DaVinci Resolve is suddenly running slowly

Hey there DaVinci Resolve forums folks, I need your help big time.

For the last few months I've been working on a cinematic video for Planetside 2 using the free version of DaVinci Resolve. It's been pretty smooth sailing so far, with a couple serious hiccups. Namely, likely due to me only having 16gb of RAM, my Resolve crashes every now and then when I do stuff with Fusion, and as an even bigger issue it often has crashed when I've tried to render things, getting stuck on certain frames and requiring me to render things in parts. It's also had some weird blocky artifacts. All of those issues I posted about it another thread, and y'all gave some good advice that I planned to follow and look into.

Unfortunately, upon returning home, a much much bigger issue cropped up: My DaVinci Resolve is suddenly and inexplicably slow as hell. At first I thought it was just the size of the project and it needing to render everything first, but even after rendering everything, it remained slow.

Even after creating a completely new project, dragging in one single unedited clip and lowering the resolution down from 2560x1440 to 1920-1080, it STILL runs very slow and the playback is extremely choppy and stutters. This is not an issue that I had before, despite my computer not being the most powerful out there. When looking at Task Manager, I don't see anything intensive going on, and even with every other program closed it still is extremely slow.

As a result, I tried a long laundry list of possibilities to try and fix this, as I was pretty sure this had to have been some mistake I made on my end. The following is all the stuff that I tried.

1. Resetting my Preferences page
2. Changing the render speed on the Deliver page
3. Restarting Resolve
4. Clearing the Render Cache
5. Restarting my computer
6. Running a cold fan over my computer to keep the temperature low
7. Downgrading my NVIDIA driver
8. Freeing up storage space on my drives
9. Uninstalling and reinstalling Resolve
10. Checking whether Resolve was using the right GPU still
11. Lowering the playback resolution even more
12. Fiddling with even more of my project settings
13. Fiddling with my battery settings to make sure I was on performance mode

Probably a few things I forgot, but all of these did either nothing or had a minimal impact on how smoothly Resolve was running.

If anyone has any ideas of what might be causing this, or any other things to try, please let me know!
6.

EDIT: Have since tried running diagnostic tests on the disk and importing the project into a new database as suggested below, nothing so far.

Little bump?

Little bump?

Did you check Windows task manager ? there might be another app using most of your Cpu power.

Check msconfig as some cores/threads might have been disabled (on purpose or not)

Run cmd as admin, then
Run a chkdsk on C drive
Run sfc /scannow
Run cleanmgr

Little bump?

Did you check Windows task manager ? there might be another app using most of your Cpu power.

Check msconfig as some cores/threads might have been disabled (on purpose or not)

Run cmd as admin, then
Run a chkdsk on C drive
Run sfc /scannow
Run cleanmgr

I did, and there's nothing else using it up. 100% going to Resolve during it.

chkdsk found no problems, scannow found no integrity violations, running after using cleanmgr did not increase speed either.

How can I use msconfig to check the core/threads being disabled? Could be the issue though I'm a bit dubious given that my in-game performance doesn't seem to have dropped at all. It's just Resolve.

Is there any other info I could give to help diagnose the issue?

Any other ideas?

Just something that helped me once— export your project, create a new database, import the project into the new database. Worth a shot.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Just something that helped me once— export your project, create a new database, import the project into the new database. Worth a shot.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Gave it a shot, didn't work. Thanks though!

Perhaps a drive going bad? Test throughput of all drives with Crystaldiskmark or something similar? (Maybe also check for SMART errors?)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Something that has helped me in the past when I had several major slowdown/choppiness problems.
Disconnect ALL of your USB connected devices. Restart. See if that makes a difference. If it does, restart, plug them in one at a time and observe.
Worth a shot.
Regards
Steve

Mine just started going bonkers, too. I've been working on a project for over a year now. It stopped rendering anything and now won't do anything, not even slowly. It just goes straight to freezing up.

Something that has helped me in the past when I had several major slowdown/choppiness problems.
Disconnect ALL of your USB connected devices. Restart. See if that makes a difference. If it does, restart, plug them in one at a time and observe.
Worth a shot.
Regards
Steve

This seemed possible because these issues only cropped up after going on a vacation where I definitely moved around my USB connections. Unfortunately, removing them all didn't seem to fix the issue.

Any other possible solutions?

What was the drive performance and SMART results?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

One of the tools I use to check SMART is CrytalDiskInfo. Just know if you have a lot of drives (I have over 30), you'll have to use the arrows or the Disk dropdown to check them all: https://i.imgur.com/soASyTD.png

And the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test that comes with Desktop Video (https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/support/family/capture-and-playback) is good to check disk performance. Note the FPS listed in the lower right for 10bit 422 at each resolution. See its manual for more info.

