A Look at Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve 8.1

In the multifaceted world of postproduction, many people play a role in bringing a complex production to life. We’re familiar with the duties of editors and assistant editors; visual effects artists and animators; and composers and sound designers.

Of course, no such list would be complete without the important contributions of the colorist.

While some dose of color correction is included in most NLEs and compositing programs, to garner the full benefits of the technique requires dedicated color correction software and hardware. Color correction is at once technical and artistic. Ideally, a color grader is someone who employs the principles of color theory as second nature. He or she needs to also understand the subtle nuances that color plays in story telling, whether for a feature film, a music video or television commercial.

This isn’t really news, but it’s a good introduction for a discussion about DaVinci Resolve, the sophisticated and advanced color correction system from Blackmagic Design.

Proven Power

Resolve was originally a creation of Da Vinci Systems Ltd. The Coral Springs, Florida-based company had long been a leader for over 25 years in professional color grading for high-end post. About a year ago, Blackmagic Design acquired the company. Blackmagic, an Australian company, is of course a leading manufacturer of a bounty of hardware products used widely in the feature film, postproduction and television broadcast industries.

Nice move on Blackmagic’s part, I’d say. They’re already well known for creating quality products with incredibly low-ball prices such as capture/playback cards, disk recorders, monitors, converters, encoders and switchers. Yet with the acquisition of the highly esteemed DaVinci Resolve system, they have gained even more ground in the sexy world of high-end color postproduction, hardware and software.

According to Blackmagic, DaVinci Resolve has been used to grade more feature films, television commercials, documentaries, episodic television productions and music videos than any other color grading system. The system has been used on such features as Avatar, Transformers, Alice in Wonderland, Robin Hood, Quantum of Solace as well as numerous independent and smaller productions.

Company 3 has installed eight DaVinci Resolve systems in their NY and LA offices (read our article about them here). Other high profile post houses include Hollywood’s Technicolor, London’s Deluxe 142 and Out of the Blue, a post house here in Manhattan, which opened for business in 2010.

Micah Kirz, one of the founders of Out of the Blue, says, “I love Resolve because even though DaVinci has evolved, Blackmagic has been careful to make sure the fundamentals stay the same. Resolve was made for colorists, with colorist input, and has the tools colorists need. The user interface is intuitive, and it’s pretty much everything I could ever need to produce work that I’m proud of.”

Blackmagic has just released version 8.1 of DaVinci Resolve. I’ll go over some of the new features later. We begin, however, with an overview of the whole system.

Command and Control

Blackmagic has made an impressive colorist control surface to use with Resolve. It’s got rings, buttons and trackballs, all of which greatly enhances the use of the software. While Resolve can, in fact, be operated with a mouse, the control surface can speed up your workflow by a factor of 200 percent or more according to professional opinion, and allows you to do multiple tasks at once. Aside from the increase in productivity, the control surface looks great, will impress your clients and give your boutique an air of exclusivity that may, in fact, help you justify in charging the big bucks.

The price for DaVinci Resolve software is $995, a fee that even the most cost-conscious studio could afford (consider that just a few years ago the cost of Resolve system was $200,000 and up). The DaVinci Resolve colorist control surface, however, prices at $29,995, with a license for the Resolve software license included.

Those seeking a less expensive control surface have several options and can choose from alternatives from Tangent, J.L. Cooper and Avid. Below is an image of the Tangent Wave.

Working With Resolve

Getting your sequence from your NLE into Resolve is a breeze, even if it has multiple video tracks and transitions. Assuming your NLE has XML export (and most of the major ones now do), you simply export an XML file and import it into Resolve. The video tracks, clips, edits and transitions will all be correctly referenced and you are free to do operations that you would usually do inside your NLE right inside of Resolve, such as moving shots to a different layer, changing the length of transitions and editing in and out points.

I think the interface of the DaVinci Resolve software is well laid out. There’s a viewer on the left where you can see the results of your work. In the middle, there is a gallery where you can store presets that you have defined along with stills for easy reference. To the right of that is the node graph.

Those who have worked with nodes in other applications (such as compositors or 3D animation programs) will already be aware of the advantages of this approach. It’s a visual way of working that allows you to quickly and intuitively change the connections between the nodes to suit different purposes. Each node you add is a full color corrector and you can keep adding nodes for each color corrector you add to the shot. Nodes can, of course, be masked to only affect a portion of the screen and the masks can be given soft edges and gradients.

