Da Vinci Resolve 12 & Windows 7

Anthony Schilling · February 14, 2016

Anyone using Resolve 12 with Windows 7? Blackmagic lists Windows 8.1 or 10 and there's no way I'm giving up Win 7 for any of those. I found some threads online with people stating Win 7 Professional has been running fine, but i'm using Home Premium. I would upgrade to Professional if possible, or downgrade to Resolve 11 if possible. The program opens fine, but the video signal is not legible. That may be fixed with a new GPU coming this week, but i'd also like to get some advice on the OS first.

Jay Young · February 14, 2016

No problems here.

Nvidia GPU, AMD x6 processor

Anthony Schilling · February 15, 2016

No problems here.

Nvidia GPU, AMD x6 processor

Thanks- is it Home Premium, Pro, or Ultimate?

Jay Young · February 15, 2016

Ultimate, but I'm not sure that matters. Who knows.

Phil Rhodes · February 15, 2016

Unlikely to make any difference, I suspect. Can you not prove the system with the free version?

Anthony Schilling · February 15, 2016

Unlikely to make any difference, I suspect. Can you not prove the system with the free version?

Not yet. Everything opens fine but video is scrambled or black. Kept getting error about my GPU being full. My card is a 6yr old Radeon HD 4870 with no mare than 1GB of RAM. I have a new 4GB Radeon GPU coming tomorrow.. So I uninstalled Da Vinci, then bit the bullet last night and upgraded my machine to Windows 10 (after I got confirmation that my scanner will work with it). I'll re-install Da Vinci after the new card is in and hopefully all will be well.

Edited February 15, 2016 by Anthony Schilling

Satsuki Murashige · February 15, 2016

I could be wrong but I believe the latest version of Resolve has an 8GB RAM minimum requirement. You can probably get around it if you're working with very lightweight codecs.

Satsuki Murashige · February 15, 2016

If you're talking about vRAM then my system with 1GB vRAM works fine, though it is Mac OSX, not Windows.

Anthony Schilling · February 15, 2016

If you're talking about vRAM then my system with 1GB vRAM works fine, though it is Mac OSX, not Windows.

I have 16GB on the motherboard, the new video card will have 4GB. I feel like my current video card should have handled it better but who knows, that's why I updated the OS just to be safe. Apparently Da Vinci runs mainly off the GPU. They have a little chart that says 4GB GPU is the minimum requirement to deal with 4K. I almost got an 8GB but would have run close to $400, and I plan on working in 1080 or 2K for now.

http://www.dcinema.me/2015/09/davinci-resolve-system-requirements-a-reality-check/

Edited February 15, 2016 by Anthony Schilling

Anthony Schilling · February 16, 2016

Got Win 10 installed, new GPU card in, Da Vinci re-installed, and all seems to be working well. I was able to drop in an AVI and take it for a little ride. The interactive functions with the color wheels are so smooth! I was able steer the image where I wanted it to go very easily, and it looked so right. But it's still going to take a lot of tutorials and practice to get used to the layout and functions of it all... which for my purposes would be the file management, coloring and rendering. I still have no interest in using the editor. I think as a whole, the program might have more in common with (what i consider to be) less user friendly NLE's like Avid and Final Cut, which I have always avoided. Non the less i'm pretty happy and excited about getting into it, then adding the new Ripple track ball panel this April.

Satsuki Murashige · February 17, 2016

Good to hear, congrats! I found this to be a useful tutorial on node functions: https://www.cinema5d.com/davinci-resolve-nodes-tips-tricks/

The included manual is also very helpful.

Anthony Schilling · February 17, 2016

Good to hear, congrats! I found this to be a useful tutorial on node functions: https://www.cinema5d.com/davinci-resolve-nodes-tips-tricks/

The included manual is also very helpful.

Thanks a lot Satsuki! I've been real curious about the node function, pretty complicated at first. This will be very helpful. Lots of tools in there to get the hang of. I had no problem with the wheels, sliders and scopes so far, very effective.

I've been having some concerns about codec compatibility. Apparently they just added AVCHD support in version 12.3? My first test was a Sony AVI 23.97fps. The viewer couldn't seem to get the frame rate right on playback? HOWEVER!! The good news is that I was able to just drop a raw image sequence into the time line and it handled it beautifully! Da Vinci didn't even ask about the settings, it just assigned it 24fps and playback was just right.

Satsuki Murashige · February 18, 2016

Yes, I never get real-time playback in Resolve. Maybe it's different on a system with a better GPU, but this basically makes the editing functions useless to me. I only use them to trim and fix issues from a finished editorial timeline.

There's is a little green/red indicator in the player window along with the playback frame rate. Green means real-time, red means below real-time. It's always been way too fast at 23.98fps for really light codecs or 5-20fps for heavy codecs. It also depends on how many nodes I have going.

Definitely create some presets for Project Settings (gear icon in the very bottom right) and also for Preferences. It's a pain in the ass to go through all the settings since there are so many of them but it's very important that you get them right.