Here's fast PCIe storage that won't have any problem playing back anything: https://i.imgur.com/BsT5J1i.png

A regular SSD that's good for up to 98fps on 1080p: https://i.imgur.com/XG4cl1E.png

And a plug-in USB that's going have issues at 1080p but be ok for 720: https://i.imgur.com/VnLPyen.png

One of the tools I use to check SMART is CrytalDiskInfo. Just know if you have a lot of drives (I have over 30), you'll have to use the arrows or the Disk dropdown to check them all: https://i.imgur.com/soASyTD.png

And the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test that comes with Desktop Video (https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/support/family/capture-and-playback) is good to check disk performance. Note the FPS listed in the lower right for 10bit 422 at each resolution. See its manual for more info.

Here's fast PCIe storage that won't have any problem playing back anything: https://i.imgur.com/BsT5J1i.png

A regular SSD that's good for up to 98fps on 1080p: https://i.imgur.com/XG4cl1E.png

And a plug-in USB that's going have issues at 1080p but be ok for 720: https://i.imgur.com/VnLPyen.png

I have two drives, my main drive is 99% health and my external SSD is 100%. I'm just on a normal laptop, do I get Desktop Video anyway?

I thought maybe the issue was with my external drive and Resolve having issues accessing the files there, but given that the issue didn't happen before with the drive and that making an entirely new project only using files from the main drive isn't working either, I doubt that's it.

Check power settings. Also you can check if the cpus are parked by using task manager and showing all the threads and hovering the mouse over them to see if they are parked.

I'm just on a normal laptop, do I get Desktop Video anyway?

Yes, just to get the Disk Speed Test. You can uninstall it afterwards.

Check power settings. Also you can check if the cpus are parked by using task manager and showing all the threads and hovering the mouse over them to see if they are parked.

Power settings are already on maximum performance levels. At least from what I can tell, none of the CPU threads are parked (activity on all of them).

I'm just on a normal laptop, do I get Desktop Video anyway?

Yes, just to get the Disk Speed Test. You can uninstall it afterwards.

Getting a write of around 450 MB/s and a read of around 1000 MB/s.

I still feel like this must be an issue with Resolve itself on my computer, but even reinstalling didn't seem to fix it. Just strange.

Are you running any Fusion clips or color page correction?
Check in the Fusion page if you have anything in your mediaIn nodes, sometimes you might have an image that you worked on.
Also, in the Edit page, you can turn off the Bypass toggle button. If you did a color correction of worked on a Fusion clip, this will slow you down on a 16 GB of ram.

Another place to check is under Preferences > Memory and GPU system memory, could can control how much Ram usage on Both Fusion and Resolve, I’m not sure that was one of the items on your check list.

I normally optimize or use Proxy media, you have to set it in the Project setting (Shift+9) to any of the any of the 5 resolutions option window: Original, Half, Quarter, one-eighth, one-sixteenth.
After you finish you can export in Delivery Page with original.

Are you running any Fusion clips or color page correction?
Check in the Fusion page if you have anything in your mediaIn nodes, sometimes you might have an image that you worked on.
Also, in the Edit page, you can turn off the Bypass toggle button. If you did a color correction of worked on a Fusion clip, this will slow you down on a 16 GB of ram.

Another place to check is under Preferences > Memory and GPU system memory, could can control how much Ram usage on Both Fusion and Resolve, I’m not sure that was one of the items on your check list.

I normally optimize or use Proxy media, you have to set it in the Project setting (Shift+9) to any of the any of the 5 resolutions option window: Original, Half, Quarter, one-eighth, one-sixteenth.
After you finish you can export in Delivery Page with original.

These issues are occurring even on a completely new project with a single, unedited clip. So it can't be Fusion, at least I don't think it is.

Everything maxed out under preferences, unfortunately

I tried tinkering with the proxy media stuff, no results though. Same issues. Even when stuff is rendered (the bar becomes blue and stops being red) it still plays back extremely slowly, EVEN on quarter resolution or lower.

Spent another few hours tonight trying to figure it out, with no resolution. More tinkering, more resolution downgrading, checking NVidia control panel, downgrading to the studio driver, tweaking my resolution settings, disabling my integrated GPU, and much much more. Really on the last legs here, if anyone has any more ideas please lmk!

As its going, I may just try to barrel into adding these last few clips and finishing this video I've been working on, just push through the lag.

Now this is going to seem stupid to try but just try it.

I have too have been having severe perfroemance degradation after upgrading to windows 11. Ive tried all of the things you mention. Last test was to go back to 17.4.2....stll never worked.

I created a new timeline and copied the items across...and bingo it renders again and play fine. Frustratingl....let me know if it works for you.

