You can also pre-trim source clips here using the I and O keyboard shortcuts. The Media page is where you find and organize media, using color coding, bins, and metadata. Many apps trip on this resolution, only working well with HD or 4K screens. For my QHD, the Auto setting produced perfectly readable scaling. You can choose Auto, 100%, 150%, and 200% UI scaling, a help for when you're using a high-DPI display. The full-screen view is implemented well, which is important because with this complex interface, you're going to need all the screen real estate you can get. These pages are also represented by buttons along the bottom of the program window. In place of what other software would call modes, DaVinci has seven pages: Color, Cut, Deliver, Edit, Fairlight (sound), Fusion, and Media. There is exhaustive help documentation, however.

There’s not a lot of the kind of assistance Adobe is adding to Premiere Pro, nor the amount of hand-holding you get in consumer-focused apps such as Movavi Video Editor Plus. When you start a project, you see a bare-bones window with a single Untitled Project entry. Here you can open, import, or export an existing project, whether it's on your local machine, a network, or in the Blackmagic cloud. For its size, DaVinci Resolve starts up reasonably quickly.īefore you get into the editing interface, you see the Project Manager window, which has hover-scrubbable thumbnails for each project you’re working on. The installation requires a system reboot, which isn’t common these days. I tested the Windows version on a Core i7 PC with 16GB RAM.Īfter downloading the installer, you install the DaVinci Resolve program itself, but you can also optionally install its Control Panels, Raw Player, and Fairlight Audio program. The installer is a 3GB download, which is smaller than Premiere Pro’s 3.3GB, without the motion graphics and Media Encoder software. It supports Apple Silicon CPUs natively for improved performance. The program also requires at least 16GB RAM, and you need at least 32GB for Linux or if you want to use the Fusion motion graphics. Getting Started With DaVinci ResolveĭaVinci Resolve runs on not only macOS (10.14.6 Mojave and later) and Windows 10 (1703 and later), but also Linux, though only on CentOS 7.3 or later (a derivative of Red Hat Enterprise Linux). If you do the math, that means after a year and three months, you will have paid more for Premiere Pro than DaVinci Resolve. Premiere Pro is subscription-only and costs $20.99 per month with an annual commitment. The latter app requires you to buy the $49.99 Motion and the $49.99 Compressor ancillary apps to get parity in functionality, however. The $295 price just barely beats that of the $299 Apple Final Cut Pro. The company also makes pro cinema and studio cameras ranging from the $1,295 Pocket Cinema Camera 4K to the $6,385 URSA Mini Pro 12K. That’s probably because Blackmagic sells optional custom keyboards and panels that work with the software-those run from the $295 Speed Editor keyboard to the $27,585 Advanced Panel. You can only get a full license through an authorized reseller, such as B&H Photo Video. If you want all the premium features, you have to pay a one-time fee of $295. That’s perfectly understandable-you still get a lot for free.

In testing, I occasionally got a message saying I would need to pay to use a tool I was trying to use. Some of the more advanced capabilities like DaVinci Neural Engine, stereoscopic 3D tools, dozens of extra Resolve FX filters, and Fairlight FX audio plug-ins, plus advanced HDR grading and HDR scopes are missing in the free version, however. The free version is surprisingly robust, offering standard editing and cutting, effects, motion graphics, color correction, and audio editing. It’s the most powerful free video editing option you can find. The free download version of DaVinci Resolve is popular among YouTubers and gamers since it gives them a large subset of the program's editing features without the pro-level capabilities they don’t need. We found that the massive program delivers on all these points and adds innovative tools, but it takes some getting used to, as it doesn’t stick to typical video interface and workflow conventions. DaVinci Resolve combines video editing, motion graphics, color coding, and audio production in one tool, just as some consumer apps do. Learning this huge, complex, and supremely capable software does require an investment in time and effort, if not dollars. But it's also a favorite among ambitious enthusiasts because of its capable free version. Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve is professional-level video editing software: Many current blockbusters, Oscar winners, TV shows, and commercials make use of it.

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