumbstruck. at least in rendering.
after reading on it, i guess its because the free resolve for mac os has hadware acceleration, while the windows version doesnt.

did apple really pay that well?

anyway, the editing itself is choppy sometimes as well, scrubbing can be stuttery, but i just noticed another annoyance: when i do a cut on the timeline the film strip thumbnails are reloaded. which sometimes takes 10 seconds, in which the program is not responsive. on the imac i never even noticed this, the program was always running fine.
even when i just resize or scroll through the timeline, it always seems to be generating new film strip thumbnails which is extremely slow. again, i dont know if it does that on mac, and even if it does, it has absolutely no impact on performance. i never noticed this on an 8 year old mac.. on my high end gaming pc, nothing works while thats happening.

dont tell me the computer is too weak. do all those things require gpu support? do i have to buy the studio version now?
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Uli Plank

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Re: switched from 2013 imac to 2020/2021 alienware desltop

PostThu Apr 15, 2021 12:08 am

Yes. Everybody who is using H.264/265 for a source or in rendering will have to buy the Studio version (or be disappointed).
If you buy an Apple, the licenses are already included, so BM doesn't need to pay for them and can use them in the free version.
No, an iGPU is not enough, and you can't use HEVC 10 bit 4:2:2 in the free version.

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Trensharo

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Re: switched from 2013 imac to 2020/2021 alienware desltop

PostThu Apr 15, 2021 5:09 am

Uli Plank wrote:Yes. Everybody who is using H.264/265 for a source or in rendering will have to buy the Studio version (or be disappointed).
If you buy an Apple, the licenses are already included, so BM doesn't need to pay for them and can use them in the free version.

No.

Studio adds support for GPU Decode of H.264/HEVC and GPU Encode of H.264/HEVC. Resolve cannot encode HEVC with the CPU. If you have a Windows Machine you can still decode both of these CODECs with the CPU in the Free Version - it just doesn't use the GPU.

Your GPU comes with the CODEC for HEVC. If Resolve uses this CODEC - as they do on macOS, then this is a mute point. Lots of other software happily use this CODEC without paying extra licensing fees.

Not using the Encoder in the free SKU is a decision that BMD has made to sell the Studio SKU. Most PCs used by content creators and upstarts are stronger than what the average Mac content creator or upstart is getting. You can get Windows Laptops with Ryzen 9 4900HS/RTX 2060/16GB RAM/1Tb NVMe for less than the price of a base model 13" MacBook Pro.. Before M1, anything Mac in that price range was terrible and you basically were dependent on GPU decode to get anything approaching usable performance.

I don't even think Resolve can encode HEVC without a GPU Encoder on Windows (I'm certainly not seeing the option), so licensing is NOT the issue. It's simply a decision by the company creating the software - the same software on one platform is more convenient on another for arbitrary (but probably rooted in performance on lower-end machines, given the cost of Apple hardware and how people tend to buy there when starting out) reasons.

If one can afford an Alienware gaming PC (with 2-3x the price of Resolve Studio thrown away just to the branding), certainly they can afford a Resolve Studio license, no?

Amazing how much money we spend on a PC, and then complain about the performance of a free piece of software that has a pretty reasonably priced Studio SKU that eliminates all of those complaints.

Ignoring the fact that you can simply transcode the footage to DNx and eliminate any performance issues, anyways, regardless of SKU.
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Uli Plank

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Re: switched from 2013 imac to 2020/2021 alienware desltop

PostThu Apr 15, 2021 6:46 am

I admit I simplified. Anyway, even an i5 has some decoding capabilities if it's the model with the Iris Plus Graphics 655.
So, for whatever reason, it is supported by the free version of Resolve on Macs, but not on PCs.
In the end, we give both the same advice: if you own a good GPU, get Studio and enjoy the speed.
No, an iGPU is not enough, and you can't use HEVC 10 bit 4:2:2 in the free version.

