15" MacBook Pro Resolve 8 trick

B

blackcat

Well-known member
I just got my 15" Macbook Pro (nearly brand new and basically decked out) to run Davinci Resolve 8. I thought I would share my knowledge with my fellow AF100 users who might want to run Resolve 8 on their 15" MBP, now that Apple Color is no more. I spend a lot of time reading from others on the forum; this time I wanted to share something with my fellow AF100 users. That is why I chose the AF100 forum. I couldn't even really find a thread or forum that went too much into Resolve on DVXuser.

Normally a decked out 15" MBP won't run Resolve, because the screen does not have enough space for the user interface. My fix scales the UI to 87%, which looked right on my model. You could go up or down on that if you need.

You need to go into terminal and write this:

defaults write com.blackmagic-design.davinci.Resolve AppleDisplayScaleFactor 0.87

If you want to undo it for some reason, you need to go into terminal and write this:

defaults write com.blackmagic-design.davinci.Resolve AppleDisplayScaleFactor 1

I based this off of a post at creative cow, but that person did a global change that would impact the UI size of all applications. My addition to the workaround only changes Resolve. So, you can leave the change forever without having to go back and forth every time you need to run Resolve.

Of course, it would be better to run Resolve on a Mac Pro with CUDA, but you know, we do what we have to sometimes.
 
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Does anyone know about resolution independence for Lion? I wonder if my workaround will work in Lion, or if Lion will just have some way to do resolution independence. I read the rumor blogs, and those are so often wrong. Perhaps time will tell. I am also stuck wondering if DaVinci Resolve will add more support for OpenCl, with over 1080p and the noise node or not. If not, perhaps the rumors of an external CUDA card over thunderbolt will be true.

At least Resolve is now running on my current setup.
 
Resolve now supports OpenCl with Resolve 8, which is why I got it to replace Color. They still give you the Resolve 7 disc, and you have to download the update. I can't share how well performance is going to go on this with anyone yet. I will share more when I get to test a good bit of footage. All I can say is that my hardware specs are basically the same as the new 17". I only have the 15" monitor instead.

I am also wondering why I can't get Resolve to display on my second monitor instead, which is 1080p. I suppose I could do this by keeping the top down on the laptop and only using the external monitor as my main monitor.

This is my current card:

AMD Radeon HD 6750M:

Chipset Model: AMD Radeon HD 6750M
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x8
VRAM (Total): 1024 MB
 
Hi,
I have MB pro mid 2010, i5 15" with Lion GM installed. I found that your trick doesn't work as well as that guy's at creative cow forum. Actually whatever of these two I type, nothing happened (with regard to scaling). Do you have any suggestions?
Thanks,
Nesha
 
Sorry, I can't help you with Lion. They may have changed things in Lion. If it isn't scaling with my method or the person from Creative Cow, then some of the options in terminal might have changed. The method from Creative Cow did the exact same thing as mine, but it changed all programs and not one. I will work on my solution for Lion when and if I upgrade to it.

This thread mentions that the AppleDisplayScaleFactor command does not work in Lion, which both my method and the Creative Cow one used.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1185089

The rumor about Resolution Independence would be the obvious solution. I am going to wait for Lion and see what it really can do with scaling, and only then will I switch to Lion. That is unless I just use an external monitor with Resolve instead.

http://www.macrumors.com/2011/02/24...rt-for-super-high-resolution-retina-monitors/
 
Thank you for your effort/finding those links out. Anyway I'm getting "Error running GPU algorithms. GPU memory might be exhausted..." (on my 15" macbook mid 2010, nvidia 330M) when importing ProRes clip into it, without any node applied, so I don't think that scaling down display will sort things out. It is interesting than I'm getting very same GPU error on iMac mid 2011, 21.5", which has ATI GPU (6750M). Either way clip is unwatchable and therefore non editable, color-wise, of course.
Again, thank you very much for your time.
Rgds,
Nesha
 
It sounds like you are having problems with your hardware or settings in Resolve. Are you running version 7 or 8? Version 7 didn't allow OpenCl; Version 8 does. Look at the manual for their settings too. It is very specific, depending on your computer model. All scaling things down in Resolve does is make the user interface visible, if your screen size is too small. It won't fix whatever problem you are describing.
 
Thanks for advice. iMac mid 2011 (ATI 6750m) has a screen of needed size to run Resolve 8, which I installed and yet, there is a problem of ProRes clips I load with no nodes applied. Upon loading, clip is all messed up and in previous post described error appears. MB pro, mid 2011 with nVidia 330m, same thing with Resolve 8. Perhaps I need to stress out that those clips are running fine in Final Cut 7 and FCPX. It could be it's the problem with Lion running Resolve.
Rgds,
Nesha
 
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