How to make Resolve run 75% FASTER

Supercharge your workflow in Resolve without hardware upgrades.
FREE Webinar - Learn 7 secrets to grade better in Resolve: bit.ly/39OdiKi
Become a FREELANCE COLORIST: bit.ly/3TsgN0x (Coupon applied)
Business inquiries: tally.so/r/wgqvDD
A comprehensive guide to all the different ways you can optimize your media in Resolve.
TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Intro
2:05 Timeline Proxy Resolution
2:58 Free Training Info
3:24 Generate Proxy Media
7:48 Render Cache
PRACTICE FOOTAGE
/ discord
ABOUT ME
I'm Waqas Qazi, founder and senior colorist at Qazi & Co. I have worked with PRIME VIDEO, ADIDAS, TOYOTA, VIZIO, etc. My mission is to share industry secrets by making fun and practical videos on color grading.
My Work: waqasqazi.com/
IMDb: imdb.to/3rIm493
SOCIAL
Podcast: spoti.fi/3Y4XU4A
Instagram: / theqazman
TikTok: / qazmanofficial
Threads: www.threads.net/@theqazman
#davinciresolve #colorgrading #waqasqazi

[@i.amreis]

Oppenheimer was graded by FOTOKEM studios, and the digital version was done by Kostas Theodosiou. As per his own words. "NO additional digital corrections or enhancements were done. Offsets and contrast ONLY were used , in order to keep the integrity of the film In the digital format." so no shaddows and highlights were hurt in the making of the film !

[@theqazman]

Clear and concise. My man. ✊🏾

[@spooled.pixels]

Learned so much and forgot it all. Love the content. ❤🎉

[@FriendlyPCGamers]

cause there is nothing to learn, except the guy selling course packages.

[@CINEKREATIVE]

@@FriendlyPCGamers he makes things complex just to milk money i had the whole course very repetitive

[@joyoffilming9500]

Awesome tipps & tricks with high positive impact on day-2-day editing. My biggest learning out of it was the trick with 'ripple node changes to selected clips' which makes it much easier to turn on the node cache for all clips - assuming they all have the same node tree.

[@florentindu21]

The render cache fusion output just saved a part of my project ! I was desperate… THANK YOU !!

[@tyjuarez]

Joseph Slomka was Film Color Scientist for Oppenheimer, and Kostas Theodosiou was DI Colorist. The film was edited "offline", where proxy files were used in an NLE to generate a timecoded EDL, and that was given to the analog film editor. The only digitized footage to end up in film prints was that used for VFX shots. I saw the film in IMAX, and in my experience, The film has a look somewhere between 90s Kodak and 70s IB Tech during the 65mm color scenes, with a surprising amount of saturation given the subject matter, but a murky green undertone throughout to give it some grit. The IMAX color scenes were very neutral, with somewhat milky blacks, but a well preserved dynamic range with some great color gamut extents. Black and white scenes were more cinematic in 65mm, giving the well defined look of something like "12 Angry Men" whereas IMAX black & white scenes had the look of a high quality darkroom photograph. Overall, I would call the look of Oppenheimer on film "Analog, but not untouched."

[@heatherplumtree]

I was able to see in only at digital IMAX, and was a bit disappointed. I don't know, maybe they had some technical issues with projectors, but film looked like it was rendered at 6bit color depth with 8 bit dither (look like a cheap DLP projection). Especially awful was color parts, where saturated dark parts of film (like 10 IRE) were jumping back and forth from 10IRE to 0IRE with no middle point, and because there were a lot of saturation in dark area - image were flickering from 10IRE with warm/cold shadows to complete black (that is partially black on a projection screen). Also I was confused a little bit with skin tones, and perfectionist inside of me was struggling between following a story and been getting distracted by over saturated brownish/reddish faces in indoor scenes. Overall look because of all this was strange to say the least. It looked like someone overlayed a 8mm film grain with heavy softening on top on 65mm film scans 0_o and cranked saturation at projection side. Definitely not an IMAX experience I was waited for. On an other hand - storytelling was great, sound was too loud at the dialogs, but (you know when) it was perfect and I got tons of emotions, food for thoughts, true cinema experience (incredibly important message, a lot of thoughts covered by great visuals that was used as a bait for common viewers, with perfect modern iteration of "montage of attractions" theory made popular by Eisenstein at 1920s. And never saw people in cinema who stopped breathing for some time all together and then bounced from their seats so high (you know when) and person next to me was so emotionally tense so it lead to some quality air time after bouncing from the chair and later physically falled back into seat with all body I thought seat will fall apart Definitely a film I will rewatch few times and will disassemble for analysing. Leaving theatre I got a feeling that it was main work of Christofer Nolan and overall was happy that first impression I got in IMAX =) BTH of course I watched Barbie at premier show and watched Oppenheimer in few days (Barbenheimer phenomenon =) ) and I knew right from the start that it would not be a light movie for children, but I was not ready that it will be so strong from all cinema experience: storytelling, messages, acting, directing, production quality, work of DP, colors, sound. Barbenheimer week was highlight of my year!

