Have had trouble understanding computers for Davinci Resolve

[Butterland]

Hi all,
I know this has been covered a million times, but I don’t understand computer strengths from reading the numbers.

I plan on getting an XPS 15 laptop to use with Davinci Resolve for editing. I currently have a terrible computer that I use it with and even optimizing and fiddling with settings my computer is so slow I basically edit a picture and hope it worked on the whole video.

Davinci has a lot of options for editing and even though I suck at it, I like all the options.

Long winded entry for a really dumb question, but

When I look up XPS 15 to purchase there are 3 main options, you pick one, then can upgrade different parts. Which one works for Davinci?

I’ve read a lot about which computers, even which XPS to get, but it is jivverizh to me. The extent of my knowledge is...500gb ssd, NVidia 1060 or higher, and 16gb or more for ram.
Is there a link anywhere that I’m missing that just shows exactly the laptop, no upgrades needed?

Thanks for reading, appreciate any help, and sorry for making this the 100000000th post about this. I just don’t understand still somehow.

 

[lisadoc]

Read this article and follow on from there. Your question is far too involved for a brief forum response.

DaVinci Resolve System Requirements - A Reality Check

Bottom line, for video editing, focus on your graphics card. That's where you need the most "oomph".

And I'm not sure what you mean with your question: "Is there a link anywhere that I’m missing that just shows exactly the laptop, no upgrades needed? "

 

[Butterland]

I just meant a link to a exact laptop that’d work with resolve. I see people use the XPS, and I think I’m reading that it works, but there’s so many options and available upgrades, I don’t know which to purchase.

Computers are quite expensive, and I’d hate to buy one and it not be able run editing software.

Thank you I’ll check that site

 

[lisadoc]

I just meant a link to a exact laptop that’d work with resolve. I see people use the XPS, and I think I’m reading that it works, but there’s so many options and available upgrades, I don’t know which to purchase.

Computers are quite expensive, and I’d hate to buy one and it not be able run editing software.

Thank you I’ll check that site

This is the rule - buy the best computer that you can afford. Focus on the GPU strength (the nVidia card for the XPS) and get the best one you can, followed by more RAM and a better CPU, followed by a decent SSD drive.

As you found with your older computer, almost any computer can "run" Resolve. The only issue is how fast. It's like asking which person is best to run a mile. Frankly, most anyone can "run" a mile. Some will finish in under 4 minutes. Some will take 40 minutes. Most will be somewhere in between. So, your main question is basically "which person can run a mile"? It's not a matter of if. It's a matter of degree.

Look for "benchmark" tests on the configuration you're looking at and compare those.

Here's what the company itself considers "minimum requirements" for specific brands/operating systems:

https://documents.blackmagicdesign....a7/DaVinci_Resolve_14_Configuration_Guide.pdf

 

[Bob in Savannah]

Awesome answer. I , personally, just bought a windows surface pro (the newest model) and I have NO issues running that program... Of course, I keep my computer clean and free of needless cpu operating apps in the background. Gary utilities or CCleaner has kept any and all problems out of my pc... I would think just about any mid line pc would do the trick for you... As long as its operating at its high performance level available..

 

[Butterland]

Ok that helps thanks

 

[HomeyJay]

Hey, I went though this dance DaVinci and honestly, it was a pain in the ***. The program is great but it wouldn’t run well on my desktop setup (dual core Xeon workstation) and kept saying that the video card wasn’t up to it.
In the end I bought an iPad Pro 10.5 (which I’d been thinking about anyway) and bough the LumaFusion app on it. It’s absolutely awesome - I can even edit full 4K vids on it without skipping a beat. I’d forgotten just how powerful modern iPads were!
Anyway, just my 2 cents!

 

[Butterland]

How do you get the video to the Ipad pro? Does it have a way to link the as card?

 

[wbrownj]

@HomeyJay Thanks for the pointer to LumaFusion...it is awesome.
I am am sure that there are more advanced features in other packages such as Resolve, but frankly resolve was not running too well on my laptop (Just three years old). I was not prepared to go out and spend a mint on a whole new PC rig just for video editing but had found nothing that felt right for my iPad Pro.Then I saw your post here and decided to give LumaFusion a shot.

It is JUST what I needed, something simple enough to pick up fairly quickly and yet powerful enough to deliver the goods.
I am chuffed to bits with it so thanks once again for your post

@Butterland It seems to offer support for a wide variety of cloud based storage solutions such as
ICloud Drive
Bropbox
Google Drive
Box

and more

J

 

[drone_video]

I will offer some advice for you
First.. The video card, the video card matters, but not as much as people are leading you on to believe. a Modest dedicated (discrete) video card is enough unless your making some big movies. If you are using heavy effects that are OpenCL or similar accelerated then a video card matters more. For most people a modest video card that comes with 4 to 8GB of ram is plenty, most of the effects you would use in making a drone video are not really used - but make sure you get QuickSYNC technology on the CPU, I explain that further down.

