Yes, I love Davinci Resolve. I think it’s very robust [well, it does way more than I’ll ever need, that’s for sure!], fairly flexible, and it allows me to get super creative with my videos.
It does, however, have some drawbacks. As I continue to use it, I find some of these. I reported on an Audio Bug in Resolve 17 Beta 6, and now that I’m using the Studio [paid] version of Davinci Resolve 17, I’ve encountered another one… but it’s NOT Resolve’s fault – at least, I don’t think it is.
And I know this is a bit of a long read, so I did a quick video detailing the problem and solution. Below the video, I will go through the why, the testing I did, and the solution, so skip ahead to the bolded words if you just want the bullet point version, but if you’re interested in the details, keep reading.
I Googled the issue and found a lot of stuff to try, but after much trial & error, the solution suggested on this Black Magic Design forum thread gave me the clues I needed to solve the issue.
In a recent review video, I tested the limits of Alex Audio Butler (AAB), and I continue to do so. I love the product – it saves me time and does a damn fine job of mixing my audio. This doesn’t just apply to AAB though – as far as I know, other Resolve users employing VST audio plugins have reported the same issues.
What’s happening is that you play back your video, and everything is buttery smooth and the audio sounds perfect. Then, you render the video, only to find it has glitches in the audio, similar to a vinyl record scratch. What to do???
Well, I encountered this issue recently, and after almost 20 render tests, I have a solution! The testing involved moving the render location from HDD to SSD, changing some settings in Resolve, creating new projects, removing AAB and re-adding it to the audio tracks. None of that worked.
What did? Well, I’m glad you asked, we’re getting there …
Throttling the render speed.
Yep, that simple fix did it. To understand WHY this works, it’s helpful to understand what changed between my AAB review and now. I bought Davinci Resolve Studio. That not-so-simple change resulted in unlocking my computer’s true potential to render video, by enabling Hardware Accelerated video rendering utilizing my graphics card’s GPU. Most computers with a discrete GPU will have much more processing power there than the CPU, but it’s specialized. By using the GPU to render video, it frees up the CPU to run the operating system, other apps, Resolve itself, and it speeds the whole process up by several times – in my case, hardware-accelerated rendering takes 1/3rd to 1/5th the time it took in the free version of Resolve. That right there is worth the price of admission [and I may even do a video on this]. I went from rendering at 15-30fps to 65-175fps.
The problem arises then, because it just seems like the AAB code can’t keep up with the audio [and neither an a lot of other VST plugins], so you get weird audio glitches in your rendered video.
So, what did I set my maximum render speed to? 50. Yes, 50fps. A far cry from 175fps, but at the end of the day, a better end result is worth a little more time, right?
After throttling the render, the audio renders out beautifully – just the way it sounded in playback, and the way one would expect it to sound.
Did the bolded words help you pick out just the quick details? I hope it did, and if this helped you out, let me know in the Comments below!
-John