Now this is going to seem stupid to try but just try it.

I have too have been having severe perfroemance degradation after upgrading to windows 11. Ive tried all of the things you mention. Last test was to go back to 17.4.2....stll never worked.

I created a new timeline and copied the items across...and bingo it renders again and play fine. Frustratingl....let me know if it works for you.

Just tried it, unfortunately, no dice. Not on Windows 11 either, should I upgrade?

Well to be honest i had had trouble with windows 11 so I wouldnt recommend it at the moment.

Sorry it didnt help.

Well to be honest i had had trouble with windows 11 so I wouldnt recommend it at the moment.

Sorry it didnt help.

All good, maybe a last-ditch resort.

Anyone else?

Just tried uninstalling Resolve again and downgrading to the last version of 17, issues are not resolved.

At this point im completely migrating the project onto another computer in order to just finish it. I still want to be able to work with Resolve on my main computer for future projects though, so if anyone has any ideas please let me know!!

I got the slowdown when leaving the 17 beta version for the release. Media server shows good speeds. But I went and turned of the plugins I never use like filmconvert, etc. Than audio plugins that I dont use. I do feel it actual did a difference. But it was not of course the root problem for the slowdown. But since only a few plugins made a feel able difference, I putting it in this thread.

IT HAPPEND NOW ALSO TO ME!!
AN IS SO FRUTATING SITUATION!!

Suddenly davinci 17.4.3 become SLOWLY!!

I did everything as Qaztar, and nothing worked,

ONLY in an situation is back to work again, not with dx on mouse and "clone the timeline" but with:

1. dx and "create new timeline"
2. copy form timeline 1 and paste to timeline2
3. render cache again,

and if by MAGIC! all worked as before and PLAYBACK SMOOTHLY!!....but only for some hours after that all fall in "slow and sad".

so this is confirm that is not related to timeline resolution or proxy resolution or render cache quality and so on...

whit my hw (i9-9900, RTX-3090, 32GB RAM, 2 X NVME 1TB) i've never had any problems to edit as currently:

- timeline 3840x2160
- project 3840x2160
- proxy half at 1920x1080
- render cache DNxHR HQX

and also to start new with all in 1920x1080, not resolve.

and for the initial i think it depend by local database corrupter in some part,

then i've created new local database:
1. try to import project from the original local database,
2. also create new project into this new local database

nothing to do, even just ONE clip file imported into timeline got playback slowly,


davinci resolve studio 17.4.3
nvidia studio driver 511.65 02/01/2022
all hw working good, all test on cpu mem and disk benchmark.

i'll try to open an SR to davinci resolve help panel,

regards

I was looking into this for a few days until i realised that for gaming i adjusted my monitor to 144hz - i switched it back to 100hz and Davinci was running normal again,

Suddenly had this extreme slowdown occur in Resolve 17.4.6 (latest version). Found my problem though.

In hindsight this likely started after a reboot. I recently bought an 18 TB Seagate USB backup drive (to backup my media which I did successfully recently). However I noticed the drive was noisy and so ejected it a couple of weeks ago.

When I rebooted yesterday the drive reconnected with the system, but it occasionally made an odd sound like some gears rattling. I ejected the drive again today and voilá, Resolve performance is back, thankfully. So it was the hint in this thread to disconnect USB drives thanks for the tip!

I’m on Mac Pro 2019 16 core 48GB and Pro Vega 2 GPU. Shocking that a flaky USB drive would affect Resolve so completely while Big Sur gave no indication of any issue. I’ll investigate the USB drive later.

Edit 2022-06-30
Looks like the conclusion of an improvement yesterday was very temporary. No USB connected drives physically connected and wanting to reboot but in a half-hour of trying to quit Resolve, it still hasn’t responded to Save project changes.

So this is happening to me, too.

Been working on this project and others for months and suddenly I get playback performance of 1 or 2 fps.

Desperate for any solutions: was a recent Windows update somehow to blame?

I also got the same problem with me, where the playback would run at 60 fps , but it would be slow and stutter a lot. My CPU load is below 80% but the editor is playing back extremely poorly for some reason
I tried using different monitor settings when playback and even configured the render setting to be faster but nothing works.


This problem only popped up recently and haven't got a clue why

My CPU is around 13% and GPU (a pair of RTX 2080 Ti) are not getting hit hard so I don’t know what is throttling the whole system.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yep, same here, version 17.4.6 and yes seems to have really slowed down, I thought it was just that my project was getting too big but maybe not.

Yep, same here, version 17.4.6 and yes seems to have really slowed down, I thought it was just that my project was getting too big but maybe not.

The idea of project getting too big… is there any evidence that a database cleanup of some kind could help?

