Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve is professional-level video editing software: Many current blockbusters, Oscar winners, TV shows, and commercials make use of it. But it’s also a favorite among ambitious enthusiasts because of its capable free version. Mastering this huge, complex, and capable software requires time and effort, if not dollars. DaVinci Resolve combines video editing, motion graphics, color coding, and audio production in one tool, just as some consumer apps do. 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. Our Editors’ Choice winners in its class are Adobe remiere Pro and Apple Final Cut Pro, both of which are easier for nonprofessionals to wrap their heads around.How Much Does DaVinci Resolve Cost?The free download version of DaVinci Resolve is popular among YouTubers and gamers because it gives them a large subset of the program’s editing features without pro-level capabilities they don’t need. It’s the most powerful free video editing option you can find. The free version is surprisingly robust, offering standard editing and cutting, effects, motion graphics, color correction, and audio editing.
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. In testing, I occasionally got a message saying I would need to pay to use a tool I was trying to use. That’s perfectly understandable—you still get a lot for free.
(Credit: Blackmagic Design/PCMag)
If you want all the premium features, you have to pay a one-time fee of $295. You can only get a full license through an authorized reseller, such as B&H Photo Video. That might be because Blackmagic sells optional custom keyboards and panels that work with the software—those run anywhere from the $295 Speed Editor keyboard to the $27,585 Advanced Panel. 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.
The $295 price barely beats that of the $299 Apple Final Cut Pro. The latter app requires you to buy the $49.99 Motion and the $49.99 Compressor ancillary apps to get parity in functionality, however. Premiere Pro is subscription-only and costs $20.99 per month with an annual commitment. If you do the math, that means after a year and three months, you will have paid more for Premiere Pro than DaVinci Resolve. Getting Started With DaVinci ResolveDaVinci Resolve runs on not only macOS (14.3 Sonoma or later) and Windows 10 or 11 but also Linux, though only on CentOS 7.3 or later (a derivative of Red Hat Enterprise Linux). The program requires at least 16GB RAM, and you need at least 32GB for Linux or if you want to use the Fusion motion graphics. It supports Apple Silicon CPUs natively for improved performance. The installer is a 3GB download, which is smaller than Premiere Pro’s 3.3GB, without the motion graphics and Media Encoder software. I tested the Windows version on a Core i7 PC with 16GB RAM.After 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. If you’re installing the Studio version, you also get an optional step to optimize the software’s 50-plus neural engine components for your computer. The installation requires a system reboot, which isn’t common these days. For its size, DaVinci Resolve starts up reasonably quickly. Before you get into the editing interface, you see the Project Manager window, which has hover-scrubbable thumbnails for each project you’re working on. Here, you can open, import, or export an existing project, whether it’s on your local machine, a network, or in the Blackmagic Cloud. A recent update added new cloud features, including Blackmagic Blackloud Presentations.
(Credit: Blackmagic Design/PCMag)
When you start a project, you see a bare-bones window with a single Untitled Project entry. There’s not much of the kind of assistance Adobe gives you in Premiere Pro, nor the amount of hand-holding you get in consumer-focused apps such as Movavi Video Editor Plus. There is exhaustive help documentation, however. More on this below.The DaVinci InterfaceIn place of what other software would call modes, DaVinci has seven pages: Color, Cut, Deliver, Edit, Fairlight (sound), Fusion, and Media. These pages are also represented by buttons along the bottom of the program window (most programs have mode-switching buttons along the top). 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. You can choose Auto, 100%, 150%, and 200% UI scaling—a help for when you’re using a high-DPI display.
(Credit: Blackmagic Design/PCMag)
The Media page is where you find and organize media using color coding, bins, and metadata. You can also pre-trim source clips here using the I and O keyboard shortcuts. An interesting context-menu option here is Analyze for People, which, similar to many photo-editing apps, does face recognition to help you organize media.Once you’re on the Cut or Edit page, you get the familiar three-panel working interface, with the source panel at the top left, video preview at the top right, and timeline across the whole length of the bottom. Like Final Cut and Premiere Pro, DaVinci has compound clips, nested timelines, and take selectors. All of this means timelines can be very flexible (and complex).
