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Real-time/dropped frames playback option?
Sorry for the potentially stupid question, but I’ve searched the forum and the manual and can’t find an answer.
I tend to use quite complicated node trees and, depending on the facility I am working at, these can drastically cut my playback frame-rate (down to <10fps in many cases, considerably lower when using noise reduction). This makes reviewing the grade a real slog (I generally work on 60 min docs).
Is there any way of getting Resolve to playback at real-time dropping frames (i.e. like Color plays back) rather than playing back every frame at butt-numbingly slow speed (also making playing back with synched audio horrible)? The closest I can get is to use Fast Forward, which is fine until I hit a bit with less intensive grades applied (e.g. some archive with a basic CC) and it suddenly zips through too quickly.
I guess I could set the whole sequence to cache, but I didn’t like the way auto-cacheing seemed to get in the way of actually grading the one time I tried it (on Resolve 8) and I haven’t tried it again since … anyway, it wouldn’t help much unless I took a lot breaks!
I usually work either on a Mac version 8 in conjunction with FCP, or a PC version 9 in conjunction with Avid (dual boot system), I have absolutely no control over hardware/configuration/upgrades as I’m a freelancer.
Having searched the forum I picked up a couple of tips which may help increase performance (“use optimized display during playback”, 8 bit output, turn off scopes, etc), but I still worry I’ll be quite a way short of real-time performance next time I go in. Anyone had any joy with this?
Thanks,
Saul
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2 Replies
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Sure thing…we all have.
Bottom line is, if your clients think of the grading so low they dont invest in a Cubix and three GTX680 cards, you cant work…period.
I just had the pleasure to work in a company who had a brand new Mac their dealer sold em cheap with a GT120 and a Quadro4000 .
Normally I tend to use my “Wunderbaum” a 20 node preset for every shot as I define a lot of standards but at this place it was just not possible.
We ended up caching everything….and it it wouldnt be such an unsave and unreliable thing, I would be ok with it as it does it on the fly .
But then the director asked for a tiny editing change and that invalidated the 1 hour cache.So right now, until something changes on the software side, or people invest at least a decent amount the best solution is to render everything into a ned folder structure and load that into a new timeline for review.
Doing so you are save during the presentation on a low end system , you can do minor changes to the graded stuff and if you need to you can jump back to the first stage of grading.
A slice of color…
Resolve 10b3 , Smoke 2013 EXT
Colorist / VFX / Aerial footage nerd
https://vimeo.com/saschahaber -
Thanks for your quick reply Sascha,
Yup, in an ideal world I use a node tree very much like your “wonderbaum”, but at one of the places I work that becomes so unresponsive that I have to pare it down to about 3-5 nodes (a real PITA when you’re working with LogC), and even then I have this playback issue. Unfortunately they work on a principle of a Symphony grade being ok, and has bunged Resolve on almost as an afterthought. So it’s a question of using a low-powered resolve set up, or sucking it up and grading the whole thing in Symphony.
I appreciate that it’s never going to be perfect with such systems, but it’s a real shame you can’t just switch off real time playback and let it drop frames as needed, I got used to Apple Color’s Strobe-o-vision playback and I wouldn’t mind having the option!
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