[@Tony-ck2ug]

Man I needed this video today. Thank You!

[@AkashKRavi]

This is by far the best video regarding this topic in DaVinci Resolve! This one deserve 1 milli!

[@theqazman]

🙏🏽 and let's hope. 😀

[@youtubeadkiller5192]

One of the best vids out there, and I've seen allot of them. Thumbs up!

[@theqazman]

Ty

[@IoRisparmio]

This is gold content! Thanks for all

[@tommymejiaen]

Love you qazi, thanks, that render cache setting is a life changer

[@theqazman]

It is. Happy to help, brother. ♥️

[@little_moments514]

was always lost about render cache thanks a lot for the detailed video!!!

[@outdoorsinontario3037]

Dude! Ur setup looks so dope! Those colors pop like crazy ! ! ! Loving the coloured light change, and how you deepened those colors in ur power grade/lut. Looks gr8888

[@theqazman]

Haha. Thank you, brother.

[@PreisFilm]

subscribed since around 2016 or 17 bro and loving ur stuff learned so much from u

[@TheDanich78]

Awesome work as Always !!! Thank you so much !!!

[@MadHatterColor]

Nice one Qaz! As for Oppy, it was graded by Kostas Theodosiou, from Fotokem. Although we have effectively three looks in the film (not to make any spoilers let's call them past, present and BnW), as Kostas himself said, only offsets and contrast were used during DI (although by looking at his nodetree I would guess some windows were added for some enhance/dehance re-light). Thus, most of the look comes from coupling the neg and the print stocks (Vision3 and Eastman Dueble-X with 2383 print) along with the photography choices made on set. The look is high con, has to be given how dramatic the film is, high density with rich tones and an interesting split in the tones.

[@theqazman]

My man. Proud to have you in FCM. Beautifully put. ✊🏾

[@anthonybrett]

Learned so much from that. Great examples! Thankyou!

[@sajjadabouei6721]

thank you man, it was my first video here And I really enjoyed it

[@sammcraephoto]

Excellent explanation. Thank you.

[@matthewscott8861]

Excellent, clear, well-taught tutorial. Thanks

[@theqazman]

🙏🏽

[@m2kk]

Thanks for this video. Amazingly professional and useful. 🙏

[@rangerandrogue]

Thank you for the great information!

[@rhewes100]

Thank you for this, excellent content

[@mfjae]

Christopher Nolan graded the movie himself using a chemical film process🤪

[@gianlucazanga8432]

Me if I lied on the internet

[@fernsehdesign]

with his left hand only while juggling oranges with the right han…

[@heyshengkai]

Really useful tips, thanks!!

[@qwertzaris6860]

Hes a really good teacher thats a sub

[@xThe3xecution]

Very helpful. I would add to lower your time line resolution for the time editing and grading and set it back to your desired res right before u going to render it.

[@theqazman]

Straight out of my Masterclass. That's a good one.

[@cbstudiophotography2026]

Thank you for this video! I have a bought brand new machine with 128gb of RAM, Nvidia Geforce 4070 Ti Super with 16GB memory, Ryzen 9 7950X3D 16 core and yet, it was lagging in Davinci even in HD which was really annoying. Following the steps you provided, now it does not lag even in 4k footages. Thank you so much! As an addition, another thing that helps, is to use a timeline of 23.976 even if the footage was taken in 24p. I have no explanation why, but it improved my job too.

