Specifications

DAVINCI RESOLVE FOR MAC - CERTIFIED CONFIGURATION GUIDE

With the increasing use of digital cameras, many

colorists want to grade UHD, 4K-DCI or higher

resolutions in real time. While some cameras provide

UHD or 4K or higher capture resolutions they usually

store the images as compressed data as this takes

less storage space and bandwidth.

However for grading, the compressed data needs to

be decompressed to the full RGB per pixel bit depth

which will use four or more times the processing

power of a HD image for the same real time grading

performance. The GPU RAM therefore becomes a

very important factor when dealing with UHD and

4K-DCI timelines.

A 2012 Mac Pro with a current model GPU and 3GB

or more of GPU RAM can play UHD and 4KDCI

resolution images using a HD resolution timeline

and displayed on a HD monitor. After you have

completed your grade simply change the timeline

resolution for a UHD or 4K-DCI render.

You can also grade and display UHD/4K-DCI images

if you connect a PCIe expander to your Mac Pro,

with extra image processing GPUs, and use either

the DeckLink 4K Extreme or UltraStudio 4K video

I/O card to connect to your 4K-DCI grading monitor.

However with this current MacPro real time playback

is not always achieveable.

There are many potential speed limits within this 4K

pipeline so depending on the clip codec, CPU speed

and number of cores, system RAM, the number of

GPUs, their core count and GPU RAM, motherboard

slot speed, disk speed, etc. each of these can affect

the full 4K playback grade and display in real time.

For facilities that require full UHD or 4K-DCI

playback, grading and monitoring in real time we

currently recommend consideration of the fastest

Linux or Windows conﬁgurations we list in the

respective conﬁguration guides or a short wait for

the new Mac Pro.

UHD and 4K-DCI Image Processing