There are 2 main ways to achieve this without affecting your output resolution. Reducing your timeline resolution can lead to significant playback improvements during editing. The resolution of your timeline plays a significant role in achieving smooth playback in DaVinci Resolve, specifically if you are working with footage in 4K and above. Whether you upgrade or not, the following options will still lead to significant performance improvements. If you are experiencing playback performance issues like lagging video, dropped frames or crashing, you may find a significant improvement when upgrading to the studio version. This is especially important if you have a powerful system with a good GPU. While the free version is very capable, it does not utilize your GPU fully, and some functions are limited. It’s important to consider upgrading to the Studio version of DaVinci Resolve if you haven’t already. So let’s look at some other ways to help your system cope with intensive video editing jobs.

Even if you did, it might not solve all your problems anyway. Still, unless you’re a professional, you probably don’t have the budget for it. Upgrading to a suitable system is obviously the ideal solution to speed up DaVinci Resolve. Most recent computers will meet the minimum specs, but unfortunately, to get smooth playback and editing across the board with all formats and resolutions, plus working in Fusion, you will need a rather high-end system. There are minimum requirements for running DaVinci Resolve on PC or Mac, and if your system does not meet them, you are simply out of luck and will need to upgrade. Thankfully we have 7 ways you can speed up editing in DaVinci Resolve.

Unfortunately, the high resource requirements of video editing can make even the best editing workstation struggle without some help. To make it worse, most video is filmed in high resolutions of at least 4K these days, often with video codecs like H.264 and H.265 that are not optimal for editing. DaVinci Resolve, like any other video editing software, is very resource-intensive. Time is money for professional video editors, and performance issues like lagging video and dropped frames while editing video can absorb a lot of time and mess up your post-production workflow.

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