[@AwesomeBendanaFamily]

Super informative! Thanks bro

[@theqazman]

Happy to help, brother. 💪🏾

[@GuidoGautsch]

Super helpful! Just atarted working with 6K braw files and hoo boy, goodbye realtime playback! Messed with all of these options, with very mixed results, and this spelled it out clearly. Big thanks!

[@theqazman]

Happy to help

[@philipprousek1000]

Strong Video! Thanks!

[@theqazman]

Of course

[@RasMarty_]

great video! worked awesome for me, that was dope! thanks🙌

[@theqazman]

You're welcome.

[@robertsonbrito1862]

Thank you sooo much i was fighting with my machine that is so powerful about droping frames used proxy and nothing expressive was repening than boom cache rendering was the trick. This is just what i needed.

[@DJ_kefo]

Thank you very much for this. I've used Premiere Pro before and by default it is set to have a simultanious automatic and manual render cache. I've missed that feature until I saw that this feature existed in this video. Very helpful, thanks

[@niclassuiv9548]

Super helpful video 👏🏻

[@MsAndreaskastrup]

Awesome!

[@MetanPatel]

This guy is my man.. i get so happy when i search and find him

[@coffeelover1456]

Nosssaaaaa.... que bixonaaaaa!!!1

[@902MediaUK]

very useful, thanks pal.

[@kidnaperarthur2110]

Big fan sir 🙌🙌

[@peleuno]

THANK YOU!

[@brianrogers549]

I smashed that like button as hard as I could 👍👍👍👍

[@theqazman]

Haha. My man. ✊🏾

[@unn4medfeel1ng]

The problem with proxies is that they don't reflect the changes in RAW files, so if you're changing WB or exposure drastically, they are of no use

[@PTFWWDB]

wtf are you serious

[@dkkeyz8815]

Did you watch the video?

[@unn4medfeel1ng]

​@@dkkeyz8815yes I did, so what? There is nothing said about working with CameraRAW. By default it uses camera metadata for generating proxies, even if I already changed that to "decode using clip" on color page. Therefore, all grading breaks when switching to proxies.

[@SpartanAoues]

Great work

[@henrypittman4637]

Thank you.

[@alferdauzer]

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!!

[@user-lf7ku9fm2m]

Thanks a lot

[@MIHAO]

good stuff, thanks

[@djordjek3916]

I think there is one more. Maybe even the most important one and that is to actually change timeline resolution in the project settings to 1080p.

[@theqazman]

That's a good one but again more for editing than grading.

[@ok_roman]

To save you some time: turn off noise reduction node until you render. Same as you already do.

[@StoneEdges]

I turn my noise reduction and sharpness nodes into shared nodes so I can quickly turn them all on or off at the same time for all the clips that can use the same amount of NR and sharpness. Saves a lot of time as well. For the people who want to try that, please note, the moment you turn a node into a shared node, it immediately locks that node. You have to unlock the node before you can make changes to it.

[@ok_roman]

@@StoneEdges you can also use "timeline node" vs clip nodes.

[@StoneEdges]

Will look into that!

[@ok_roman]

@@StoneEdges this is the way.

[@picxlmedia7856]

Phenomenal! My M2 Mac Studio Ultra plays back even with NR at 24fps.

[@theqazman]

Really? I have been meaning to pull the trigger but hearing super missed reviews.

[@picxlmedia7856]

@theqazman It's pretty impressive in my opinion. That's even with a 4k timeline high res premium shooting R3D. I've only shot in this codec so not sure if anything else would give it hiccups. But it's definitely worth a look. If it doesn't hold up, which I think it would. You can always return it 😆

[@capodicasa]

Hi, I follow your channel and I find it very professional and even funny. The truth is that each of your published videos are very good and useful. They are a great contribution for post-producers, especially for those who are starting in this art. I would like to ask you if it is possible for you to add the English subtitles on your own. It happens that the ones generated by default in the platform, usually have inaccuracies and other bugs. That makes the translation into other languages even more chaotic and therefore, part of the information you give is lost. If you could include in your videos, the subtitles corrected by you in YT, it would be a great contribution that will help people with other languages. Really thanks for your great channel and I hope you can help the world community with dozens of other languages. 😁 🙏

[@HollowVisionProductions]

Great video

[@TeipelFilms]

If i remember right, Oppenheimer was not graded at all cause Christopher Nolan hates to have his footage altered and does not trust colorists. It was probably corrected in the lab but not in a Grading Suite Like Resolve.

