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Once you have selected the appropriate settings for your media, return to the edit or the media page and in the media pool, find the clip or clips that you want to optimize, right-click, and hit “optimize media.” Depending on how many clips you have selected and the length and the format of the clip, you may have a few minutes to kill while Resolve generates the optimized media. If you’re a Mac user, and you want to change the proxy to the popular ProRes proxy, you would do that here. However, if you wish to adjust or double-check the settings, you’ll find the adjustment properties by clicking the Project Settings cog in the right-hand corner, and then halfway down the master settings panel, you’ll find an Optimized Media and Render Cache area. You could probably skip this step since Resolve’s default proxy setting will work fine to transcode most media types. There are a few steps to follow to get your media optimized therefore, if you’re a new Resolve user or a new editor in general, follow the tips below, and you’ll be back with real-time playback in no time. Using the optimized media function is Resolve’s method of creating proxy files. If neither of these two options works, you will need to generate optimized media. You could change the proxy mode to half or one-quarter resolution for smoother playback, or alternatively, if you’re unable to obtain real-time playback due to an extensive color grade and effects processing, you can hit the bypass grade button that will remove all grade features.
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Of course, editing and reviewing media in this state is problematic, akin to recording sound without headphones. There may come a time when you’re editing on a sub-par laptop, or editing with RAW files, and you’ll see the frame rate counter in the top left corner of the viewer drop from green to red, letting you know that frames have been dropped - as Resolve cannot perform real-time playback. Is your machine struggling to play back media in DaVinci Resolve at the correct frame rate? If so, you may need to use optimized media.
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