If you really want to be 100% sure, look at the effects you using and confirm they are accelerated with a video card. BUT what ever you do, buy at least a laptop or computer with an dedicated nVidia video card in it, using just the built in Intel Video card is NOT ideal.

Second, and probably the MOST important thing to get is a CPU with QuickSYNC video. This is the technology that allows you to export h264/265 video at real time. basically way faster then letting a non enabled CPU render all the exported video by encoding it using the cpu alone.

The other thing, is the Intel i7 processor is the ideal CPU for video editing. You can manage budget constrains well within this CPU family, just make sure you get the QuikSYNC technology, which I'm certain is standard on the i7 - it is not on the i9 BTW <- Learned this the hard way, after intel told me my i9 had it.

Here is a link to a decent DELL Laptop
XPS 15 Inch 9570 High Performance 4K Laptop with InfinityEdge | Dell Canada

Here is the Link to the CPU specs on intel, you will find this QuickSYNC technology listed in there, and you can use this intel website to confirm that the CPU supports this required technology:
Intel® Core™ i7-8750H Processor (9M Cache, up to 4.10 GHz) Product Specifications

This is the video card it has, which is excellent for just about everyone doing video editing.... if you have money to burn, you can look for better video cards, but its almost never needed.

NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1050Ti with 4GB GDDR5

Buy as much hard drive as you can afford, most systems you can not upgrade the internal drives. I also suggest you stick with what they call a M.2 SSD. Sometimes the specs will say SSD, but that's the old style SSD that uses the "slower" SATA interface. a modern laptop should use M.2. get at least 500GB internal, and all modern laptops have a USB3 or similar high speed external connection that you can use a bigger external drive if you ever need it.

I also suggest you choose the display correctly. I would only ever get a 4K display, which is an Option on this laptop:
15.6" 4K Ultra HD (3840 x 2160) InfinityEdge Anti-Reflective Touch IPS100% AdobeRGB 400-Nits display

You can save a few bucks $500 in this case with a 1080p display, but you will not like editing video with less than 4k display (lots of reasons, too many I don't want to type out so trust me or don't, your call).

This unit comes with an excellent wireless card which you will likely be using. If you are using a NAS, you will likely want to move files between the NAS and your laptop. if your not going to plug in the network cable (requires a dock, which I suggest you get, especially if you are going to also use an external display, handy when editing). Keep in mind this wireless card is fast, but you also have to have the matching technology in your access point you connect to. Most people forget that the access point they purchased 5 years ago, has really poor speeds and is slow. so keep that in mind:
Killer 1535 802.11ac 2x2 WiFi and Bluetooth 4.2

That should be enough to get you started.... and should cover all the top things to consider.

 

[drone_video]

Hey, I went though this dance DaVinci and honestly, it was a pain in the ***. The program is great but it wouldn’t run well on my desktop setup (dual core Xeon workstation) and kept saying that the video card wasn’t up to it.
In the end I bought an iPad Pro 10.5 (which I’d been thinking about anyway) and bough the LumaFusion app on it. It’s absolutely awesome - I can even edit full 4K vids on it without skipping a beat. I’d forgotten just how powerful modern iPads were!
Anyway, just my 2 cents!

DaVinci works just fine on modern gear. It does need a modern video card and the latest versions are pretty good with the new hardware. I don't use it myself as I prefer Premier for all its other benefits despite its cost. But I would not Shy away from DaVinci if you have not tried it with a modern nVidia Card. Xeon's also don't make for good CPU's for editing...

 

[drone_video]

How do you get the video to the Ipad pro? Does it have a way to link the as card?

He is probably using this:
Lightning to SD Card Camera Reader

There is many bits of software that can be used to edit video on an ipad. This comes down to what kind of editor you are. for the cost of this dongle, you maybe want to try editing with the software he suggests.. but I will warn you, editing on an ipad is for the quick and rough, and can be challenge when wanting to get precise. So you need to decide what kind of editing you want to and make a decision. The cost of a "modern" ipad these days is similar to a lowend laptop so consider your choices.

 

[drone_video]

Awesome answer. I , personally, just bought a windows surface pro (the newest model) and I have NO issues running that program... Of course, I keep my computer clean and free of needless cpu operating apps in the background. Gary utilities or CCleaner has kept any and all problems out of my pc... I would think just about any mid line pc would do the trick for you... As long as its operating at its high performance level available..

CCleaner is not needed at all. I would argue this is actually junk software. I would never add this any system I'm running. Modern windows 10 runs just fine. If you are installing all sort of "free" apps and toosl etc those cause havoc in your system with bad code, poorly written and not up to modern program standards.

If I need to run software of that type, I open up a virtual machine, and use the software.

I would caution anyone to think twice about using tools like CCleaner, its a waste of CPU cycles. See attached picture and do your own research before you install this.

I should add that all the cleaning stuff it does, can be done manually within windows with no extra tools. It just takes a bit of knowing what to do (YouTube videos).