[@theqazman]

No movie is never not graded. Don't let them tell you otherwise. 😜

[@TeipelFilms]

@@theqazman according to Cullen Kelly it was only altered in the lab using basic Printer Lights.

[@scott_stirling]

@@TeipelFilms printer lights are a form of colour grading .. I guess then all he is stating is that they did use the most contemporary approach of colour grading.. but he still colour graded his film though

[@MikeErickson]

Thanks for this! Might just save me a computer upgrade!

[@StoneEdges]

ProRess 422 HQ doesn't show up for me as optimised media and cache formats. Are those reserved for specific camera codecs?

[@slipoch6635]

I am editing 6k footage on a computer that is ~$3000 worth, cpu is a mid-range AMD from 5-6 years ago, a motherboard ~4-5 years old, 32GB of fast good quality RAM (no corsair rubbish), and now a 3090 (although I never had an issue with my 2070s either). The footage plays back at full-speed @ full resolution with basic grading. Now I have about 13 hard drives in here striped and mirrored so speed is pretty good, but the acceleration provided by the studio drivers from nvidia for resolve seem to do the job. I am also not using certain plugins that have poor coding (good output, they're just not efficiently made). I would argue against 422 prores, from a coding perspective it isn't great compression/quality-wise and the overhead to decrypt the footage isn't worth it IMO (unless you are on m1 as it has a chip specifically for that). Prores support is also pretty poor on anything other than Apple. But this being said I haven't done benchmarks on the other options. I actually edit directly from my nvme used on the camera, this is where I am using BMRaw which has a very good playback capabilities. The rendercache is a life-saver though, when I was on the free version without the in-edit cuda acceleration, it was brilliant particularly for high-compression 1080p footage that had tons of overhead.

[@mishukx]

GREAT

[@user-sx8hn6dm9c]

i had joined the webinar this morning everything 's great, but i did not have the link to download the footage to practice and nodtree

[@visceraljourney]

hey Waqas, what is the name of those sweet brush elements you use to highlight parts of the video?

[@methesar4th96]

Mahn your video quality and new editing 🤌🏻

[@theqazman]

Ty brother. Appreciate that. Takes time but so rewarding.

[@Eman3626_EEEE]

ty

[@davesdigitalnomadlife]

Great video...definitely above my pay-grade currently!!! 🤣🤣🤣

[@heatherplumtree]

Clips at PRACTICE FOOTAGE rendered with baked-in rec709 colour science and resolve color management misinterpret colours for clips. My guess is first clip on a river is Arri wide gamut 4/Arri LogC4 (based on how clip range responds at HDR screen and handle sun clipping I would guess it is 99% correct). Second clip (as we know from tutorial) is from RED, and my best guess is RED Wide Gamut RGB / Log3G10, but if not, I found out it please my eye the most. AND IT LOOKS ABSOLUTELY STUNNING IN HDR! I spend 30 minutes admiring DP work and checking the limits of this amazing footage. RED Wide Gamut RGB / Log3G10 -> HLG on a HDR display looks stunning by itself, but I love more analog look of slightly clipped highlights (from lasers) with glow and washing out blacks by significantly lifting LIFT at about 0.09 with slight green tint - its a nice tradeoff between bright red on a true black and analog feeling, also showing off haze used on set. My respect for DP and whole production crew, such a pleasure to play with this clip

[@Alber777]

In fair honesty Premerie is smarter in this case, 1/4 quality resolution of the timeline applies only when you actually press play, otherwise you have full quality on the static clip. That is smarter and you don't have to constantly change the settings.

[@theqazman]

I agree

[@dhananjayaacharya9546]

wow❤

[@awazejahan1.7M]

Good sir

[@Clints-Vloggingdirector]

Hi there I was wondering would Rtx 4070OC be good for tracking because the 4070Ti for 4k is out of my budget

[@isoladellerosetv]

at the end, correct me if I am wrong, that optimized media and render cache settings are important if you export them or if you need more fluidity while editing or space in your PC. Right? They don't include the export (if you don't activate export render).

