Is Resolve 17 capable of 120 FPS playback?

CPU: AMD 3rd Gen Threadripper 3970X 4.5 GHz (32 cores / 64 hyper threads)
MEM: 64 GB 3733 MHz
GPU: Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti (MSI edition)
SSD: 8 x 2GB in a RAID 10 Array


Despite the above hardware, I am unable to get any version of DaVinci Resolve Studio 17 (currently running 17.2.1) to play 120 FPS footage in the preview window on the Media or Cut or Edit pages. It stutters for 2-3 seconds and then playback simply stops on its own. If I resume, it continues forward 2 more seconds and then stops again. Again, and again, and again.

Meanwhile, playback of the very same footage is buttery smooth in Adobe Premiere Pro 15.2.

Camera: Sony a7 SIII / Sony FX3
Video: H.265 119.88 FPS 10-bit 4:2:2 280 Mbps

Can your system actually decode that format at 120fps?

H.265 is very demanding, long-GOP material. It's possible if you transcoded it to a simpler format like DNxHR or ProRes, it might play back at 120fps... but that's a pretty demanding format.

Can your system actually decode that format at 120fps?

Thank you for the reply. As a friendly reminder from my original post: "Meanwhile, playback of the very same footage is buttery smooth in Adobe Premiere Pro 15.2."

H.265 is very demanding, long-GOP material. It's possible if you transcoded it to a simpler format like DNxHR or ProRes, it might play back at 120fps... but that's a pretty demanding format.

Thank you for the reply. As a friendly reminder from my original post: "Meanwhile, playback of the very same footage is buttery smooth in Adobe Premiere Pro 15.2."

H.265 is very demanding, long-GOP material. It's possible if you transcoded it to a simpler format like DNxHR or ProRes, it might play back at 120fps... but that's a pretty demanding format.

Thank you for the reply. As a friendly reminder from my original post: "Meanwhile, playback of the very same footage is buttery smooth in Adobe Premiere Pro 15.2."

Then use premiere.

H.265 is very demanding, long-GOP material. It's possible if you transcoded it to a simpler format like DNxHR or ProRes, it might play back at 120fps... but that's a pretty demanding format.

Thank you for the reply. As a friendly reminder from my original post: "Meanwhile, playback of the very same footage is buttery smooth in Adobe Premiere Pro 15.2."

Then use premiere.

Thank you, Walter. Does this mean you have tested 120 FPS playback in DaVinci Resolve 17 and can confirm the product is incapable?

[Peter Chamberlain]

You will need a DeckLink for 120fps playback otherwise the video syncs to the UI refresh rate.

You will need a DeckLink for 120fps playback otherwise the video syncs to the UI refresh rate.

Will it sync to a 120Hz GUI monitor?

[Peter Chamberlain]

I havent been able to test that, but my guess is it would work.

I havent been able to test that, but my guess is it would work.

Are there any plays to improve vsync so 60fps video will playback smooth on 60hz UI screen?

You will need a DeckLink for 120fps playback otherwise the video syncs to the UI refresh rate.

Thank you for the reply, Peter. Two concerns:

1. From the DeckLink page: "high frame rate support of up to 60 frames per second". 120 FPS does not appear to be supported — is that correct?
2. There does not appear to be a DeckLink which supports DisplayPort — is that correct?

May I ask the PM team to consider implementing the solution in software by simply dropping the excess frames upon playback as other NLEs do in this situation?

Tested on my system at home:
1) file at 120fps, timeline at 24fps, playback at 24 fps, playback is real-time dropping excess frames
2) file at 120, timeline at 120, playback at 24, you can edit every frame and it will skip to every 5th frame maintaining the playback
3) file at 120, timeline at 120, playback at 60 (the max my monitor can do) you can edit every frame and it will skip to every other frame maintaining the playback
4) file at 120, timeline at 120, playback at 120 --> the decklink card could not do it, but the "video clean feed" to the Dell monitor did and it played mostly at 120 with minimal skipping. Not sure if the monitor set itself at 120....

