The plans to update DaVinci Resolve to version 12.5 ended with the program receiving a major upgrade with a huge number of innovative new features that will please the millions of users around the world. The program can be seen in action at NAB 2016.

DaVinci Resolve 12.5 is designed to make it easier for professional editors and colorists to work faster and have more creative options than ever before. With millions of editors now using DaVinci Resolve, Blackmagic Design engineers have been gathering feedback from customers and adding the features they’ve asked for.  That’s how it started. Although veyrbody loved the software, there was always someone asking for something more.

Blackmagic Design engineers started to work on the list and kept introducing features, adjusting others. When they looked, DaVinci Resolve 12.5 had dozens of new editing and trimming features such as new swap and shuffle edits, seven entirely new trim operations, paste inserts, an expanded edit overlay with ripple overwrites and append edits, and much more. In addition, timeline performance has been greatly improved so editing is faster and the new Cinema Viewer option plays video full screen, making it easier for customers to preview their cut on laptops or systems with a single display.

DaVinci Resolve 12.5 introduces an entirely new way to navigate clips using audio waveforms. The source viewer features a revolutionary audio waveform overlay that allows you to see the audio waveform and video clip at the same time. This is the fastest way to navigate to different parts of a clip based on spikes, silent areas or other visual cues in the audio waveform.

DaVinci Resolve 12.5 also adds dozens of new media management and metadata features that make it easier for both assistants and editors to organize and work with massive amounts of media. A new metadata keyword dictionary makes it easier to choose common or previously created keywords and quickly apply them to clips. Metadata can now also be imported or exported via CSV files. Media Pool metadata columns can also be customized and saved, colors can be assigned to specific clips, and markers can now be single frame or durational. Display names, which are used throughout the software, can be automatically created based on metadata tags such as scene, shot and take information, saving editors hours when importing and working with large amounts of footage. New Power Bins in the Media Pool allow sharing of content between projects, making them perfect for graphics, stock footage and sound effect or music libraries that are used across multiple projects.

The number of features introduced or modified is so huge that it would take pages to explain them all. For colorists, for example, DaVinci Resolve 12.5 introduces major enhancements to the node editor so now it’s possible to quickly navigate between nodes, swap nodes, select multiple nodes with a lasso, copy node contents, extract nodes, use embedded alpha channels in mattes and more. When dragging a saved grade from the gallery, customers now have the option to drag the grade in as a single compound node, or as a fully expanded node tree. These changes allow professional colorists to work even faster, while also making it more intuitive for video editors that are learning how to use Resolve’s massive set of color correction tools. In addition, there is a new single point tracker, new temperature and tint sliders have been added to the primary grading controls, additional XRite Colorchecker charts are now supported in the Color Match palette and customers can now select and modify multiple control points at the same time when working with Power Curve Windows.

With cameras such as Blackmagic Design’s URSA Mini 4.6K that already shoot with the latitude needed for HDR work, DaVinci Resolve 12 has already been used to grade more HDR content than any other system. DaVinci Resolve 12.5 Studio now includes major advances in HDR grading controls. 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. These enhancements mean Blackmagic Design is the only company that offers a complete end to end HDR workflow from on set production to post production.

In addition to the above features, which covers only partially what is possible to do with DaVinci Resolve 12.5 Studio, customers will also get dramatically improved spatial noise reduction which uses a superior multi GPU accelerated algorithm to reduce noise while retaining incredible detail. When combined with DaVinci Resolve 12.5’s enhanced temporal noise reduction controls, customers get the ultimate noise reduction toolset. DaVinci Resolve 12.5 Studio customers also get a new automatic correction tool for fixing barrel, pin cushion or perspective lens distortion, along with high quality de-interlacing, support for Camera LUTs, the DaVinci Color Transform Language (.dctl), and the ability to create ProRes remote render jobs on Windows machines. Customers can even use a terminal command to run a headless version of DaVinci Resolve without the GUI for remote rendering.

“The overwhelming success of DaVinci Resolve 12 has been incredibly exciting. Originally we planned DaVinci Resolve 12.5 to be focused on all the little things that make colorists’ and editors’ lives more productive, however its turned out that DaVinci Resolve 12.5 has become a major upgrade with a huge number of innovative new features,” said Grant Petty, CEO, Blackmagic Design. “I’d like to thank everyone for their huge support and positive feedback. This year we really wanted to take the time to address all of the finer details and the little things that make a huge difference to the pros that use it everyday, as well as new users learning the software. DaVinci Resolve 12.5 now includes virtually every imaginable editing and trimming tool! We are really excited about how quickly editors are switching, and we are committed to continue making it the best editing and color correction software in the world!”

DaVinci Resolve 12.5 will be demonstrated on the Blackmagic Design NAB 2016 booth at #SL217. Blackmagic Design announced the availability for immediate download of the public beta for DaVinci Resolve 12.5. Get it and go explore!