Is DaVinci too much stress for my MacBook? Trouble with mutliple nodes.

DaVinci Resolve

Is DaVinci too much stress for my MacBook? Trouble with mutliple nodes.

Posted by Drew Angle on July 4, 2012 at 5:27 pm

I’m a student filmaker and I’ve been grading with Apple Color for the past 2 years. I discovered that DaVinci offered a free version of the Resolve Lite program. I downloaded it and wanted to experiment with it on a project

I shot on the 7D – 1080p (1920 X 1080) Apple ProRes 422 HQ.

I’m running the program off of my 15″ MacBook Pro, Mac OS X Version 10.6.8, 2.4 GHz, 4GB Memory. There are 11.5 GB of free space on the internal HD.

I’m coloring the clips with the media stored on a HD with a FireWire 800-800 cord.

I had some trouble off the back with the “GPU Memory exhausted” warning and I went ahead and followed all the troubleshooting I found on forums.

– I set my databases
– I downloaded the Beta for Davinci
– I’m only working with a short 30 second scene, linking the clips on the HD with the XML I exported from FCP

After all of this I was able to actually view the footage in the coloring window.

BUT, just as I thought I had solved the issue, started grading, and went to add a third node to my node tree, I was back at square one – the video glitched and I received another warning that my GPU Memory was exhausted.

I found this pretty frustrating. I’m not trying to work with an ellaborate amount of nodes – hopefully around 5-6 per clip for some simple coloring, grading. Is there any more troubleshooting to be done? Or is my MacBook at its limits with DaVinci?

Dwaine Maggart replied 13 years, 10 months ago 5 Members · 5 Replies
5 Replies

Joseph Owens
July 4, 2012 at 9:54 pm

[Drew Angle] “is my MacBook at its limits with DaVinci?”

Could be… what is the on-board GPU your laptop shipped with?

jPo

“I always pass on free advice — its never of any use to me” Oscar Wilde.
Peter Chamberlain
July 5, 2012 at 1:14 am

Hi, you don’t detail the model number or year of the MBP so it might be reaching its processing power.
All I can suggest is the following.

Close any other apps that are open.

Set the
timeline resolution to 720p
resizing to bilinear
don’t update interface icons during playback.
keep the number and length of clips in the media pool to those you need and no more.

Good luck.
Peter
Esteban Aguilera
July 5, 2012 at 10:19 am

[Peter Chamberlain] “keep the number and length of clips in the media pool to those you need and no more.”

talking about, do not load the mediapool, relate it to the master session, is it so?
I do not quite understand, if not to be charged are the sessions. Or not to be loaded is the master session.

in a 40-minute show, I divided into 4 parts of 10 minutes on the same project and charge all clips in the Media Pool.

This is so the best way to do it? or is it better to have 4 projects of 10 minutes each, from the point of view of performance and have not loaded the master session?

Di Davinci Resolve Colorist
Drew Angle
July 5, 2012 at 4:52 pm

Thanks guys.

It’s a MacBook Pro 6,2
Intel Core i5

2 Video Cards
Intel HD Graphics Vram 288mb
NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M Vram 256mb

And the film I’m coloring is about nine minutes which I’ve broken down into even smaller sessions.

I’ll try some of the tips suggested and let you guys know.
Dwaine Maggart
July 5, 2012 at 6:15 pm

The issue is the 256MB VRAM. 1GB is a general minimum. 512MB might get by for a few nodes depending on resolution.

As Peter mentioned, running with a timeline resolution of 720P (1280×720) will help. But probably not much. If you need to render 1080 files, you will be in trouble.

Dwaine Maggart
Blackmagic Design DaVinci Support

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