Blackmagic Da Vinci Resolve 12 public beta now available for download

Da Vinci Resolve 12 public beta

Blackmagic has unveiled the latest iteration of its popular color grading application, Da Vinci Resolve, with a public beta that furthers its progression towards being a fully-featured editor.

Since Blackmagic's acquisition of Da Vinci Resolve, an industry-leading color grading application, back in 2009, the company has worked hard to get the program into more hands and to make it more useful. Blackmagic first introduced a free version, dubbed Resolve Lite, which replicated the full version's toolset, albeit with some limitations, such as lack of denoising and stereoscopic tools, among others, and limited ouput resolutions. Users who wanted the full version could either pay $999 or simply buy a BMCC 2.5K, BMPC 4K or one of the URSA variants and receive full Resolve as a throw-in.

When Resolve 11 came out of beta around this time last year, the big news was that the color grader received more advanced editing tools. In the Resolve 12 public beta, Blackmagic has taken the logical next step, unveiling a new interface, multicam with sync options, better trimming, real-time audio mixing, compatibility with VST and Audio Unit plugins and much more.

Blackmagic has also decided to rebrand their two software versions of Resolve. Resolve Lite, the free version, will now be know simply as 'Da Vinci Resolve', while the full version will now be 'Da Vinci Resolve Studio'.

We're prepping a full review of the Da Vinci Resolve 12 public beta by RedShark News contributor Jonny Elwyn. Check back with us for his review and our continuing coverage of Da Vinci Resolve's development.

For more information, check out the full press release on Page Two!

Full press release

Blackmagic Design Announces DaVinci Resolve 12 Public Beta is Available Now for Download

Fremont, CA - July 27, 2015 - Blackmagic Design today announced that the public beta of DaVinci Resolve 12, its professional editing and color correction software, is now available for download from the Blackmagic Design website.

In addition, Blackmagic Design today announced new naming for the DaVinci Resolve product line, plus extra “secret” features that were not included in the original launch and are being publicly disclosed for the first time today.

The new DaVinci Resolve 12 is the software’s biggest update ever and includes powerful new features, making it both the world’s most powerful editing system as well as the world’s most advanced color grading system. The DaVinci Resolve 12 Public Beta will allow customers to start testing and integrating it into their facilities, and will provide us with valuable feedback that will greatly assist us in finishing development so we can launch an extremely reliable and robust product.

DaVinci Resolve customers have been extremely generous with their feedback and advice in the past, and we are excited to let them get their “hands dirty” using this release so we can collaborate with them to make it perfect. Without the DaVinci Resolve community behind it, DaVinci Resolve 12 would not have been possible and Blackmagic Design is extremely grateful for their assistance. We hope they will be proud of the hard work the engineering teams has put into this release.

With this public beta, the DaVinci Resolve product line has also been renamed to better reflect the models of DaVinci Resolve available.

The free DaVinci Resolve Lite will now be renamed to just DaVinci Resolve. This is because there is nothing “lite” about the free version as it includes more features than any other product. DaVinci Resolve is a complete professional editing and color grading solution for individual editors working on SD, HD and Ultra HD projects.

The US$995 paid version of DaVinci Resolve Software has been renamed to DaVinci Resolve Studio. This will help customers understand that it includes many additional and powerful features that are needed by larger facilities. DaVinci Resolve Studio is for customers that need to build advanced editing and color correction systems with multi GPU support, DCI 4K, 3D stereoscopic tools, multi-user collaboration tools, remote rendering and much more.

We hope that once customers become established with DaVinci Resolve 12 and start generating income from their creative work, they can upgrade to the extremely powerful DaVinci Resolve Studio for $995. By upgrading, engineering for DaVinci Resolve can continue to be expanded so customers will get even more features in the future. Upgrading is the DaVinci Resolve community’s way of ensuring they get the new features they need, as it pays for the engineering for DaVinci Resolve.

Blackmagic Design believes this “free and paid upgrade” model is vastly superior to the “cloud” model for distributing software products because customers get to take control of their systems.

With this free and paid upgrade model, customers never have to worry about a system going down in the middle of a job, on set or when used remotely, because a license suddenly expires. With DaVinci Resolve, there is no license to expire and, if the worst should happen, a customer can get DaVinci Resolve working on a system immediately by downloading the free version in minutes.

DaVinci Resolve 12 also includes new features that have not been previously announced until today. This includes new support for Intel Iris and Iris Pro GPUs. This is a major update that required significant engineering work to complete. Support for Intel Iris and Iris Pro GPUs dramatically improves performance on a wider range of systems, including laptops. This will greatly assist editors and colorists who are working remotely and on-set.

With the explosion of customers working with high resolution media and native RAW camera files, DaVinci Resolve 12 can now create optimized media proxies with custom settings for both the codec and resolution for even faster editorial performance.

Also, a new Smooth Cut transition uses proprietary DaVinci optical flow algorithms to create a seamless transition between different parts of an interview so you don’t have to cover jump cuts with b-roll.

"We’ve seen DaVinci Resolve 12 in action, and we can’t wait to start cutting with it," said Patrick Woodard, Supervising Colorist at DigitalFilm Tree who has worked on hit shows such as NCIS:LA, UnReal, Agent X and Rush Hour. "This is a professional editor that will make a big impact in Hollywood, and in our operation. Resolve 12 provides collaborative editing and color grading like we’ve never seen before. An editor can work with multiple colorists on the same timeline simultaneously."

“Since it was announced at NAB earlier this year, the response from professional editors and colorists has been overwhelming.” said Grant Petty, CEO, Blackmagic Design. “Everyone has been asking to get it as soon as we could provide it,  and now we have decided to release it as a public beta so we can get feedback from the editing and color correction communities to help us make it even better. We’re very focussed on bringing innovation back into the world of professional editing and color correction, and it has been fun and exciting working on this major update. We want everybody to try it!”

