While artificial intelligence has continued to be the biggest story of 2023 (despite all the doom and gloom by those worried about its job-replacing aspects), the advancements of AI and neural engine features have slowly been being introduced into pretty much every aspect of film and video production.
Post-production has probably been the leader for AI innovations, and your favorite video editing apps and software have been rolling out new AI-powered tools and neural engine features all year.
In case you’ve missed these announcements, or if you’re simply interested in learning how you might be able to explore some of these AI innovations yourself, let’s take a look at the most prominent (and at times helpful) AI and neural engine features in the latest version of DaVinci Resolve.
What is a Neural Engine?
Before we dive too deep into the tools and features in Resolve, let’s take a moment to talk about AI and, in particular, what the neural engine is and how it works.
For Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve, its neural engine is a machine learning tool that uses state-of-the-art deep neural networks to power many of the features found in DaVinci Resolve Studio.
More broadly though, a neural engine, or a neural network, is how artificial neural network algorithms work to try to imitate the human brain, something which computers have historically not been very good at. For hardware, like the latest iPhones for example, a neural engine is a piece of hardware that accelerates and optimizes machine learning and neural network tasks for better speed and energy efficiency.
For DaVinci Resolve, the neural engine is at work for a wide variety of tools and features working to better optimize programs which are basically trying to do what human brains do best. You can find a great explanation of this in the video below from YouTuber Joris Hermans, which we’ll be referencing for the features below.
7 AI and Neural Engine Features in DaVinci Resolve
So, as mentioned above, Hermans’s video does a great job of outlining some of the best “must-know” AI and neural engine features in DaVinci Resolve Studio 18.6. You can also read a bit more about Resolve 18.6.1 which we wrote about when released last week.
Here are the seven different features and tools that Hermans highlights in his video, along with timestamps so you can jump around if you’d like to focus on specific features:
The face recognition, object removal, and scene detection features stand out. You might have seen some of these AI tools at work in other NLE apps like Adobe Premiere Pro, but rest assured that DaVinci Resolve is uniquely building its own solutions to optimize your editing workflows in Resolve.
These tools are all really designed to do one thing really well—which is to make editing easier and quicker. None of these tools are true replacement features which make the editor’s job unneeded.
In fact, it’s the opposite. All of these tools help streamline your editing process but require a keen eye to refine them and make them your own.
How to Get Started
If any of these above tools or features seem interesting to you, all you have to do is open up DaVinci Resolve Studio and make sure you’re using the latest version of the product.
For those using the free version of DaVinci Resolve though, you’re probably going to want to upgrade to the paid version just so you can get all of the latest AI and neural engine features.
However, other than that, these tools are all active and worth checking out today. Just don’t expect any of them to replace your job just yet.
Monica has a BA in Journalism and English from the University of Massachusetts and an MS in Journalism and Communications from Quinnipiac University. Monica has worked as a journalist for over 20 years covering all things entertainment. She has covered everything from San Diego Comic-Con, The SAG Awards, Academy Awards, and more. Monica has been published in Variety, Swagger Magazine, Emmy Magazine, CNN, AP, Hidden Remote, and more. For the past 10 years, she has added PR and marketing to her list of talents as the president of Prime Entertainment Publicity, LLC. Monica is ready for anything and is proudly obsessed with pop culture.