(Credit: Blackmagic Design/PCMag)
There are two timelines on the Cut page. The main one at the bottom shows image frame previews and audio waveforms, while the solid blue one at the top is useful for navigation. You can view source material in thumbnail, metadata, strip, or list views, but you can’t adjust the thumbnail size. The Cut page includes a Boring Detector option, but all this does is show you which clips are too long and which are too short. New for the Cut page are two menus: One lets you turn ripple and snap editing on and off, as well as other display options. The other offers the new Create Subtitles from Audio, scene detection, markers, and other track options.The Source panel buttons let you easily control what appears in the Source section: Media Pool, Sync Bin, Transitions, Titles, and Effects. A search box helps you find what you are looking for, and the useful Power Bins persist from project to project.DaVinci lets you choose between a locked or free playhead. With the former, you drag the clip across, and the playhead remains centered. The latter is more like what you see in other editors. With a free playhead, you move the playhead rather than the media. It’s disappointing that you can’t zoom the timeline with the mouse wheel on the Cut page. In my testing, it did, however, work on the Edit page, and there are even buttons for Full Extent Zoom and Detail Zoom, as well as a custom zoom slider.
(Credit: Blackmagic Design/PCMag)
All the standard keyboard shortcuts are available: J for reverse, K for stop, L for forward, and Spacebar to stop and start playback. The Keyboard Customization panel lets you go to town with your own shortcuts, and you can even set the program to use Final Cut or Premiere Pro shortcuts. One very handy option on the Fusion page is pressing Shift-Spacebar to call up a searchable list of all the tools you can use in your project.Like Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve offers multiuser collaboration workflows so that editors, colorists, and sound people can all work on the same timeline—even simultaneously. The use of proxy media makes this more efficient, and the software integrates with Frame.io, an online collaborative video editing platform that can sync projects. Davinci’s BlackMagic Cloud is getting more collaborative editing features itself, including Blackmagic Cloud Storage (in beta as of this writing), Cloud Project Libraries, organization support, and the previously mentioned Cloud Presentation, which lets you share uploaded clips with a comments sidebar.Basic Editing With DaVinci ResolveWhen adding clips to the timeline in Cut mode, buttons let you choose among Smart Insert, Append, Ripple Overwrite, Close Up, Place on Top, and Source Overwrite (requires synced time codes in the clips). As with most pro video editors, you can trim the source clips before adding them to the timeline. While you’re doing so, the preview window splits into two, showing your start and end frames, along with the frame number in a mini-timeline. You can set in and out markers on the timeline to tell the program where to insert a clip from the source. The program lets you do three- and four-point editing, in which you mark the in and out points on both the source and on the timeline to control the clip position.
(Credit: Blackmagic Design/PCMag)
For trimming, DaVinci selects the appropriate edit tool automatically depending on where the cursor is—roll edit, transition duration, or slip and slide—though you can also manually select the mode you want.Striking Transitions and Effects in DaVinci ResolvePro video editors usually don’t use canned transitions found in consumer products. They either simply jump-cut or use a custom transition. Some consumer products do include custom transition tools such as Pinnacle Studio’s seamless transitions, which let you identify areas of the before and after clips to zoom, pan, and swoop to. In Resolve, you get to the transitions on either the Cut page, where there’s a clear button, or on the Edit page, where you find them in the Effects section’s Toolbox.
