Blackmagic Design continues to improve the overall functionality of DaVinci Resolve 16. This update improves the close up edit feature by using DaVinci Neural Engine to automatically find faces, zoom in and reframe shots.

The public beta 2 reflects all the user feedback from Resolve 16.1 beta. Blackmagic fixed numerous bugs and improved many new features. The update is free for all existing customers and the new Resolve 16.1 beta 2 can be downloaded for free directly from Blackmagic support center webpage.

In case you want to upgrade to the new 16.1 beta 2 from Resolve 15 or earlier, Blackmagic recommends to back up your database, both DiskDB and PostgreSQL if you use them, export your drp’s of your active projects and then restore the v15 DB before upgrading to v16 in preparation for the version upgrade as you can not go back to v15 with a v16 DB.

While there is no change of the database format from v16, DaVinci Resolve Studio 16.1 requires a firmware update for the DaVinci Resolve Micro and Mini Panels.

What’s new in DaVinci Resolve 16.1

Features marked with * are in progress and may change before the final release.

Cut

• Sync Bin view which shows synced clip cutaways for the current shot on the timeline in a live multi-view for up to 9 cameras
• Support for automatically grouping shots from one camera by analyzing timecode and camera number metadata
• Live overwrite from the Sync Bin multi-view where the desired camera number can be pressed on the keyboard and the cut away length can be adjusted live with the scroll dial
• Ability to extend the timeline from the Sync Bin view to easily find the next edit for your timeline
• Sync Clip window to perform timecode based, audio waveform based and in or out point based syncing for clips
• Smart Indicators on the timeline which show where the closest edit points are based on the playhead position
• Boring detector with timeline indicators to detect edits which are running too long
• Jump cut detector with timeline indicators for flash frames and jump cuts
• Close Up is now powered by the DaVinci Neural Engine to automatically identify faces in the clip and reframe the shot for a close up on the subject
• Support for a blade action in the toolbar
• Support for a new blended scroll mode in the DaVinci Resolve Editor Keyboard that dynamically toggles between scroll and jog based
• Support for a new transition dialog to quickly find and apply the desired transition to the closest edit point using the scroll dial on the DaVinci Resolve Editor Keyboard
• Support for a new picture in picture mode to quickly apply a picture in picture edit by easily selecting the image quadrant using the scroll dial in the DaVinci Resolve Editor Keyboard
• Support for performing a slide edit by Alt/Option + dragging the timeline clip overlay
• Support for adding bins and moving clips between bins in the media pool
• Improved thumbnail clip hover behavior when selecting and previewing source media in the viewer

Edit

• Support for always using embedded timecode for clip based formats even when using frame count timecode project setting
• Ability to copy and paste transitions across multiple edit points in the timeline
• Support for track name and track number burn-in and render tags
• Support for dragging adjustment clips to media pool
• Support for renaming adjustment clips in the inspector
• Support for showing or hiding individual panels using keyboard shortcuts
• Support for opening Final Cut Pro 7 XML files from Finder or Explorer to import media or timelines
• Improved performance when analyzing clips for detecting and classifying people
• Improved easing behavior when applying smoothness to position keyframes
• Improved results when syncing multicam clips and syncing video and audio clips using audio waveforms*
• Improved blade behavior when there is a clip selection

Fusion

• Support for reading media with super scale applied in the Media Pool
• Improved memory management on compositions with multiple input layers
• Improved memory management on multi-GPU systems
• Improved viewer interactivity and playback performance on single GPU systems
• Improved render all savers status display
• Support for ACEScg as a gamut option

ResolveFX

• ResolveFX Stop Motion
• ResolveFX and OpenFX plugins can now process and modify the alpha channel

Color

• Support for viewing flags applied on the current clip on the video monitoring output*
• Support for an option to update the shared node grade from a version stored in a gallery still
• Ability to paste a power window by appending to the existing windows from the Power Windows option menu
• Support for a user preference under Color to restrict node navigation to color corrector nodes and avoid mixer nodes and splitter and combiner nodes
• Improved CIE scopes with a 1976 u’v’ view and the ability to show an additional reference gamut
• Improved color match processing powered by the DaVinci Neural Engine
• Ability to step the timeline wipe frame forward and back from the view menu and using the relevant shortcuts
• Support for previewing timeline clip grades from the gallery when live preview is enabled

Fairlight

• Support for 96 KHz and 192 KHz sample rates at a project level for DaVinci Resolve Studio
• Support for clipping indicator for main buses on the Fairlight mixer
• Support for enabling extended bounce tail durations from the option menu for audio clips with reverb and other tail effects
• Support for customizing the tail duration threshold for reverb and other tail effects
• Support for automatically enabling Insert In for an audio track when manually patching track inputs
• Improved performance when loading and switching timelines
• Improved performance when generating waveform profiles for nested timelines
• Improved peak hold and decay behavior for meters in FairlightFX plugins
• Support for displaying and persisting individual audio effect windows on top of other windows