The biggest thing to do on your system with an SSD/M2 drive is run the trim command, which in windows 10 is where the old "defrag" tool was. Running that once in a while will keep your SSD type drives in good shape. BUT for those that don't know, never run a defrag process that moves files around. that old defrag process will destroy your SSD type drives. Windows 10 does a great job at knowing if you have SSD drives so it turns this old defrag off. Not sure how 3rd party tools see these drives.

 

[drone_video]

Read this article and follow on from there. Your question is far too involved for a brief forum response.

DaVinci Resolve System Requirements - A Reality Check

Bottom line, for video editing, focus on your graphics card. That's where you need the most "oomph".

And I'm not sure what you mean with your question: "Is there a link anywhere that I’m missing that just shows exactly the laptop, no upgrades needed? "

This is a great and helpful response to this poster.

They word there video card recommendation very strong, then post specs for a modest card 2/4GB (which is not the ideal way to evaluate the video card performance, but I guess its typical that the more video ram, the better the cards processing engine is these days so it works).

My point on the way the word the strong advice on the video card makes it sound like you need to drop $3000 usd on the latest video card they make if you can afford it. The truth is that the middle of the line gaming cards work really well and get like 90% of the same performance for way less money. I just didn't want any to walk away with the idea that spending that $3000 on a video card is needed to edit 4k video... I post another link in a separate post here to show off some bench marks for the OP.

 

[drone_video]

These guys do great testing and there is video card bench marks for you to look at:
Recommended System: Recommended Systems for DaVinci Resolve

keep in mind these recommendations here are for the Pro Editors who use these systems to make money. But you can get some insight into what to expect with the hardware you intend to purchase.

 

[HomeyJay]

No guys, if you want to get the best out of LumaFusion, you need to use this way to get the video out of the Mavic.
Firstly, if you just get a card reader to transfer video, the video will go into the Photos app and then start getting uploaded to your iCloud. You don’t want to start uploading 2gb videos to your iCloud account!
So, firstly, copy your Mavic vids to a safe folder on your PC.
Secondly get yourself a iXpand flash drive. This has a usb connector at one end and a lightning connector at the other.
Copy the files you want to onto the iXpand drive from the PC and then plug it into your iPad.
Open up LumaFusion and select “import” and choose the iXpand drive. Import your vids into LF and play!
If you mess up, you still have your backup files on your PC!

You can transfer via WiFi but it’s really slow - maybe 15x slower!

 

[Butterland]

I should add that all the cleaning stuff it does, can be done manually within windows with no extra tools. It just takes a bit of knowing what to do (YouTube videos).

The biggest thing to do on your system with an SSD/M2 drive is run the trim command.

Thank you for all that info. Are able to link a reliable video on this? Including the trim command? Or explain it to me?

I bought the mavic excited to edit and have ran into the computer wall. I had no idea how awesome editing was, hell I love doing pictures! And Im not even good at that, it’s just so awesome.
But I also had no clue how much computer stuff I had to learn as well, I need a computer club that’s also cool with Mavics haha

 

[Butterland]

These guys do great testing and there is video card bench marks for you to look at:
Recommended System: Recommended Systems for DaVinci Resolve

keep in mind these recommendations here are for the Pro Editors who use these systems to make money. But you can get some insight into what to expect with the hardware you intend to purchase.

Thank you- I’ll check that out, I wish they had a mavic/resolve computer that was more affordable. I think I’m going with the xps15 you advised.(XPS 15 Inch 9570 High Performance 4K Laptop with InfinityEdge | Dell Canada)

saving up now and trying to make sure.

 

[drone_video]

Here is a video that talks a bit about this. It should be enough to get you started.

 

[Rivendell]

I’m a DaVinci Resolve user who has posted on this very issue. I have also bought, paid for, used and returned the Dell XPS 15, specifically because it wouldn’t process DR well.

It’s important to remember that DaVinci Resolve has a reputation for being particularly (i.e. more than almost every other graphics package) demanding of hardware, particularly processor and graphics card (rather than RAM). When the programme loads, you get a hint as the graphics show people using banks of desk tops to achieve their results!

The UK’s “PC Specialist” website has an excellent forum, including specific builds for DR. I eventually spent over £2000 on a work station laptop. The spec is:

17.3" Matte 4K LED 60Hz 72% NTSC Widescreen (3840x2160) (No G-Sync)
Intel® CoreTM i7 Six Core Processor i7-8700k (3.7GHz) 12MB Cache
32GB Corsair 2400MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 16GB)
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1080 - 8.0GB GDDR5 Video RAM
1 TB HDD
500 GB SSD (important)

It’s also really important to consider the editing demand you’re going to place on your system. Two track video and audio, without colour grading or complex transitions could be handled by a lesser spec. As soon as you start to colour grade, mix audio effects etc you will find bottlenecks unless you’ve got a system to cope. DR - even the free version - is immensely capable and most people won’t explore its limits. This invites the question “why not use a simpler programme, as there are heaps?”. I’m no expert, but I like DR because it does everything well and I like the interface. I’ve paid a premium for that in the hardware.