(Credit: Blackmagic Design/PCMag)
Resolve has one of the coolest transition interfaces I’ve seen. Simple monochrome shapes appear in the list but hover over an entry, and your own clips in the timeline show how the transition will look in the viewer when applied. There are some striking transitions at your disposal in the Fusion Transitions section, including Camera Shake, Drop Warp, and Tunnel of Light.Many transitions simply work when you drag them to the timeline. For others that need more clip content, the program can automatically overlap the clips if you choose Add to Selected Edit Points and Clips from the context menu. Controls for effects you apply show up in the Inspector panel, which you can open from the top right button. You can control any effects for which they make sense with keyframes, which smoothly animate the effect’s position or intensity from the start to end keyframes in your timeline.
(Credit: Blackmagic Design/PCMag)
DaVinci Resolve’s unique Fusion Studio editor uses a node-based editing workflow beyond the ken of the average enthusiast-level video editor. It’s basically an input/output system where you add effects and media along the flowchart and connect one node’s output to another node to its right. You can reuse effect groups or restrict them to selected parts of the image.
(Credit: Blackmagic Design/PCMag)
DaVinci Resolve is excellent at motion tracking, even allowing multiple tracks. To do this, you need to create nodes in Fusion. Suffice it to say it’s a much more complicated process than it is in Corel VideoStudio or other similar consumer software. The program actually has multiple tracker tools, including Camera, Planar, and Point trackers. The last two take 3D space into account, moving with your tracked object on three axes. A new capability even lets you track a surface as it warps.Smart Reframe is similar to tools found in Adobe Premiere Pro and Apple Final Cut. It can take a landscape scene and reframe it as a vertical smartphone-shaped canvas, automatically keeping the point of interest, say a person, in the frame. This tool is only available in the paid Studio version of DaVinci Resolve.It took me a while to figure out how to apply a chroma key effect: You have to switch to Edit mode (even though you can see and apply the Effects in Cut mode and in the Inspector in that mode) and then switch the viewer window mode to Open FX Overlay view. You draw a box inside the color you want to key out, and eureka! This gets you a reasonable key to fine-tune, but in testing, just checking the Despill box did an amazing job of cleaning up frizzy hair, which can be difficult for chroma-keying tools.Picture-in-picture effects are easy to produce. Simply turn on the Transform or Crop tool below the preview player and resize and position as you like.You can apply stabilization from a handy option in the Inspector. You get three mode choices: Perspective, Similarity, and Translation. Perspective is the standard version that takes into account motion on any axis. Similarity does the same, except it can avoid image artifacts the first may introduce. Translation only stabilizes based on the X and Y axis (two-dimensional) motion. As with everything in Resolve, you get plenty of adjustments for stabilization, such as zoom, cropping ratio, and strength. The tool works quickly, and with enough tweaking, you can achieve optimal stabilization.Multicam editing is another strength of DaVinci Resolve. You can sync by timecode or sound, and use as many angles as you want, though a four-by-four grid is the max the interface can show, which is a standard number for pro video editing software.DaVinci Resolve Color Editing
(Credit: Blackmagic Design/PCMag)
DaVinci Resolve sports all the color wheels and spectrometers you’d expect in a professional video editor. You can copy grades, use LUTs, and control edits with keyframes and Fusion nodes. Resolve uses AI for color matching, supports camera raw modes, and offers temporal and spatial noise reduction.Another cool and relatively new feature is automatic object selection. Just scribble on an object or person (there are separate modes for them) to create a Magic Mask. This is a paid license feature you can then use for tracking color edits so they’ll just apply to the selected area as it moves.Titles in DaVinci Resolve
(Credit: Blackmagic Design/PCMag)
In DaVinci Resolve’s Effects Library, the Titles section includes basic lower third, scroll, and static text options. You can make them any size, position, rotation, color, and font you can think of, as well as apply drop shadow, stroke, and background color. Below those basics are the Fusion Titles, which include many more choices, many with animations (even 3D animations). AI Automated Captions
(Credit: Blackmagic Design/PCMag)