DaVinci Resolve 12 is the only software that lets customers edit, grade and finish projects all in a single tool. Resolve lets professional editors work in a comfortable, familiar way while also giving them an entirely new toolset, along with DaVinci’s legendary image processing technology, that will help them cut and finish projects at higher quality than ever before. The familiar multi track timeline, customizable interface and keyboard shortcuts make it easy for editors to switch to DaVinci Resolve 12. Best of all, with DaVinci Resolve there is no monthly subscription, you don’t need to be connected to the cloud, and you don’t need to buy any proprietary hardware.

DaVinci Resolve Versions

DaVinci Resolve 12 is available for Mac, Windows and Linux computers with 3 versions available:

DaVinci Resolve 12 is free for customers to download and is a full professional editing and color grading system that is suitable for independent users working on SD, HD and Ultra HD projects. The free version supports all of the same file formats and has the same exact image quality as the paid version of DaVinci Resolve. The free version is designed for editors and colorists who need a dependable and professional tool to grow their business.

DaVinci Resolve 12 Studio is $995 and has all of the same features as the free version, but also adds support for multiple GPUs, 4K output, motion blur effects, temporal and spatial noise reduction, 3D stereoscopic tools, remote rendering, and collaboration tools that let multiple users work on the same project at the same time. DaVinci Resolve 12 Studio is recommended for professional studios and collaborative workgroups.

DaVinci Resolve Advanced Control Surface is $29,995 and includes the award winning DaVinci hardware control panel which was designed with input from professional colorists to help them work faster and be more creative. The DaVinci Resolve Advanced Control Surface lets colorists manipulate multiple parameters simultaneously, giving them more control and creative options than is possible with a standard mouse and keyboard.

Summary of New Features in DaVinci Resolve

DaVinci Resolve 12 features a new, modern interface with a lighter overall color scheme and new fonts that help reduce eye strain and make it easier to work for long sessions. The new interface is scalable and has been designed to look great on high DPI monitors, such as retina displays. New top down navigation speeds up layout selections and also gives users more flexibility to customize their workspace.

The new multi-camera editing feature of DaVinci Resolve 12 lets editors cut programs from multiple sources in real time. DaVinci Resolve 12 can synchronize camera angles based on timecode, audio waveforms, or in/out points. The source monitor displays a grid containing the camera angles and plays them all back in sync while the editor makes cuts to the audio and/or video.

In addition to multi-camera editing, DaVinci Resolve 12 also features several enhancements to the core editing tools. All trim modes, multi-slip, slide, ripple and roll have been extended and editors can now select multiple points for dynamic trimming and asymmetric trimming of clips, even if they’re on the same track. Timelines can be nested, edited together and expanded or collapsed in place to greatly simplify editing of large multi scene projects. New transition curves let editors create and edit custom curves for transition parameters and new on-screen controls let editors see and adjust motion paths directly in the timeline viewer.

DaVinci Resolve 12 includes an entirely new, high performance audio engine that offers higher sampling rates and greatly improved realtime audio playback performance, including reverse playback and tape style slow motion scrubbing during dynamic JKL trimming. Both VST and AU audio plug-ins, along with their custom interfaces, are now supported and can be used on individual clips or entire tracks. Audio parameter adjustments can be recorded and now contain editable automation and full curve editor support. For the first time, editors will be able to export projects directly to ProTools via AAF for audio finishing.

Media Management in DaVinci Resolve 12 has been redesigned to accommodate editorial workflows. Customers can now manage projects and media using new copy, move, transcode, relink and consolidate tools. Whole projects, including media can be archived and restored with ease. Resolve 12 makes it easier to find media in large projects by letting users create smart bins that can display footage based on metadata tags. Users can now import media by simply dragging it in from the Finder or Windows Explorer, or by using new “Favorites” for one click access to commonly used media folders on disk.

DaVinci Resolve colorists will find incredible new tools that give them even more creative grading options than ever before. Resolve 12 improves upon DaVinci’s legendary advanced color science by adding support for DaVinci’s own color managed timelines as well as ACES 1.0 transforms, making it easier to get consistent results, especially when working in facilities with managed pipelines.

The core grading and color correction tools have also been improved with a new, easier to use curves interface, automatic color analysis and matching between two or more clips, an incredibly accurate 3D perspective tracker, and a new 3D keyer with improved matte finesse options. Colorists can now define their own smart filters, convert any window to a bezier, collapse multiple nodes into compound nodes to simplify their view, ripple grades across multiple clips, and flatten pre and post-group grades into a clip’s individual grade.

DaVinci Resolve 12 also now supports remote rendering so customers working in larger facilities can distribute rendering jobs to other Resolve systems that are on the same shared database and shared storage.

With dramatically improved editing, DaVinci Resolve 12 now has the ability to integrate with other NLEs even better. Edit timelines can "round trip" to other editing software and more of settings, plug-ins and edits are preserved. For example when importing XMLs from Final Cut Pro X, DaVinci Resolve 12 can now import multi-cam clips and preserve all the original camera angles. Also, audio support is greatly improved to match the audio timeline in Final Cut Pro X. This makes collaborative workflows better and allows different people in a facility to use the tools they prefer instead of being forced into an inflexible company wide platform.

Availability and Price

The DaVinci Resolve Public Beta is available today for download and once beta testing is complete, the main final release of DaVinci Resolve 12 will be available in later August timeframe for download from the Blackmagic Design website free of charge for all current DaVinci Resolve customers.