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murfilein

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Re: switched from 2013 imac to 2020/2021 alienware desltop

PostThu Apr 15, 2021 7:15 am

Trensharo wrote:
Amazing how much money we spend on a PC, and then complain about the performance of a free piece of software that has a pretty reasonably priced Studio SKU that eliminates all of those complaints.

Ignoring the fact that you can simply transcode the footage to DNx and eliminate any performance issues, anyways, regardless of SKU.


oh sure i can afford the studio license. however i am not a professional creative (yet). my last pc i bought well over 12 years ago, so for this alienware i shelled out a good amount of money expecting it so last at least as long as my old one.

the 2013 imac i received for free, and working with resolve on that i had certain expectations upgrading my rig. i'm sure you can understand my disappointment that i suddenly have to pay for something that was included for free before.

by the way, is the actual timeline editing GPU supported as well? because that film strip generation really slows the machine does as well sometimes...

just for good measure: are there any other freeLNE's that support hardware acceleration? might have a look, but i'm actually way too comfortable with resolve now, so i will probably buy the studio license eventually...
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Uli Plank

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Re: switched from 2013 imac to 2020/2021 alienware desltop

PostThu Apr 15, 2021 8:10 am

As long as your sources are H.264/265, most everything in DR is faster with hardware decoding. You can try easily: transcode your footage to one of the intermediate codecs, like ProRes, Cineform or DNxHR (with a tool like Shutter Encoder) and compare the speed.
No, an iGPU is not enough, and you can't use HEVC 10 bit 4:2:2 in the free version.

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Trensharo

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Re: switched from 2013 imac to 2020/2021 alienware desltop

PostThu Apr 15, 2021 11:24 pm

murfilein wrote:
Trensharo wrote:
Amazing how much money we spend on a PC, and then complain about the performance of a free piece of software that has a pretty reasonably priced Studio SKU that eliminates all of those complaints.

Ignoring the fact that you can simply transcode the footage to DNx and eliminate any performance issues, anyways, regardless of SKU.


oh sure i can afford the studio license. however i am not a professional creative (yet). my last pc i bought well over 12 years ago, so for this alienware i shelled out a good amount of money expecting it so last at least as long as my old one.

the 2013 imac i received for free, and working with resolve on that i had certain expectations upgrading my rig. i'm sure you can understand my disappointment that i suddenly have to pay for something that was included for free before.

by the way, is the actual timeline editing GPU supported as well? because that film strip generation really slows the machine does as well sometimes...

just for good measure: are there any other freeLNE's that support hardware acceleration? might have a look, but i'm actually way too comfortable with resolve now, so i will probably buy the studio license eventually...

Nothing free is going to compare to Resolve, and frankly Resolve Studio is basically the Final Cut Pro of the Windows ecosystem now that even mid-range hardware exceeds the requirements for 4K/UHD video production.

Without GPU decode, thumbnail generation is going to be slower. It has to decode the video with the CPU to generate the thumbnails.

Editing, scrubbing, etc. will all be choppier for the same reason.

-----

H.264/HEVC is highly compressed and does not store full frames. It stores a full frame and then a sequence of "differences" - at regular intervals. This means your computer has to do a lot of work for things like thumbnail generation, as it is not simply a matter of pulling the frames out of the footage.
It has to pull a frame out, and then compute the intermediate frames using those diffs. This is why thumbnail generation takes longer - increasingly longer as the frame rate of the footage increases.

Hardware Decoders are designed specifically for this task, and are much faster at it than the CPU. Using the CPU to decode this footage is like gaming without a GPU in your machine, and using the CPU for Graphics and Physics Processing. The disparity is that huge.

It's also often Variable Frame Rate when it comes out of consumer devices and this sometimes affects performance negatively (used to be a huge source of slowdowns, but most software has patched in "support" for VFR).

-----

You don't have to buy Studio. You can continue to use Free. But I would generally recommend you buy Studio because the UX is just... better... unless you transcode everything to an Intermediate CODEC (which will require a lot of disk space, potentially).

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