Video Editing

Runs two independent hardware paths: the Mercury Playback Engine (GPU compute via CUDA/OpenCL/Metal — handles effects, scaling, color space conversion) and a separate hardware media engine (NVENC/NVDEC or Intel Quick Sync — handles encode/decode). Hardware encoding only accelerates LongGOP codecs like H.264/HEVC (2-5x faster); intraframe codecs like ProRes bypass this path entirely and show no difference between flagship and older GPUs. Simple cuts and audio editing are CPU-only — the GPU sits idle.

RAW debayering happens before anything else in the pipeline — before even the node editor's Source bar. Blackmagic RAW is partially debayered in-camera (lighter GPU load); RED RAW debayers fully in Resolve (heavier GPU load, benefits more from extra power). Color page nodes are GPU-parallel by design. Fusion is the exception: 2D compositing scales with GPUs, but 3D rendering runs almost entirely on CPU, and adding GPUs measurably slows Fusion overall due to sync overhead. VRAM cannot be pooled across multiple cards in Resolve, and exceeding it causes a sudden performance collapse rather than gradual slowdown.