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Other Project Settings That Improve Performance
In addition to working with proxies, using reduced raw decoding quality, generating optimized media, and enabling the Smart and User caches, there are five additional options in the Project Settings window and one setting in the UI Settings panel of the User Preferences that you can use to further improve real time performance if you’re working on an underpowered computer, at the expense of lower image quality while you work. These settings can then be changed back to higher quality modes prior to rendering.
— Set timeline resolution to: (Master Project Settings, Timeline Format) DaVinci Resolve is resolution independent, so you can change the resolution at any time and all windows, tracks, sizing changes, and keyframe data will be automatically recalculated to fit the new size. Lowering the Timeline resolution while you’re grading will improve real time performance by reducing the amount of data being processed, but you’ll want to increase Timeline resolution to the desired size prior to rendering. This is effectively the same as using the Proxy command, but you get to choose exactly what resolution you want to work at.
— Enable video field processing: (Master Project Settings, Timeline Format) You can leave this option turned off even if you’re working on interlaced material to improve real time performance. When you’re finished, you can turn this setting back on prior to rendering. However, whether or not it’s necessary to turn field processing on depends on what kinds of corrections you’re making. If you’re applying any filtering or sizing operations such as blur, sharpen, pan, tilt, zoom, or rotate, then field processing should be on for rendering. If you’re only applying adjustments to color and contrast, field processing is not necessary.
— Video bit depth: (Master Project Settings, Video Monitoring) Monitoring at 8-bit improves real time performance, at the expense of possibly introducing banding to the monitored image.
— Monitor scaling: (Master Project Settings, Video Monitoring) Lets you choose which transform filter to use when scaling video to fit into the Video format resolution you’ve specified. Options are Bilinear and Basic.
— Resize Filter: (Image Scaling) A drop-down menu that lets you choose an alternate image transform filter (such as Bilinear) that is lower quality but less processor intensive. A “Force sizing highest quality” checkbox in the Render Settings list of the Deliver page helps make sure you don’t accidentally render your final media at this lower quality setting, however.
— Hide UI overlays: (User Preferences, Playback Settings) Off by default. When using a single GPU for both display and CUDA or OpenCL processing, or if your display GPU is underpowered, or if you lack the PCIe bandwidth required for the currently specified resolution or frame rate, you may be able to improve real time performance by turning this option on. When enabled, onscreen controls such as the cursor, Power Window outlines, and split-screen views are disabled and hidden during playback. When playback is paused, all onscreen controls reappear.
— Minimize interface updates during playback: (User Preferences, Playback Settings) On by default. While enabled, this setting improves real time performance by hiding on-screen controls that appear in the Viewer, such as the cursor, Power Window outlines, and split-screen views during playback. When playback is stopped, onscreen controls reappear.