I've just uninstalled Da Vinci (free version). Was trying to suss out the basics but fear you might need a university degree (and A LOT of time!) to use it. My needs are modest . . the user 'manual', if printed, would probably equate to Lord of the Rings type size.
The official manual for DR16 is more than 3300 pages, and honestly is not great even at that length. They need better writers, or at least editors. Like, a hot key index would be helpful, but it doesn’t even do a good job explaining icons, much less have that index, and is extremely repetitive. There are sections that try to describe various icons, and it says something like “there are 5 icons, which are from left to right,“ and then it describes 7 icons, so not all that helpful (this is not an actual quote, but that guide is pretty infuriating because of things like that). The “beginner guide“ is, I think, a more manageable 400 or so pages, but is more of a guided tutorial, which takes longer. It’s a powerful but complex program, but the learning curve isn’t as bad as I’d heard, at least to get the basics down, if you have spent time with another editor (see below). A very high-level video editor friend of mine (he runs a company that does commercials and PR video/internal video work for several of the world’s largest corporations) encouraged me to try it out. That said, I gave up when I first tried it a year ago. But I’ve come back and love it now. You don’t need a university degree to understand it; there are a lot of good tutorials on YouTube and BMD‘s own videos are pretty good too. PM me and I’ll send links to the tutorials that I found very helpful if you’re interested.
I do hope the OP can get this worked out. His system definitely is capable of running it. Premiere Pro users have reported this sort of problem as well. For what it’s worth, I spent more than year learning and doing a ton of work with PP, and really like it. But I’ve spent the past few months playing around with Resolve and find it to be both a more powerful and capable editor, and also a bit more intuitive, although this is with a background in PP (Pr in Adobe’s nomenclature). PPs keyframing system is somewhat easier to work with, but once you get a handle on Resolve’s it makes sense and has more powerful options. And Resolve has better coloring/lighting functions, not to mention its effects and audio editors are built in, unlike with Adobe’s products where you have to transfer files between different products to get to the more advanced features (not to mention you have to have the CC subscription or at least a subscription to PP, AE, amd AU, at which point you might as well spend the $50/m or so for the whole package). Its trim/editing functions are also, in my opinion, a lot easier to use than PP’s.
And I get what you’re saying about your needs being modest, but once you realize what you can do with a little extra effort (and it’s really not that much) you’ll want to do it.
One big downside to Resolve is that for the free version, your only support option is basically the official forums (where they do have employees helping out). I’d like to see BMD do a better job, at least for folks having real technical issues like this. Not a great way to get new customers if the program won’t work correctly. Adobe does a much better job at customer relations. I don’t dislike Adobe‘s stuff, and still have my CC subscription. I’ll probably keep up Ps/Lr forever. But I do find Resolve to be a superior product (I haven’t bought the paid version yet but probably will soon unless I discover some glaring flaws).