-
Can I Render Preview Clips, like in Premiere?
Ive been using Resolve for a few years and love it (its too good for being free) but one things that’s been a pain is performance. Everything is great until i use any type of filters/fxs. Then its a clunk fest.
When I was using Adobe Premiere this was an easy fix as I could just press ENTER and it renders preview clips on anything with fx. And then continue work as usual even on an old outdated laptop. Here I am on a systems with Ryzen 9 7900X + RTX 4070 Ti SUPER and it can barely handle a blur filter in Resolve.
I have not found a way to do this in Resolve. I see several options in the menu that are named in ways that look like they should be relevant to this, but changing any or all of them seem to make zero difference in performance. Is there no way to render preview clips like Premiere?
Ive been considering the paid version as I see it boosts performance and makes use of GPU more, but I wonder if that would even put a dent in this.
-
10 Replies
-
Hi,
Yes, of course, render for better playback. You should go to the Playback menu and choose Render Cache – Smart. or User. And you should check Project Settings – Master Settings and set up a video format for render.
-
I’m finding this to be a nogo too. For testing purposes I set RSMB on a clip and raised values to make it playback slow and jittery.
I set it to Render cache to User and adjusted the Project Settings/Master Settings pretty low. If its making preview clips this should be fine at full res as it wouldn’t be trying to process fx in real-time. (If its like Premiere). It doesn’t seem to want to render anything and I do not see any indication that its working or doing anything. It continues to process fx/filters in real-time and give bad playback even if I right click the clip and choose Generate Optimized Media. It goes low res but its still trying to process everything regardless. In Preiere you can load up the clips with lots of fx that require heavy processing and bring the project to a hault, but you Render Preview clips and it runs perfectly smooth because all of that gets pre-rendered until you make a new change to the clip/fx settings. That’s what im trying to do in Resolve. -
Davinci is still not handling things quite well. This is one of them.
By the way, is your Timeline Proxy Resolution set to Full?
-
If you mean within Project Settings, I tried setting it to half and quarter but saw no difference in performance. it seems like its just not rendering the results (source footage + fx on the clip) as a preview clip. It seems like it only deals with the source footage, while fx on the clip continue to be processed in real-time. But also since there is apparently no visual indicator that a clip has been rendered, I have no idea if its actually working. Its set to 5 seconds by default. I tried lower delay too.
-
When timeline proxy mode is set to full, you should see the best quality in Canvas, similar to Premiere, Full, Half, and Quarter.
-
I think that’s a separate topic. I’m having no problem with quality and playback of the media.
Its only for clips that have fx/filters/plugins on them. Premiere has the option to render those clips as preview clips when you press ENTER/RETURN so that playback is smooth, because most computers cannot run heavy processing in real-time. In DaVinci Resolve I am not seeing a way to do this. I think all of the above mentioned options/settings are good things to know, but they do not deal with this issue.In another server someone told me that NO, DaVinci Resolve does not have the option, which seems very surprising for a video editor to skip as a feature. Its kind of a necessary feature for any editor. I just wanted to ask here too and see what other people think.
-
I should also mention Im working in the Edit tab. I wonder if they expect us to only use fx in Fusion. I see clip context menu option for “Render Cache Fusion Output”. Maybe this is how it needs to be done in Resolve rather than right on the timeline.
-
Actually…i just tested this idea and I think it may be the solution. I have the same fx plugins in use in Fusion. I chose a combination of them that drastically tanks performance. Then when I go back into the EDIT tab playback is only a little choppy the first playthrough, but then it seems to run perfectly smooth. It is still kind of an automatic cache i think and i wish there was a visual indicator that it is working, but it seems to be working.
Its a bit less convenient than Premiere’s way and annoying that its an automatic background things “Just trust us / we’re doing magic”. But so far so good
@Devrim Akteke thank you for attempting to assist me in this. The info you share will probably be helpful in other future situations too.
-
I am thoroughly confused now. I’m not sure what I did wrong before, but NOW it is working with Auto Render cache in the Edit tab. And there is now a blue line above the clip to show when its pre-rendered as well as red when it is not. That was not showing up before.
-
Just adding to this, what are good settings (Project settings) for the render cache? I’m not very familiar with the different types. Even with 1 filter, it still gets choppy and laggy after the blue line shows the clip was cached. I think what caused confusion is after making changes to the clip, It does not seem to re-cache at all. no red or blue line is shown. Then randomly, maybe, if it decides, it will re-cache. I’m trying this with an adjustment clip now too. It worked the first time, but after making changes it won’t recache or show the filter. Then randomly during playback i will see 1 or 2 random frames blip of the filter but it doesn’t stay.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up