im now on three monitors. couldn’t help myself. bought the Flanders back into the mix. this is the perfect setup (for me). But! ive lived without the broadcast display for a week and now its back that delay between the broadcast and the computer monitor is super annoying. Autodesk you must be able to fix this. In Davinci Resolve, FCP and anything else ive tried its not there. please fix. The setup is Mac Studio to thunderbolt to decklink ultra studio 4K mini to Flanders vix 12G SDI. huge delay. Or if its fixable this end then please let me know how to!
The delay is somewhat inherent in Flame’s implementation I guess. This has been a huge problem forever. On the other hand, Flanders’ monitors might have some internal process that further enhances the delay, at least it is the case with my old 55” monitor connected to my Linux box.
The MacStudio with ultra studio mini has less of a delay in Flame, but still more than Resolve and Premiere.
In any system where you have different processing and signal paths between software and monitor, timing variation is inherent. Particularly with broadcast devices where there are a few extra steps that have to be taken.
However, I’ve found that how it impacts you has a lot to do with monitor placement and how you use them. In my last suite I had a 55” LG on the wall, about 3m from me, with two UI monitors on the desk.
By that visuals separation, I wouldn’t look at them at the same time and my eye wouldn’t catch the difference. I would either be focused on broadcast or UI, but never on both.
It gets worse when audio is involved. Audio can only ever be in sync with one or the other display. All professional software allows for controlling the audio delay and have it be matched to the monitor. I would always match it my broadcast monitor - so when I do final watch back, I would see it on whatever delay that monitor has with audio in sync.
As for the UI monitors, I picked Eizo or NEC monitors that were color calibrated. So for working on a shot they were very close, and I didn’t have to check broadcast for work-in-progress, but then would do a final check on the broadcast display. And while working on a shot, I would never have audio playback on.
Might be worth considering if a different desk setup may mitigate the problem, as it’s not avoidable.
This is not the Flame team’s fault that there is a delay. Because each frame has to be processed, then sent out to the interface and then the monitor. They would have to delay the playback on the UI to match, which would annoy everyone equally.
One other way is to skip the DeckLink. Drive your broadcast monitor via HDMI or DP from the Mac. You loose the control over color management of the path and are at the mercy of MacOS, but you can have time-synced playback in full screen on a broadcast monitor.
I think you are all missing the point. same setup - with flame - huge delay on the broadcast - maybe 2 frames. Davinci resolve or FCP rock solid no delay that I can see.
Out of curiosity I looked into this a bit more. There are no settings in Flame or Resolve that affect this delay, directly or indirectly.
I did measure the delay by playing back a sequence with a distinct clip transition, and recording both monitors with my iPhone at 30fps to see when they switched.
Here’s the table with the last matching frame pre-transition and the first matching frame post-transition. Sometimes there was an in-between frame as the monitor and phone weren’t sync locked:
Flame: 86 - 94 (8 frames)
Resolve: 87 - 92 (5 frames)
Baselight: 86 - 90 (4 frames) - notable that the broadcast was early, not late.
So, yes, Flame is almost twice as slow as Resolve, but all of them have delays of some sort.
Test was on Mac Studio M1, Ultra Studio 4K Mini, Mac OS 15.7.4
Flame 2026.2.1 / Resolve 19 / BL 7.0
Ahah - thanks for that - I was about to do the same test. In fact I still might just to check. It’s all about perception and the flame just goes over that limit for me. The whole playback being sacrosanct thing seems to have gone out the window for some years now, I remember a long time ago where the broadcast monitor was always in sinc with the play window. It’s all about if you have a director sitting next to you they cant see any problems. If you have to explain stuff away then you lose their trust!
Agree, that the perception threshold may play a big role there.
It may be worth having a feature request (if one doesn’t already exist) to add a configuration value to delay the UI by a variable time. In Flame there is already a button to decide whether audio should follow UI or broadcast.
One would have to measure the delay on their individual system and then set it. One question would be if that time is stable or variable? Is it just the extra time to takes to communicate to BMD I/O via thunderbolt and then monitor processing time, or if there are some variables based on what content is being processed. Which would make such a configuration less useful.
Digging around in old information, it seems in the SGI days the components for both signal paths were more tightly linked, rather than today’s commodity hardware. Hence the bigger variability.
I think I also remember something about how flame works and and a “buffer readback” that flame uses to verify frames that many other systems do not do (?).
I also have the same delay on resolve, GPU path is always faster than breakout box path.
Yep, SGI and even early Linux boxes all did broadcast through a direct from gpu pipeline, the latter through an Nvidia sdi daughter-card. Those were the days….
So apart from the broadcast delay. The three screen set up is very good. Apart from one huge thing. I go into the player. And the side screen becomes a huge waveform monitor. Totally useless. It would be better staying as the media panel as I have it. Would love an option to do this.
Good morning, nice setup, maybe you just need bigger table 
How big is your Flanders? How colour accurate are those Displays with Flanders?
Are you using 120Hz or 60Hz refresh rate? It would be nice if Flame would support higher refresh rates.
How noisy and hot are those ThunderBlades?
+1 for Autodesk to fix delay on broadcast. I am on Linux and have same issue, Resolve is working with no problems. I have tried couple of Intensity and Decklink cards and same problem.
hi there. the Flanders is 31 inch. table can just about cope - its one of those Herman Miller standing desk with a walnut top. im using the 120Hz rate - flame complains when you launch it. but doesnt seem to bother it after that. the XDRs matched the probed Flanders straight out of the box. very happy with them. these are the standard glass as I hate that nano textured buff glow you get off the nano ones. the thunderblades are totally silent. excellent drives. I have one for the project and one for the cache. both 24TB running raid config.
its a shame apple doesnt allow you to utilise its on board HDMI out as a video out rather than just a screen out.
the problem is that apple has some very weird ideas in regards to color management, you technically absolutely CAN use the hdmi out even with embedded audio and all that.