A cool new feature in Davinci is the ability to generate captions by analyzing your clip or timeline with AI. You simply press the speech bubble icon (third button from the top left) and a caption panel pops up after a brief progress bar. It did an accurate job on an indoor clip I tested it with but fares less well if there’s a lot of background noise. What’s cool is that when you click on a word in the transcription, it takes you to the place in the video where the word was spoken. There’s also an option to remove silent portions, and you can add keyframe markers based on words in the transcript. It can’t, however, automatically remove filler words (like “um” and “ah”) from the caption or video.Sound and Audio Editing in DaVinci Resolve
(Credit: Blackmagic Design/PCMag)
Resolve’s Fairlight audio editor supports up to 2,000 audio tracks. Without even opening Fairlight, you can easily lower the volume using the line in the audio waveforms (in the timeline) or use a simple mixer control to the right of the timeline. All of today’s advanced acoustic effects are at your disposal—chorus, de-esser, de-hummer, echo, compressor, noise reduction—many even from the standard Edit page as well as on the Fairlight page. You can download a library of royalty-free stock audio from Blackmagic’s website for use in DaVinci.New features include AI-based audio classification, an automatic dialog leveler, Fairlight automation vector keyframing, and a new timeline grid to help you sync audio and video. Fairlight also has 3D audio panning capabilities.How Fast Is DaVinci Resolve?For all its complexity, DaVinci Resolve is fast and stable. When using the free version, I did run into a message telling me “Your GPU memory is full,” something I have never seen while testing video editing software. I found the proxy resolution was set to full resolution by default. Halving the resolution corrected the problem, though processing the proxies wasn’t immediate, with the preview going still for a while. The program automatically detects and uses the GPU to accelerate processing—sort of.For render speed testing, each video editing program joins seven clips of various resolutions ranging from 720p all the way up to 8K and then applies cross-dissolve transitions between them all. I note the time it takes to render the project to 1080p30 with H.264 and 192Kbps audio. The output movie is just over five minutes in length. I run tests on a Windows 11 PC with a 3.60GHz Intel Core i7-12700K, 16GB RAM, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, and a 512GB Samsung PM9A1 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD. Note that I tested the paid version of the software.
As you can see in the chart, DaVinci’s performance places it respectably in the top half of the group, as it did the last time I tested it. In previous tests, the Native software encoder delivered much slower results, but with my current setup it took about the same time with that setting or Auto, which uses your graphics hardware (in my case, Nvidia). In any case, I suggest using the Auto setting, shown below.
(Credit: Blackmagic Design/PCMag)
DaVinci Resolve Help and DocumentationBlackmagic doesn’t skimp on its help documentation for DaVinci Resolve—a PDF of over 4,000 pages! I appreciate the detailed instructions and information, but that size alone indicates the complexity of the application. If that’s not enough, a web search can find a wealth of online video tutorials from enthusiastic users. A list of all of Resolve’s features would be longer than most PCMag articles, so if you want to learn DaVinci Resolve inside and out, you’ll need to dig.Verdict: Powerful But Complex Video Editing SoftwareDaVinci Resolve is a powerful professional video editing application with an impressive collection of adjustments and effects. New users should expect a lengthy acclimation period, though, as its interface and methods differ from the general run of video editing software. Still, its excellent free version has no time limits and offers enough tools to be useful, so anyone who wants to get started with pro-level video editing on a budget can hardly do better than DaVinci Resolve. Our Editors’ Choice winners in the category are Apple Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere Pro, both of which have more in common with entry-level software and, therefore, less of a learning curve.
Pros
Plenty of editing tools for precise control
Clear, well-designed interface
Includes motion graphics and audio editing
Fast render performance
View
More
The Bottom Line
A tremendously powerful professional video production application, DaVinci Resolve includes all the cutting, keyframing, color grading, and audio tools pros want. It also offers a capable free version, but there’s a considerable learning curve.
Like What You’re Reading?
Sign up for Lab Report to get the latest reviews and top product advice delivered right to your inbox.
This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time.