Under the node graph is the project timeline where you can see the thumbnails of each shot in your movie. Towards the bottom left of the interface is the primary color control area where you can change the gamma, lift and gain. Other color grading apps might refer to this as three-way color correction.

To the right of the primary controls is an area where one can access color adjustment curves, blurs, keying, and other effects. At the bottom right is a clip timeline where you set keyframes (or dynamics as Resolve likes to call them) for parameters in the current clip that you want to change over time.

Resolve handles a remarkable number of camera formats including RED, ARRI, Open EXR and ProRes. It also easily handles H.264 files from a Canon 5D Mark II, with no transcoding necessary.

I was especially impressed with the remarkably fast and precise 3D motion tracker, which automatically sets up a detailed point cloud on the moving image and uses it to glean data for tracking. Equally impressive was the motion stabilizer that quickly and correctly stabilizes footage taken with a shaky camera.

Once you’re done with all your color work, getting it all back into your NLE is pretty much done the same way you brought it in. Simply export an XML file and read it into your editing program. All the graded shots are properly linked and your timeline is updated with any changes.

Performance

DaVinci Resolve, like Adobe’s Mercury Playback engine, takes advantage of commercially available NVIDIA CUDA GPUs, which seriously boosts real-time performance. Because of this it is recommended that you get at least a second video card and more if you can afford it, since each will add to the speed of the interface as well as rendering.

If you’re all out of PCI slots for additional GPUs, you can get a neat product from CUBIX called the GPU-Xpander which will grant you additional PCI slots in an external enclosure without overheating your computer or overburdening its power supply. It works with high-powered GPUs such as the NVIDIA Quadro series.

Version 8.1

As I was writing this piece, a new update of Resolve was released. Here’s a quick report on some of the noteworthy new features in version 8.1.

Final Cut Pro X users can now import and export FCP Pro X timelines using the new rich XML format round trip. This means that timelines can be moved in and out of Resolve with even more details than before (such as speed changes). Avid users also will enjoy better integration and compatibility when importing and exporting between Media Composer and Resolve.

The new version also now includes layer node composite effects such as add, subtract, difference, multiply, screen, overlay, darken and lighten effects. After Effects and Photoshop users will no doubt be familiar with these modes and the creative possibilities they offer.

DaVinci Resolve 8.1 now includes ACES colorspace support, the new file format promoted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences technology committee to provide a universal and open image interchange and processing format.

Other new features include enhancements to the interface as well as support for Blackmagic’s video capture and playback device UltraStudio 3D for Thunderbolt.

Conclusion

As I’ve noted, prior to Blackmagic’s acquiring the company last year, the price of a Da Vinci Resolve system cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s now just under a grand. This has caused many to rejoice. In addition, Resolve Lite, a limited but still useful version of the software is available for free from Blackmagic’s website. (The app runs on the latest iMacs, 17-inch MacBook Pro and Mac Pro computers.)

You can use Lite for your own projects without restriction and it is a great way to get into Resolve. It does have limits, of course. For example, projects can only run in SD and HD resolutions with only two color correction nodes available. Once you take to it, though, you’ll want to get the full version.

Resolve is currently available for Linux systems and Macintosh. The Linux version offers more power because it’s based on a cluster of Linux computers with high performance GPU cards, so all processing is real time. According to Blackmagic, you can start with a single computer on Mac OS X for lower cost, then upgrade to Linux for extra power for high resolutions such as 2K or 4K, stereoscopic 3D feature films or real time grading of raw RED files.

For Windows users, Blackmagic has announced that in the first quarter of 2012, Resolve for Windows will begin shipping. This is exciting and welcome news since there are fewer choices for high-end CUDA GPUs on the Macintosh platform where you’re limited to a Quadro 4000. Workstations such as the HP Z800 which run the Windows OS, however, accepts all of the NVIDIA GPUs including the Quadro 5000 and 6000. The Windows version will be a free update to all licensed users.

DaVinci Resolve offers a whole world of professional color correction at an astounding price, considering what one would have needed to pay for it before. Now that it comes from Blackmagic, a potent force in the industry and a company that, in my opinion, knows how to do things right, it is even more compelling.

— Dan Ochiva contributed to this article

Tagged as: Blackmagic, color correction, control surface, Cubix, CUDA, DaVinci, Design, HP Z800, Linux, Macintosh, Nvidia, post-production, Resolve, review, Tangent, Version 8.1, Wave, Windows