GPU Card For Davinci Resolve ?

[NewTwoVideo]

Is a 12GB NVidia RTX 3060 sufficient to edit 4K video from a Sony A7IV? The most complex operation I anticipate is brightening video footage that is too dark from bright sky deceiving the meter. I don't want to buy a card that won't work for what I anticipate I will need to do.

TIA.

[fred_abila]

12 GB is plenty of VRAM for 4K with a brightness or exposure fix. The weak spot with A7 IV files is decoding, and that depends on which codec you record.

XAVC S and XAVC HS in 4:2:0 can be hardware decoded by the 3060 in Resolve Studio. The 10-bit 4:2:2 modes (4:2:2 XAVC S, XAVC S-I, 4:2:2 XAVC HS) are not hardware decoded on RTX 30 or 40 cards, so playback falls back to the CPU. RTX 50 cards added 4:2:2 decode. The free version of Resolve doesn't use GPU decoding for H.264/H.265 on Windows at all.

Either way the dependable fix is to generate Optimized Media or proxies (DNxHR LB/SQ or ProRes Proxy) and cut with those. The 3060 then handles the timeline and the grade fine, and Deliver renders from the camera originals unless you tell it to use the optimized media.

Since you're lifting footage that the bright sky made too dark, I'd keep shooting 10-bit for the extra room in the shadows and lean on proxies, rather than drop to 8-bit just to make playback easier.

[NewTwoVideo]

Thank you. This is very helpful and will require some study by me because I'm a novice at all this.

I assumed that if the card I buy could handle footage from the A7IV, it could handle footage from my lesser sources, but maybe I am getting ahead of myself.

Below please find two screen grabs from Media Info. Would the 3060 handle these well also given the recommendations you made for the A7IV footage?