Media and Delivery

• Ability to preserve video essence for faster rendering of uncompressed clips without content changes
• Support for decoding and encoding ProRes IMFs
• Support for decoding and encoding DNxUncompressed half float formats
• Support for decoding IMA4 format audio in QuickTime clips
• Support for a preference to stop renders when a frame or clip cannot be processed
• Support for decoding floating point TIFF images
• Support for decoding DPX 10-bit RGBA files
• Improved performance when decoding H.264 and H.265 clips using GPU acceleration on AMD graphics cards
• Improved encoding to Panasonic SHV 8K with support for 50fps in DaVinci Resolve Studio
• Ability to disable video on Pro Tools and audio only exports
• Ability to render adaptive audio tracks as discrete mono channels
• Ability to export subtitles when exporting a timeline to Pro Tools using the Deliver page preset
• Support for rendering embedded audio timecode for synced audio clips when using the Pro Tools export preset
• Support for GPU accelerated debayering on CUDA systems when decoding ARRIRAW clips using the ARRI SDK Full Res debayer
• Improved Vimeo render settings with options for setting description, visibility and password for the uploaded video
• Support for a warning when exporting an IMF or DCP package with an incorrect audio track setup
• Support for decoding spanned AVCHD MTS clips
• Improved playback speed when decoding JPEG 2000 clips
• Improved performance when media managing long wav files
• Improved behavior when rendering a single multi-channel audio track as individual wav files
• Improved ProRes 4444 playback performance
• Support for identifying and importing multiple Panasonic P2 shots in a single folder as separate clips

General

• Support for a full-screen viewer on an additional display on DaVinci Resolve Studio
• Ability to halve the current playback speed as well as playback at half, quarter and 1/8th speed using the Play Slow command
• Ability to repeat alternate frames for 48fps clips in Clip Attributes to emulate 24fps capture and playback
• Improved playback quality for variable frame rate QuickTime files
• Support for disabling unbuffered I/O for any Media Storage location on Mac systems
• Support for decoding ALAC files on Windows and Linux systems
• Support for an option to optimize projects in disk databases by Option/Alt right clicking a project in the project manager
• Support for accessing and editing project notes from the File menu
• Support for choosing the preferred network interface from the project server application when sharing databases and generating access keys
• General performance and stability improvements

Minimum system requirements for macOS

• macOS 10.14.6 Mojave
• 16 GB of system memory is recommended and 32 GB is recommended minimum when using Fusion
• Blackmagic Design Desktop Video version 10.4.1 or later
• CUDA Driver version 418.105
• NVIDIA Driver version – As required by your GPU
• RED Rocket-X Driver 2.1.34.0 and Firmware 1.4.22.18 or later
• RED Rocket Driver 2.1.23.0 and Firmware 1.1.18.0 or later

Minimum system requirements for Windows

• Windows 10 Update
• 16 GB of system memory is recommended and 32 GB is recommended minimum when using Fusion
• Blackmagic Design Desktop Video version 10.4.1 or later
• NVIDIA/AMD/Intel GPU Driver version – As required by your GPU
• RED Rocket-X Driver 2.1.34.0 and Firmware 1.4.22.18 or later
• RED Rocket Driver 2.1.23.0 and Firmware 1.1.18.0 or later

Minimum system requirements for Linux

• CentOS 7.3
• 32 GB of system memory is recommended minimum
• Blackmagic Design Desktop Video version 10.4.1 or later
• NVIDIA/AMD Driver version – As required by your GPU
• RED Rocket-X Driver 2.1.34.0 and Firmware 1.4.22.18 or later
• RED Rocket Driver 2.1.23.0 and Firmware 1.1.18.0 or later

Upgrading your PostgreSQL database server on Mac

Until DaVinci Resolve 12.5.2, the Mac installer used to ship with PostgreSQL version 8.4.2. Starting from macOS Sierra 10.12, PostgreSQL version 8.4 is no longer supported. If you intend to upgrade to the latest OS, you will need to upgrade your PostgreSQL database server to version 9.5.4 prior to upgrading macOS. Once your PostgreSQL installation has been upgraded and your data has been ported, you can then proceed with your macOS upgrade.

We have provided apps to simplify upgrading your PostgreSQL version on your Mac.The apps along with instructions can be found in the:

/Library/Application Support/Blackmagic Design/DaVinci Resolve/Upgrade PostgreSQL

folder. Starting from DaVinci Resolve 12.5.3, new installations will include PostgreSQL version 9.5.4.

Migrating Legacy Fairlight projects to DaVinci Resolve on Windows

In order to import legacy Fairlight DR2 projects into DaVinci Resolve, download and install the following utility on your Windows system: downloads.blackmagicdesign.com/DaVinciResolve/Fairlight-Project-Importer.zip After installing the utility, you should see an option to “Import Fairlight Project” in the Fairlight menu in DaVinci Resolve.