Figuring out how to use Davinci Resolve video editing and color grading software on Librem 14

Spoiler alert: This didn’t end up working. I was able to install and load Davinci Resolve without kicking up an error message, but as soon as i loaded media, it would not play on the edit timelie. So basically, it doesn’t work. I am keeping everything below as a record in case anyone else wants to try and figure it out, at least they can know what I tried already.

Installing Davinci Resolve on Purism 14 Linux, Elementary OS (Ubuntu 18*)

As a warning, back up your machine before trying anything below. I relienquish all responsibility to anything detrimental that happens to you machine from tinkering below, so don’t mess around unless you’re certain of what you’re doing. As usual. With that said, if you want to proceed, do so at your own risk.

Davinci Resolve
Davinci Resolve is a fully featured video editing suite that is well put together and good for things from youtube to hollywood. And it’s free. I wanted to put together somehing that covers how to install it on the Librem 14.

Purism Graphics Processor
The 14 has the comet lake graphics processor. Here is comet lake information

OpenCL
For it to work, it typically needs a strong GPU to even load, and to get it to run on the 14, it has to detect OpenCL on the machine.

I installed ElementaryOS on my system which is based on Ubuntu 18. For that reason, I followed these instructions to get the right versio of opencl up and running.

Ubuntu ppa for 18.04, 20.04, 20.10, 21.04*

add-apt-repository ppa:intel-opencl/intel-opencl
apt update
apt install intel-opencl-icd

When that was done, I installed the necessary packages from here: https://github.com/intel/compute-runtime/releases

After that, I checked if I had openCL by typing clinfo in the command line.

I also ran

darktable-cltest

to make sure i got successful messages all the way through like so:

0.070937 [opencl_init] opencl related configuration options:
0.070969 [opencl_init] 
0.070975 [opencl_init] opencl: 1
0.070981 [opencl_init] opencl_library: ''
0.070986 [opencl_init] opencl_memory_requirement: 768
0.070992 [opencl_init] opencl_memory_headroom: 300
0.070997 [opencl_init] opencl_device_priority: '*/!0,*/*/*'
0.071003 [opencl_init] opencl_mandatory_timeout: 200
0.071008 [opencl_init] opencl_size_roundup: 16
0.071013 [opencl_init] opencl_async_pixelpipe: 0
0.071040 [opencl_init] opencl_synch_cache: 0
0.071051 [opencl_init] opencl_number_event_handles: 25
0.071060 [opencl_init] opencl_micro_nap: 1000
0.071069 [opencl_init] opencl_use_pinned_memory: 0
0.071078 [opencl_init] opencl_use_cpu_devices: 0
0.071088 [opencl_init] opencl_avoid_atomics: 0
0.071096 [opencl_init] 
0.071491 [opencl_init] found opencl runtime library 'libOpenCL'
0.071549 [opencl_init] opencl library 'libOpenCL' found on your system and loaded
0.091054 [opencl_init] found 1 platform
0.091096 [opencl_init] found 1 device
0.091143 [opencl_init] device 0 `Intel(R) UHD Graphics [0x9bca]' supports image sizes of 16384 x 16384
0.091155 [opencl_init] device 0 `Intel(R) UHD Graphics [0x9bca]' allows GPU memory allocations of up to 4095MB
[opencl_init] device 0: Intel(R) UHD Graphics [0x9bca] 
     GLOBAL_MEM_SIZE:          51359MB
     MAX_WORK_GROUP_SIZE:      256
     MAX_WORK_ITEM_DIMENSIONS: 3
     MAX_WORK_ITEM_SIZES:      [ 256 256 256 ]
     DRIVER_VERSION:           21.19.19792
     DEVICE_VERSION:           OpenCL 3.0 NEO 

i ran this because it will give you specific errors if somehting is wrong.

Setting up Davinci Resolve

  1. Download Davinci Resolve 17 (Not Resolve Studio unless you want to buy the pro version) from –https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/-- (16 does not support Intel graphics on linux).

Since it’s only officially supported for CentOS, there’s a script here: https://www.danieltufvesson.com/makeresolvedeb to turn it into a .deb so you can install it easily on debian or ubuntu. Follow the instructions, but make sure to change the version numbers to the ones you downloaded.

Also, here is a set of 'simplified instructions that are basically the same thing as above, but more generic. Go with whatever you’re comfortable with.

As usual, be careful, pay attention to warnings and error messages, and post in here if you have success or any bugs.

Utilities
A set of utilities to get information about your graphics card:
https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-tell-which-graphics-vga-card-installed/

1 Like