[@thatsginter]

Super helpful! I finally have Studio and have been hit by the NR lag, so been looking for ways on how to tackle it. Is there a way to create NR nodes that are linked that allows a global way to do this? Or is that a bad idea?

[@theqazman]

You can use "shared node".

[@willdidth3shot]

Very good content. I just wonder that when I export my project, do I need to turn off the cache? Thanks

[@theqazman]

No

[@TheOlidosOfficial]

Just wondering, is the proxy video speed accurate to how fast the video will run on KZbin? Because my computer is quite slow, and I often get 3-5fps on the proxy.

[@TomDirtzFX]

When should i generate proxies? IN the beginning of every single project?

[@eduardsiebert4645]

how can i Generale proxy media for the Clips which are in timeline. When I select them I can Generale optimized media but not proxy media. What is better, Proxy oder optimized media?

[@sajalkararia7202]

Well this is what all the time i used to do except the lowering the resolution of the timeline 😅

[@Filmmakers_N]

Should render cache be disabled when I'm already saving a video (ready)?

[@rifkifreeman]

so when we grade better use playback as original file rather than proxy file right ?

[@leonardkuper3951]

No one really graded it on a screen thats for sure! The Film was never digitalised, so they had to use chemical ways of grading and I think the man himself was highly involved in these processes. Would be really interesting to see which chemicals have what effect on the film. 🙏

[@dariusz7847]

My project settings 422 HQ does not exist? did this get updated out? I have 18 studio

[@sj6654]

Man make one tutorial on your editing process those graphics are sick !!

[@theqazman]

🙏🏽 I'll definitely think about it.

[@gusthecanonrebel]

What about generating optimized media? A bit different from proxies

[@actornickjameson]

Qazman, Discord doesn't seem to like me. Create and account, try to log in, 'email or password invalid'. Tried several times. Thoughts?

[@doughnut5286]

Thanks for the info..... also a question.... 'there is a lot MoGraph happens here.... what are u using, AE or Fusion on this project?' also your video looks better and better specifically with the edit style and obviously the color grade..... also.... dang, your room tone lights looks interesting to me... imma gonna try that on my room 😅😅

[@theqazman]

Thanks for the love. Everything was done in Resolve+Fusion. I'm putting in a lot of work to edit and it's rewarding to see comments like this. 🙏🏽

[@baluu2016]

I dont have "Profile 422 HQ" is that a Plugin thing or one frome the Studio version? Pls Help ^^

[@66longinus]

How can I get full resolution AND full frame rate ?

[@KirkwoodImaging]

I'm nearly certain you'd gain a lot of performance by just switching to an M2 Max/Ultra. The ProRes acceleration is so good. Sadly those Intel Mac Pros are long in the tooth now.

[@03chrisv]

I feel this. My i9 13900k with 64gb of ram and RTX 4080 likes to throw me the middle finger anytime I forget to change the timelime proxy resolution or forget to disable relight when when editing.

[@michaelstapleton9312]

What’s the glove for?

[@nyambe]

M1 16Gb 4K 50hz Sony footage, works fine with full resolution except if you reduce noise

[@user-yf8tt6ii7o]

Thanks for your advises! It`s very helpful, but I also like your chair and can`t find the same)Can your write model or give a link?

[@theqazman]

Ty. Leap by steelcase.

[@user-yf8tt6ii7o]

@@theqazman thank you very much!

[@shraddheshpatil3874]

What is the background music i want it

[@sameersodia4194]

Brother is active in a system of Davince Studio. If you deactivate it and activate it in another system then it will be done.

[@rafaelbillionare]

Wouldn't it be better to use the Blackmagic Proxy generator? It generates the proxies in the background while you work on the project

[@mariotriforce]

Depends, codecs are limited in the proxie generator, personally I prefer the cloud pod/a BMD camera that would upload proxies first 😅, camera 2 grade ❤❤

[@strangloove]

Can you show us how to get CIN city look ? :)

[@flexflex5853]

How to apply a render cache on only one clip please ? When i turn on the render cache, & when i click on smart or user, all my clips are in red to blue… I would like to only have one clip with that.. :/

[@theqazman]

User shouldn't do anything as seen in the video unless you tell it what to cache.

