Blackmagic announced the DaVinci Resolve 17 Beta in a two hour presentation. We have selected and bookmarked some of the highlights.
Quite a few years ago here on FCP.co, we stated that the battle for dominance in the NLE market was going to be a two horse race, FCPX and Resolve. Quite a few industry experts scoffed when we suggested that Resolve would challenge the established Avid base. They didn't realise that Blackmagic started pouring development money into Resolve as soon as they acquired the well-respected colour grading system. Their goal was to make it the leading NLE, not just a finishing tool.
It has come a long way since we watched how to build a colour correction node tree back in 2010. Here's Grant Petty's presentation of the DaVinci Resolve 17 beta that runs two hours.
Now, if you haven't the time to watch the whole video, here's some interesting timestamps to click on.
31'49" Introduction to the new colour tools. The warper looks a lot like a third party plugin that we have seen, locking the grid and then warping colours looks quick and flexible. Getting the detail back into the highlights looks impressive with the expanded zones in HDR.
In this separate tutorial, Darren Mostyn goes into more detail about the Color Warper:
37'09" Magic Mask. The neural engine powered masking & tracking tool looks amazing. Hours of rotoscoping saved!
42'54" Fairlight Audio. It seems that Blackmagic has really got their eyes (ears?) set on converting Pro Tools users over to Resolve for audio post production. FCPX users will see some very striking GUI similarities here.
53'34" Fairlight Desktop Console. A good looking audio control desk. Having used a similar tool when just editing, the noise of the faders and possible 'clacking' at end stops might make you turn it off after a while. However, for mixing audio after picture lock, it looks a great tool. It's priced at $3,495.
1 04'34" DaVinci Resolve Speed Editor. A new smaller sized dedicated keyboard with jog wheel. Looks very easy and quick to use, we especially like the jog wheel being used to trim clips. Will it stop you reaching for the mouse?
1 37'26" Multicam editing with the Speed Editor. Worth a watch for any FCPX editor to see how Resolve handles Multicam. Watch out for Sync Bins and Source Overwrite.
1 47'51" The Edit Page. A new keyer, good automatic reformatting for social media and flexible use of proxies. The Video Collage looks pretty impressive, a very quick way to build up grid overlays of images and video.
Steve Martin at Ripple Training explores the edit page in this tutorial:
1 58'18" Fusion. A tighter integration with the editing features. We can see a whole new range of effects, titles and transitions being built for Resolve.
So a large update to Resolve with many features that will be used when finishing FCPX edits. We think that Blackmagic have really brought some innovative ideas to editing such as Source Overwrite and Source Clip. However we also feel like they are playing catch up in other areas, splitting the bins into dates or scenes seems like a relatively basic feature if you are used to editing in FCPX.
Either way, breaking new ground or adopting features, it has reinforced our opinion that Resolve and FCPX are leaving the rather antiquated looking Avid and Premiere behind.
DaVinci Resolve 17 Features
- Next generation HDR color correction with customizable wheels and tonal zones.
- Mesh and grid based color warper delivers an entirely new way to transform color.
- Magic mask automatic object isolation powered by the DaVinci Neural Engine.
- Improved color management with tone mapping and color space aware tools.
- Massive DaVinci wide gamut color space for higher quality image processing.
- High speed audio editing with new keyboard and mouse context sensitive tools.
- Fairlight Audio Core engine with auto load balancing and support for 2,000 tracks.
- Revolutionary FlexBus architecture for audio routing without limitations.
- Automatic transient detection for beats, words, and sound effects.
- Support for massive audio projects with thousands of tracks on a single system.
- Metadata based card view in media pool on cut page.
- Precision audio trimming on the cut page timeline and graphical trimmer.
- Smart reframe powered by the DaVinci Neural Engine on cut and edit pages.
- Live effect, title, and transition previews on cut and edit pages.
- Import and edit projects from ATEM Mini Pro ISO.
- Proxy media workflows up to 1/16th resolution in H.264, H.265, ProRes or DNxHR.
- Timeline based clip syncing to create multicam and compound clips.
- Alpha support for keying and compositing on cut and edit pages.
- Render in place command for effects heavy clips on cut and edit timelines.
- Make source side adjustments before editing clips into the timeline.
- Portable timeline and bin files for easy sharing.
- Native interlace processing and realtime 3:2 pulldown removal.
- Node tree bookmarks, customizable Fusion toolbar, and vertical node layouts.
- Support for growing files in media pool.
- Support for frame based metadata for BRAW, ARRI, RED, Sony and EXR.
- Workflow integration API and third party encoder API.