User Manual

Setting Color Depth in Fusion Studio
As we said earlier, DaVinci Resolve always processes at 32-bit float bits per channel; however,
you can use less memory and still achieve more-than-acceptable results using the Performance
Mode setting located in the User > Playback Preferences panel.
Fusion Studio automatically uses the color depth that makes the most sense for each file format.
For example, if you read in a JPEG file from disk, then the color depth for the Loader is set to 8
bits per channel. Since the JPEG format is an 8-bit format, loading the image at a greater color
depth would generally be wasteful. If a 16-bit TIFF is loaded, the color depth is set to 16 bits.
Loading a DPX file defaults to 32-bit float, whereas OpenEXR generally defaults to 16-bit float.
However, you can override the automatic format color depth using the settings found in the
Import tab of the Loader node’s Inspector. The Loader’s Inspector, as well as the Inspector for
images generated in Fusion (i.e., text, gradients, fast noise, and others), has a Depth menu for
8-bit, 16-bit integer, 16-bit float, and 32-bit float.
The Loader’s Inspector Color Bit Depth settings.
Configuring Default Color Depth Preferences
The default color depth setting forces the tool to process based on the settings configured in
the Node Editor’s Frame Format preferences. These are used to set a default value for color
depth, applied when a Generator tool is added to the Node Editor. There are three drop-down
menus to configure color depth in the preferences. They specify the different color depths for
the interactive session, final renders, and preview renders.
To improve performance as you work on your comp, you can set the Interactive and Preview
depth to 8-bits per channel, while final renders can be set to 16-bit integer. However, if your
final render output is 16-bit float or 32-bit float, you should not use the integer options for the
interactive setting. The final results may look significantly different from interactive previews set
to integer options.
The Frame Format Color Depth settings.
If you aren’t sure what the color depth process is for a tool, you can position the pointer over
the node’s tile in the Node Editor, and a tooltip listing the color depth for that node will appear
on the Status bar.
1363Chapter – 67 Controlling Image Processing and Resolution