[@flexflex5853]

@@theqazman when i put user, all the timeline goes in red to blue, not just the clip i want. I do trailers, & for exemple the 4th rush, i add an effect on it, but my computer have a lot of issues with effects on davinci. Thats why i would to apply this method to only this clip, & not all the timeline because its too long.. Sorry for my English!

[@dedauu]

how do you show the fps?

[@UVCSureshM]

❤

[@TreviaFilmProductions]

Hi, I really need your help! I'm im working on a project for a client and I found your video because I need a little help making resolve Run faster and I tried the part about generating proxy media but 422 hq doesn't show up when I go to do it and I don't know why.

[@TreviaFilmProductions]

Is there a next best option?

[@YAMAGUCCIJP]

3 different ways is confusing. Should I pick one? Use them all? I did what you said methodically and the playback is still unusable. Premiere out the box performs so much better, fuck adobe though.

[@thanushcopilot]

I have a good PC, but whenever I work with camera original clips, it's always laggy, and I often end up freezing my system, which results in having to restart the software all the time. I never knew about what you just showed. Thanks so much!

[@theqazman]

This should help a ton.

[@TomasRamoska]

What is your PC specs? I have Intel i7 13700k 64GB DDR5 RAM RTX4080 and fast Samsung 990pro SSDs 7.5K read and write. Blackmagic 6K RAW smooth like butter.

[@heatherplumtree]

@@TomasRamoska If you apply some noise reduction (even built-in in resolve), do some halation and and tracking masks and heavy grading it will still run smooth like butter in real-time with original media? Also when you need heavy duty noise reduction (like neat video) there is no way you will have realtime without pre-rendering noise reduction at full res. Or you do have? Never saw 4080 in person, curios. Moved to M1 Max Mac and kinda happy for its price

[@TomasRamoska]

@heatherplumtree I was looping today a 6K BRAW file with: Temporal noise reduction Frames - 5 Motion est. type - Better Motion range - 5 Set the Threshold to 50 Put some secondary corrections Colour warper and curves. Still no dropped frames but GPU works overtime about 80% utilisation 😅 The footage is 24fps not much more headroom left I probably can do 30fps max. 60fps out of the questions at this kind of resolution.

[@heatherplumtree]

@@TomasRamoska wow, yeah, workstation is a beast :) I checked my MBP m1 max 16” with 32gb unified memory, 4k prores 422 hq works fine with temporary NR with max settings, some color correction nodes, glow, and I have 16-20 fps with full resolution, which is fare for a laptop :) I get tired of crashes on PC and decided to move resolve to mac completely, since it is easier to transport (I left my workstation and display in another country), have really powerful hardware for its size, kinda cost effective, will never ever encounter “low gpu memory” error due to 32gb unified ram, and have a truly decent liquid retina HDR 16 screen, that have just a little but less resolution than 4k, but produce perfect black, acceptable halo around brigt object (can be seen on a extreme angles on a black background with white mouse pointer, more or less like CANON HDR broadcast display for 10 times less money) is capable of 1000 nit easily, have built-in colour profiles (good enough), amazing coverage of p3 color space and can be used with HLG/2020 oetf and colour gamut. Using lcd TV as main screen I send clean feed to built-in mbp screen and have almost perfect intermediate level colour grading station. Can be paired with proper SSD or used with NAS/DAS via usb 3.1/thunderbolt. At the moment I consider ordering 100 bucks small 11/13 inch display with USB connection from china for having a dedicated screen for x4 scopes. Overall - I can’t complain. Maybe some time in the future I will move back to more powerful PC workstation with Nvidia GPU, but it is a goal if I will get really huge amount of grading job, which will not happen soon. But I can highly recommend mbp 16 on m1/m2/m3 chips for Davinci Resolve as a mobile/desktop intermediate level solution

[@juanromero961]

so I watched the free 1 hour course and it was great! the only thing is that I didn't see the free node tree or luts.. how can I see them?

[@theqazman]

Sorry. Dm me on IG.

[@juanromero961]

will do! this was an amazing video btw. us fans are so indebted to you haha @@theqazman

[@carma.channel]

cool