There are hundreds of clips in this project, and several nested timelines…?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I think I found sort of a solution? this is more because of my settings, but after setting my "Frame interpolation" settings to have the fastest option possible it kind of fixed the problem or turning off "Retime and Scaling " in the Inspector for my Video clips seem to make it work normally now

Frame Interpolation Settings (in Project Settings)
Old --> New
Retime process : Optical flow --> Nearest
Motion Estimation : Enhanced better --> Standard Faster
Motion Range : Medium --> Small

I have those Setting in my project originally because I thought it was only in use when you are doing Slow Motion but apparently not. Because after I changed to the new one I was getting better playback.

With this, I fixed my problem but I don't know if it's only for me , because of my Frame interpolation settings

Did you use any clips in your timeline which don't have the same fps as the timeline itself?
That would explain it.

Did you use any clips in your timeline which don't have the same fps as the timeline itself?
That would explain it.

ye my timeline is 30 fps 1080p and all of my clips are

I found, that with every new version since 17.4 DR just get`s slower and slower.
Choppy timeline, lagging audio in the timline, ect.
And I am not talking about huge projects, just 10 minute YT videos.

Delivering is ok, just editing is getting slower and slower with every new version

Any updates on this, for me projects just start getting slow for no reason, no noise reduction going on, just after 3 weeks on a project, getting slow and yes again, 1 minute things, not big things.

In my particular case it may have been partially due to a drive experiencing a failure. The system got slower and slower and slower, in many cases crashing repeatedly.

Then my main drive array disappeared from the desktop.

Replacing the power supply brought the drive array back and appears to have corrected the performance issues. Is this relevant in all cases? Surely not. But if a drive that has footage or caches on it is filling up, badly fragmented, or failing, it surely will have a negative affect on performance!

I think I found sort of a solution? this is more because of my settings, but after setting my "Frame interpolation" settings to have the fastest option possible it kind of fixed the problem or turning off "Retime and Scaling " in the Inspector for my Video clips seem to make it work normally now

Frame Interpolation Settings (in Project Settings)
Old --> New
Retime process : Optical flow --> Nearest
Motion Estimation : Enhanced better --> Standard Faster
Motion Range : Medium --> Small

I was getting around 1-1,5 FPS on my UHD render. Sometimes it would crash, without showing any error. Reinstaling drivers for both (integrated and discrete) GPUs didn't do much. Only after changing this one setting

Motion Range : Medium --> Small

It suddenly went to 12-14FPS without any crash.

Didn't expect that.

AMD Ryzen 7 4800HS with Radeon Graphics
RAM 40 GB
RTX 2060 Super 6 GB
Windows 11 22H2 22621.1105
Davinci Resolve 18.1.3 Build 8
Input footage: Red Dragon 6K & 1080P H264 & 6K H265 & a lot of graphics & nodes (no NR)

Well, 6 GB is barely enough for UHD. I’d expect problems with demanding temporal effects, like optical flow.
Nvidia GPUs are notorious for memory full problems.

My PC (see signature) with 8GB VRAM on my P4000 does not handle UHD very well (very easy to run out our VRAM memory).

I’d say 8 GB is the minimum to work in UHD.

Even 8GB is going to be marginal if you use temporal noise reduction or optical flow.

I often use both and my 12 GB RTX3060 sees VRAM use regularly exceed 9GB on UHD timelines.

I had this issue when installed a new 10Gbe card on my machine. For some reason, the PCI express on my motherboard was recognizing additional PCI lanes. I assume this confused the GPU and in turn slowed davinci. I moved the card to another PCI slot which fixed the issue.
I'm sure the issue people are having is GPU-related. Try reseating your GPU in the motherboard or if there have been any recent hardware changes these may be the cuplrit. Check BIOS. Hope that helps someone.

I was luky to SOLVE it !!!

I work on a recently upgraded W11PRO from W10PRO, on a self buit PC, i7, 64 RAM and RTX2060 KO.

Personally the problem was driving me crazy as I have a medium, good machine.

Long story short: I placed my computer on plane mode (no wifi, no bluetooth) and worked again. The problem only was coming back when I turned BT back on. I checked my BT devices, actually only two werte used at that time (logitech keyword and Davinci Speed Editor).

Davinci SE keyboard was showing an strange behaviour on BT devices as "connected / disconnected" at intervals of about a second.

I throw BMSE device away. Then I added again the Speed Editor to bluetooth devices in my PC and voila. I had my computer back to life !!!

At the same time, I also had an issue with "Nucleus Aisle on Windows Security" (I do not think this is correct in English), caused by a file or app named ftdibus.sys which I fixed previously to apply for the fix here explained.