Simply, anything in excess of 4K UHD (3840×2160) – this includes variations of 4K, like DCI – will not be allowed to export in the Free version of Resolve. While it’s still not a great format to edit in, if you’re editing videos that come out of streaming or NVIDIA ShadowPlay and phones, you’ll find it helps massively. More threads from the CPU, more GPU power, all the good stuff. On Studio, decoding H.264 and MP4s is helped along by the extra utilization of your hardware.

It’s why when you create Proxy Media or Optimise Media in Resolve to make editing easier (these methods essentially allow you to convert your video from say, 4K to 720p, and then when you export, it’ll replace the files with the original 4K) they usually recommend file formats you’ve never really seen out in the open like DNxHD etc., which Resolve can play with fairly well. It’s a cumbersome, condensed set of data, which Resolve then needs to extrapolate that dataset out to allow you to work with it. The codec that usually sits in MP4s and is used by consumer-grade gear regularly, is brilliant for watching back but not editing with. You’ll find that Free Resolve is not capable of decoding H.264 files easily. This doesn’t even get into the limits of the free version.įor more on System Requirements, you can see our roundup and hardware recommendations. The recommended is 32GB of RAM, but even then, you’ll need to bundle it with a beefy GPU and CPU if you intend to be using heavy effects in your videos. These will slow down on 16GB of RAM, leading to stuttery messes. However, where things collapse in on themselves is when you need Fusion, which some effects rely on even in the Edit and Cut pages. However, if you have a gaming PC with at least 16GB of RAM and a nifty graphics card, you’ll be able to hop into the Edit and Cut pages.

Because Resolve has a free version, it’s incredibly enticing to simply download and expect it to work, but DaVinci is a hungry piece of software that only hardware will satisfy.Įssentially, if you’re going to be editing on your 599 laptops from Amazon with 8GB of RAM and an integrated graphics card, you want to look elsewhere if I’m blunt.

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