The file is a ProRes HD

that should do it....

Thank you, Walter! I would love to replicate what you did in #3 below, but I'm experiencing different results. Specifically, when I change the "Playback frame rate" in the project settings from 119.88 to 59.94 (which I do by adjusting the setting immediately below it [Video format: HD 1080p 119.88 -> HD 1080p 59.94] and it automatically adjusts Playback frame rate above it), the behavior upon playback is to play all frames without skipping, resulting in 1/2 speed slow motion playback. Did you adjust any other settings in order to enable it to skip ever other frame to maintain playback? Or is this a unique capability of your DeckLink card? (which I do not currently own)

Tested on my system at home:
1) file at 120fps, timeline at 24fps, playback at 24 fps, playback is real-time dropping excess frames
2) file at 120, timeline at 120, playback at 24, you can edit every frame and it will skip to every 5th frame maintaining the playback
3) file at 120, timeline at 120, playback at 60 (the max my monitor can do) you can edit every frame and it will skip to every other frame maintaining the playback
4) file at 120, timeline at 120, playback at 120 --> the decklink card could not do it, but the "video clean feed" to the Dell monitor did and it played mostly at 120 with minimal skipping. Not sure if the monitor set itself at 120....

The file is a ProRes HD

that should do it....

3) file at 120, timeline at 120, playback at 60 (the max my monitor can do) you can edit every frame and it will skip to every other frame maintaining the playback

1) the project settings are irrelevant because
2) I setup the timeline itself with those settings.

but

I'm playing a ProRes file, a H264 might not pass the deflating/decoding speed of your CPU...

You don't have "show All Video Frames" switched on, do you?

ResolveShowAllFrames.jpg (23.88 KiB) Viewed 4512 times

You don't have "show All Video Frames" switched on, do you?

ResolveShowAllFrames.jpg

Thanks for the reply, Mike. That is correct — I just checked and confirmed that "Show All Video Frames" is not switched on.

3) file at 120, timeline at 120, playback at 60 (the max my monitor can do) you can edit every frame and it will skip to every other frame maintaining the playback

1) the project settings are irrelevant because
2) I setup the timeline itself with those settings.

but

I'm playing a ProRes file, a H264 might not pass the deflating/decoding speed of your CPU...

In #3 above, you said that your file was 120 and your timeline was 120, but playback at 60—what specific what specific timeline setting did you configure to playback at 60 fps while leaving the timeline itself at 120? I initially tried to match your settings at the timeline level, but failed to locate a playback frame rate setting there — hence why I resorted to the project level playback frame rate setting. The only other timeline-level frame rate setting I could locate (aside from the timeline frame rate itself) is Monitor -> Video Format. Changing Video Format to a lower frame rate had no impact on playback (i.e. when I set it to HD 1080p 59.94, playback still occurred at 119.88).

What are you using that produces ProRes files at 119.88 FPS? I attempted to replicate your configuration, but my Ninja V maxes out at ProRes 59.94, and similarly, transcoding from H265 to ProRes wasn't an option either since DaVinci Resolve doesn't support ProRes export, and Premiere Pro's implementation of ProRes maxes out at 59.94 as well.

However, I did take your suggestion of transcoding the H265 to H264, but I'm afraid the result was the exact same... when played back at 119.88, DaVinci Resolve automatically stops playback within 2-3 seconds each time.

Although I wasn't able to test ProRes 119.88, I was able to transcode the file to an arguably equally NLE friendly format — DNxHR 444. At an overall bit rate of 6,991 Mbps, it's safe to say that compression was minimal. Unfortunately, just as before, behavior was exactly the same: playback was incredibly choppy and halted every 2-3 seconds.

Since your base clock is 2.9 GHz, your max boost clock is 4.3 GHz, and your core count is 12, while mine are 3.75 GHz / 4.5 GHz / 32 respectively, I think we can agree that I am not hardware constrained. I should be able to replicate your results — with the notable exception that I do not have a DeckLink card.

I havent been able to test that, but my guess is it would work.

