Davinci Resolve and 2.7k footage Mavic 2 Pro

[pogbellies]

Hi I recently shot some 2.7k footage on my Mavic 2 Pro. I'm having a few problems with “deliver” in Resolve though.

DJI quotes the resolution at 2688x1512 however Resolve only has presets for 4k, 1920x1080 or 3840x2160. I know i can input a custom resolution, however 2688x1512 doesn’t seem to match any standard. The closest standard I can find seems to be 2704x1520. Should I upscale to this resolution?

I would use 4k but the PC struggles a bit with it.

Any ideas welcome.

 

[IShouldBeWorking]

That's pretty interesting. I haven't actually ever shot 2.7k with my Mavic. (I was lucky enough to buy a new editing machine earlier this year that can handle full 4k.) But 2688x1512 strikes me as a pretty odd resolution. I'd suggest going to 2704x1520, just like you said, and seeing how it looks, and also how it renders with your current hardware. I bet it will look just fine and it'll definitely be more widely supported than 2688x1512. Feel free to share your results here when you've rendered them. I'm no expert but I'd love to take a look.

 

[pao1os]

That's pretty interesting. I haven't actually ever shot 2.7k with my Mavic. (I was lucky enough to buy a new editing machine earlier this year that can handle full 4k.) But 2688x1512 strikes me as a pretty odd resolution. I'd suggest going to 2704x1520, just like you said, and seeing how it looks, and also how it renders with your current hardware. I bet it will look just fine and it'll definitely be more widely supported than 2688x1512. Feel free to share your results here when you've rendered them. I'm no expert but I'd love to take a look.

Thanks for the reply, I just rendered this short clip at 2704x1520 but I'm not sure that YouTube plays it at full resolution. Forgive the terrible flying, I was trying to get used to the waypoint settings!

Strangely the PC will render 4k really well but the process of editing it is painful, it stutters and jumps in the preview windows. This is with the Da Vinci preview settings at 720p and full use of the Nvidia GPU GPX870m with 6Gb of video RAM. The PC is a Core i7 2.5GHz with 16Gb RAM, which I would have thought would have been sufficient. Hey ho......

 

[IShouldBeWorking]

I think the level of detail in the brick and the fields in your shot looks pretty nice. You timed your flight to capture some great golden light too.

I had similar experiences before I upgraded my editing machine. I could wait patiently for the renders, but trying to edit in DaVinci was too stuttery unless I used proxy files. I was filming using 4k h.265 and the machine I was using didn't support support h.265 decode in hardware. Switching to proxies during the edit helped a lot. Here's a tutorial if you want to try it out. DaVinci Resolve calls it using optimized media.

Quick Tip: How To Use Optimized Media In DaVinci Resolve

As I recall, h.265 codecs were added to Intel processors in the 8th or 9th generation Core CPUs. So once I got one of those, things have been buttery smooth during editing. So switching over to h.264 may make things smoother too, depending on your processor's age.

 

[pao1os]

I think the level of detail in the brick and the fields in your shot looks pretty nice. You timed your flight to capture some great golden light too.

Thanks for finding the good!

I had similar experiences before I upgraded my editing machine. I could wait patiently for the renders, but trying to edit in DaVinci was too stuttery unless I used proxy files. I was filming using 4k h.265 and the machine I was using didn't support support h.265 decode in hardware. Switching to proxies during the edit helped a lot. Here's a tutorial if you want to try it out. DaVinci Resolve calls it using optimized media.

Quick Tip: How To Use Optimized Media In DaVinci Resolve

You are now officially my hero! It works like a dream.

 

[IShouldBeWorking]

Excellent! Glad that did the trick! My old box was so bad that even generating proxies made me lose my patience. But it's sure a lot cheaper than buying a new one.