DaVinci Resolve Studio (17.1) on m1 bad performance

[AmeDSl]

Hi there. Did you guys experiment some issue whit Davinci Resolve Studio, Mac m1 (16 GB of ram) and Sony a7sIII footage? For instance with 4k h264 10 bit 120fps files (but even with 60p), without any node or effect on it, they are stuttering on 4k 25p timeline, while in FCP they're not (and rendering is deactivate in both NLE). In certain cases even the h265 are stuttering. Now, let's assume is not an hardware bottleneck on M1 (because FCP can handle pretty smooth all of them, at least most of time) we just need to wait till next BM release? Ty for answer! PS I know H.264 and h265 highly-compressed codecs are intended as delivery formats, but despite of this FCP can handle all of them pretty smooth.

 

[asafblasberg]

Hello! I'm so sorry you're having this issue. It is strange since I've heard nothing but great reviews with Resolve. I should be getting a Mac M1 soon. Any way you might be able to upload some of the footage so I can take a look? If not, no worries, but I'd love to try it out if you'd like
Thanks,
Asaf

 

[AmeDSl]

Sure! the first clip is 422 120fps h264 4K, second one it’s a h265 file with the same setup. In both NLE (DaVinci Studio and FCP) the project is on a 4K time line 25p.

 

[asafblasberg]

Hi ameDSi, do you have links to download the video? Are you able to do that?

 

[AmeDSl]

Edited

 

[rezenclowd3]

Either way, I would be using proxy footage from 4K to quarter ProRes..... No need to work in 4k

Even on my 5950x and 3090FE I use proxy media onto another drive.

 

[AmeDSl]

Release 17.1.1 fixed the problems with h264 422 10 bit on Apple M1, there are still a bit of stuttering (both h265 and h264) but I think with some bit of tuning BM will make DaVinci Resolve Studio really smooth on M1 (without transcoding, as FCP actually do).

 

[javiercarrillo]

I've been trying to edit 1080p/XAVC footage from my A7C on Resolve and, while a couple of (color-grading) nodes would still allow for smooth playback, going anything beyond that starts giving me playback glitches. Furthermore, applying a single Fusion effect will make playback unusable.

Not sure if this is expected or just a bug.

FWIW, Final Cut Pro is able to apply ~12 effects/3D texts/color changes on the same file with no glitches at all.

 

[AmeDSl]

The only way that i found in order to edit smooth on DR is to convert all files (both h264 or h265) in Prores... Maybe Blackmagic is more on raw power then on optimization, that's why probably they have high requirements for Pc users. On FCP no problem at all. On FCP no problem at all (but he missed too much tools for my needs).

 

[Romsky]

After many tests with my MacBook Pro (M1, 16GB, 1TB SSD) i can just say that the M1 generally performs very bad with DaVinci Resolve. I just took some footage from my iPhone 12 Max pro (4K 60FPS) and put this on the timeline. The only thing i did was set speed to 25% (MotionFlow). Then i start to export it (h.265, 50MBit). The max FPS on encoding was 4 FPS. The same projekt on my Dell XPS 15 (10750h, 64GB, GTX 1650ti) i got 11 FPS and with my Acer ConceptD 7 Ezel (I7 10875h, 32GB, RTX 2080 Super) i got 20 FPS.

In FinalCut the M1 (CPU & GPU) performs very well, good optimized... in DaVinci its stuttering (timeline) and very slow. (I am very disappointed). I dont know if this Problem will be there forever because M1 is generally bad in DaVinci Resolve, or if its just a bug from DaVinci and needs a fix.