BSVP On-Site: Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve

BSVP On-Site talks with Dan May of Blackmagic about the new upgrades to DaVinci Resolve 11. Blackmagic unveiled DaVinci Resolved 11 at NAB 2014. The upgrade comes with 140 new features, 70 of which are in the editing platform. It is quite dizzying to think about how much Blackmagic actually put into Resolve 11. The upgrade is free to all previous owners of any version of Resolve.

The new editing features include expanded timeline capabilities. The things that are most impressive in the new editing capabilities are J, K, L keyboard controls for playing and reviewing footage in the timeline as well as 3 and 4 point editing. Almost everything is now customizable and keyframeable right in the timeline, such as transitions and effects. There are also many new titling keyframe capabilities. Another addition in the editing platform is the 2 screen view in order to see multiple editing windows at once. On the high end of Resolve, they offer multiple users working on the same project which enables two colorists and an editor to work with the same timeline. For instances where your project is under deadline and the editor is adding the final touches to the program, the colorist can get a jump on his work. Then as the colorist makes adjustments, the editor is able to see the changes as the clip indicator turns red. The editor can then accept those changes and the clip will update in the timeline. In a single user production house, the new upgrades also help speed up the editing and finishing workflow with the ability to bring in raw video files, drop them directly on the timeline and begin editing immediately. The editor can then jump over to the Color page, making adjustments with color and then go to final delivery.

Blackmagic continues to work with third-party partners with round-tripping with other platforms such as Final Cut Pro X, Flame, Smoke and Premiere. For editors who have their platform of choice, they can still bring their finished project into Resolve for color. Resolve 11 is a very powerful software platform and allows editors the flexibility and time to be more creative. For editors who work with a variety of camera formats Resolve 11 has the capability to work with a wide variety of video formats* Blackmagic was one of the first companies that were able to connect from Final Cut into Avid and can now work with almost every format. If needed, you can combine multiple video formats onto the same timeline. It’s also very scalable. The more GPU and the more power you have means the more real time capabilities. Beta versions are scheduled to be released in May 2014 followed the public release by September 2014.

*DaVinci Resolve allows full unlimited editing and grading of DPX, CIN, EXR, Tiff, QuickTime, ProRes, DNxHD and MXF files all in real time. You can even work with AVI, JPEG2000, HQ and HQX in MOV, JPEG, TGA and BMP and multi channel audio! Camera RAW Support DaVinci Resolve includes more native camera file support than any other solution! That means you’re editing and grading directly from the wide dynamic range camera originals. DaVinci Resolve is compatible with CinemaDNG RAW, ARRI Alexa™ RAW and Amira™. RED One™, EPIC™, Scarlet™and Dragon™ R3D files including +5K, monochrome and HDRx images. Also supported are Cineform™, Cineform™ 3D, Phantom Raw™, GoPro™, Nikon™, Canon™ C300, C500 and 1D, 5D, 7D and the raw cameras from Sony™ F65/F55/F5 RAW and their XAVC variants and many, many more!