Performance & Backends
Film/Emulsion™ does more per pixel than a LUT or a curve. Most of that cost sits in Halation and Grain, the two stages that sample neighboring pixels instead of just remapping the one in front of them. This page covers what the Quality control actually changes, how the plugin chooses a GPU or falls back to the CPU, and what to check first when a render is slow or a render does not match what you graded.
What Quality changes
Quality has three settings: Extreme, High, and Performance. It only affects Halation and Grain. The color chain, from Adjustments through Print, renders identically at all three settings. Push/Pull, stock choice, print stock, exposure, every color decision you make carries over unchanged no matter which Quality setting is active.
What changes is how thoroughly the plugin builds the halation glow and the grain field: how densely it samples, and the thresholds that decide how fine each one reads. Extreme does the most work and matches the reference look the format was built against. High and Performance do less, which speeds up the render at a cost to the halo’s edge and the grain’s texture. Compare the two at delivery size on your own shots, since the difference shows up most in a close look at the glow and the grain rather than at normal viewing size.
Because color never moves between tiers, you can grade at a lower tier and trust the color you see. Grade on Performance or High for responsive playback, then switch to Extreme before you render or before you make a final call on the halation and grain texture. Judge the finished look at the tier you intend to deliver at. A grade approved on Performance and delivered on Extreme can read slightly different in the glow and the grain, even though every color control landed exactly where you set it.
Film/Emulsion is measured at UHD. Larger frames and stacked plugin instances add work on top of that, and that is where Quality matters most for playback.
| Control | Range | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Quality | Extreme / High / Performance | Extreme |
How the plugin picks a backend
Film/Emulsion renders on a GPU when one is available and falls back to the CPU when it is not. The CPU path produces the same picture, just slower.
- macOS renders on Metal.
- Windows renders on CUDA on a supported NVIDIA card.
- AMD cards on Windows currently render on the CPU.
- With no supported GPU path available, the plugin renders on the CPU on either platform.
Which path is actually available on a given frame depends on Resolve’s own GPU processing mode, set in DaVinci Resolve > Preferences > Memory and GPU > GPU processing mode. That setting determines what Resolve offers the plugin. If Resolve is not offering a GPU path the plugin supports, Film/Emulsion renders that frame on the CPU even on a machine with a capable card.
Resolve Free and Studio both load the plugin the same way. Backend selection follows the GPU processing mode and the card in the machine, not the Resolve edition.
Symptoms and fixes
Playback is slow. Check Quality first. Extreme is the heaviest setting by design, so drop to High or Performance while you work and switch back before you render or judge the final look. If it is still slow at Performance, check Resolve’s GPU processing mode in Preferences, and render cache the node so Resolve does not re-render it on every scrub.
The render does not match what you saw in the viewer. Check for a Quality mismatch first. If the viewer was showing High or Performance and the render used Extreme, the halation and grain will look a little different even though every color setting is identical. Confirm Quality is set the way you want it before you render, and check whether the node is cached to an older Quality setting.
The plugin works but everything is very slow, on a machine with a GPU. Check whether the frame rendered on the CPU rather than the GPU, which Export Diagnostics will tell you. Then check Resolve’s GPU processing mode in Preferences, and confirm your card is supported for this plugin’s GPU path on your platform. An AMD card on Windows renders on the CPU for now, which is expected, not a fault.
Diagnostics
If a render problem does not resolve with the checks above, Film/Emulsion has an Export Diagnostics button in the Plugin Info group. It writes a text file to your Desktop with the plugin’s log, version, and the GPU or CPU backend that was active. Send that file to support along with a description of what you did, what you expected, and what happened instead. The installer has its own, broader diagnostic bundle covering the installer and helper logs. See Getting Help for how to collect both.
Next: back to the Overview for the full tab map, or the Resolve Quick Start to walk the whole chain on a shot.