DaVinci Resolve 12.5 Adds Over 250 New Editing, Color and VFX Features

At NAB 2016 today, Blackmagic Design unveiled hundreds of new features and enhancements in DaVinci Resolve, including significant upgrades to the editing experience, new native effects, HDR workflows, and easy round-tripping with Fusion.

For starters, here’s a quick crash course in the features that have been added.

DaVinci Resolve 12.5 has over 250 new features that give editors and colorists dozens of new editing and trimming tools, incredible new media management and organization functions, new retiming effects, enhanced keyframe controls, on-screen text editing, new ResolveFX plug-ins and much more. The re-designed node editor is easier and more intuitive to use. There are new HDR grading tools, vastly improved noise reduction, lens distortion correction, a completely redesigned Deliver page for outputting projects and a new Fusion Connect command for round tripping visual effects shots between DaVinci Resolve and Fusion.

And here’s Blackmagic’s introduction video that showcases all of these new features:

New editing features

In the press release, there are more details as to the new features coming to DaVinci Resolve 12.5 version. Here are a few of the big ones being added to Resolve’s editing, playback, audio, and metadata capabilities.

• New Cinema Viewer option plays video fullscreen
• Swap and shuffle edits
• Seven entirely new trim operations
• Paste inserts
• Expanded edit overlay with ripple overwrites and append edits
• Audio waveform overlay in the source monitor
• Improvements to timeline curve editor
• New metadata keyword dictionary
• Power Bins in the Media Pool for sharing assets between projects

In addition to those features, Resolve 12.5 also has drastically improved speed ramping abilities.

DaVinci Resolve 12.5 introduces an entirely new way to create custom retime effects and speed ramps. There are now separate curves for both frame position and playback speed. This allows any frame to be moved to any point in time, while also allowing variable speed changes between any range of frames. 

With HDR cementing itself as one of the dominant trends in video in 2016, Resolve has added significant new features that make working with and viewing HDR media a breeze.

Specific nodes can now be set to HDR mode which enables the grading tools in Resolve to work in an extended dynamic range especially designed for HDR deliverables such as Dolby Vision and HDR10. In addition, caching formats such as ProRes 4444 XQ and DNxHR now support extended dynamic range to serve as an efficient storage alternative to uncompressed 16-bit float files.

New GPU & CPU Accelerated Effects

In addition to the slew of editing and grading features, Resolve 12.5 has an array of brand new effects, which Blackmagic is calling ResolveFX.

DaVinci Resolve 12.5 also introduces ResolveFX, a powerful new framework for native GPU and CPU accelerated effects. This release includes ResolveFX plug-ins such as GPU accelerated color space and gamma transformations, along with more traditional effects such as lens blur, light rays, emboss, dent, vortex, mirrors, gaussian and other blurs, glows, ripples, and more. Advanced ResolveFX tools like film grain, lens blurs and flares are available with DaVinci Resolve 12.5 Studio.

source: blackmagicdesign.com

Round Tripping with Fusion

Also, the ability to round trip projects between Resolve and Fusion seems like an important step for Blackmagic, as it signals they’re serious about building out a seamless end-to-end post-production workflow. Here’s what the press release says about how the Fusion Connect feature works:

When scenes are rendered out of Fusion, they automatically replace the clips on Resolve’s timeline. As effect shots are completed, the Fusion Connect clips in the Resolve timeline can be refreshed to show the most current version of the shot.

It sounds a whole lot like the dynamic linking between Adobe’s software tools, which is a fantastic step forward for people who’d like to stay inside of Blackmagic’s post-production ecosystem.

The Beta of Resolve 12.5 is Available Right Now

The beta version of Resolve 12.5 is immediately available to download on Blackmagic’s site. It is, of course, a beta piece of software, so it is highly inadvisable to upgrade to it if you’re in the middle of a project in Resolve 12 or if you plan on using it for anything more than playing around with the new features. Better safe than sorry. Resolve 12.5 is expected to come out of beta in the summer. Lastly, if you’re in Vegas for NAB 2016, you can visit the Blackmagic booth at #SL217 to see a live demo of the new features.