Judging from the old eyeball test, it does indeed work.

In #3 above, you said that your file was 120 and your timeline was 120, but playback at 60—what specific what specific timeline setting did you configure to playback at 60 fps while leaving the timeline itself at 120? I initially tried to match your settings at the timeline level, but failed to locate a playback frame rate setting there — hence why I resorted to the project level playback frame rate setting. The only other timeline-level frame rate setting I could locate (aside from the timeline frame rate itself) is Monitor -> Video Format. Changing Video Format to a lower frame rate had no impact on playback (i.e. when I set it to HD 1080p 59.94, playback still occurred at 119.88).

What are you using that produces ProRes files at 119.88 FPS? I attempted to replicate your configuration, but my Ninja V maxes out at ProRes 59.94, and similarly, transcoding from H265 to ProRes wasn't an option either since DaVinci Resolve doesn't support ProRes export, and Premiere Pro's implementation of ProRes maxes out at 59.94 as well.

However, I did take your suggestion of transcoding the H265 to H264, but I'm afraid the result was the exact same... when played back at 119.88, DaVinci Resolve automatically stops playback within 2-3 seconds each time.

Although I wasn't able to test ProRes 119.88, I was able to transcode the file to an arguably equally NLE friendly format — DNxHR 444. At an overall bit rate of 6,991 Mbps, it's safe to say that compression was minimal. Unfortunately, just as before, behavior was exactly the same: playback was incredibly choppy and halted every 2-3 seconds.

Since your base clock is 2.9 GHz, your max boost clock is 4.3 GHz, and your core count is 12, while mine are 3.75 GHz / 4.5 GHz / 32 respectively, I think we can agree that I am not hardware constrained. I should be able to replicate your results — with the notable exception that I do not have a DeckLink card.

I couldn't reproduce this issue at all. Hardware decode on/off, monitor running at 120/60, h264/h265/DNxHR444 all performed the same. I did not have a DeckLink monitoring in the system.

I couldn't reproduce this issue at all. Hardware decode on/off, monitor running at 120/60, h264/h265/DNxHR444 all performed the same. I did not have a DeckLink monitoring in the system.

I apologize for the silly question, but for my sanity I have to ask: you're seeing a green 119.88 indicator in the upper left corner of your source monitor as you preview your video?

Bonus question: Your footage is 4K?

I'm just struggling with this because you're the first person to indicate that you can't replicate the issue and I'm wondering what's unique about your system. The 3090 is the only thing I can think of, but you said that you even tried testing with hardware decode off, so that can't be it—right?

I havent been able to test that, but my guess is it would work.

Judging from the old eyeball test, it does indeed work.

Also, may I ask exactly what make and model monitor you're using that supports a 4K 120 Hz refresh rate? As I scour the Internet for options, it appears that the color representation trade-offs to get to a 4K 120 Hz monitor are too high. All of the professional 4K monitors capable of maximum wide color gamut representation appear to be capped at 60 Hz.

Thanks!

Nevermind. Read the rest of the thread.

I apologize for the silly question, but for my sanity I have to ask: you're seeing a green 119.88 indicator in the upper left corner of your source monitor as you preview your video?

Bonus question: Your footage is 4K?

I'm just struggling with this because you're the first person to indicate that you can't replicate the issue and I'm wondering what's unique about your system. The 3090 is the only thing I can think of, but you said that you even tried testing with hardware decode off, so that can't be it—right?

Yes, I have a solid green indicator light. I tried it at HD and UHD timeline resolution and source media resolution with no changes. I'm happy to try with your media and a sample project if you can share them.

The monitor in question is an LG CX 48" OLED TV. Since the 3090 and the TV both have HDMI 2.1 support, it runs at 3840x2160 at 120Hz 10-bit RGB 4:4:4. I use it for my computing and media consumption at home, not for work. That said, LG C series TVs generally perform well when calibrated for SDR, and are commonly seen as client monitors in grading suites. The DeckLink 8K card has support for 120fps, but I don't know if there's an available piece of gear to convert that signal into HDMI 2.1.