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DaVinci Resolve comes in two flavors: a powerful free version – which I reviewed recently, and it remains the best free video editing software and best video editing software I’ve ever used.
But there’s also the more powerful DaVinci Resolve Studio. This is the high-end, pro-grade variant for professional filmmakers and videographers. It unlocks a raft of extra features for a reasonable one-time fee.
Now, I’m a massive fan of both of Blackmagic Design’s video editing tools, so I was keen to see what the latest version of Studio brings to the editing bay.
You can download the app by clicking here.
DaVinci Resolve Studio 21: Pricing & plans
- One-off cost just under $300
- Advanced professional non-linear desktop video editor and visual effects compositor
- Frankly, it’s a steal at this price
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that you have to pay for professional software. Yes, the free version of DaVinci Resolve is the outlier here, as it offers so much for free, but there are some limitations compared to Studio.
For instance, whereas Resolve limits your exports to 4K and 60 fps (which is honestly fine for the overwhelming majority of us), pros have been known to need more, so Studio lets them work up to 32K and 120fps.
This is but scratching the surface of course, and I’ll show you some exciting features Studio exclusively has over its free sibling in this review, but how much will this cost you, I hear you ask. Less than $300.
Not as a subscription, not the price you have to pay for each major new version, but $300 as a one off, which is the same price Apple charges for Final Cut Pro – at least as long as Apple keeps its one-time charges, since unlike Blackmagic Design, the company have now embraced subscription pricing for its Creator tools.
So yes, $300 for a professional video editing platform, which includes powerful colour grading, special effects creation and audio cleanup, for Windows, Linux and Mac computers. Not too shabby.
Why is it so cheap? Because just like Apple, Blackmagic subsidizes the development cost through their hardware sales – which is there waiting for you, when you’re ready to take your video editing to the next level
DaVinci Resolve Studio 21: Interface
- Modern interface
- Cleverly crams so many features into a single app
Launching Studio after having worked in Resolve, you’ll be hard pressed to notice any difference. The interface looks identical. Even the app’s icon is merely labelled ‘DaVinci Resolve’. The only way you can definitely tell at a glance which version you’re in, is lower left of the bottom toolbar – you’ll either see ‘DaVinci Resolve 21’, or ‘DaVinci Resolve Studio 21’.
Very briefly, Studio’s interface is divided into various sections, which are referred to as ‘Pages’. They’re listed in the order you’re expected to work in (although that’s by no means compulsory). ‘Media’ is where you import and catalog your clips and footage, and ‘Photo’ is brand new for 21 (I explored it in greater detail in my review of the free DaVinci Resolve 21).
‘Cut’ and ‘Edit’ are there to build your project; one is for quick work, the other is for more precise editing, coupled with far more tools and features. ’Fusion’ is for all your special effects magic, while colour correction and grading is done in ’Color’. ‘Fairlight’ is for detailed audio work and sound editing, and when all your work is done, ‘Deliver’ is where you export your finished project.
Each Page offers different tools and capabilities, keeping all workspaces focussed on the work at hand, while letting you effortlessly and seamlessly switch between each as you need to. It’s a great way to keep the interface as simple as possible while allowing you to do everything in a single app, and allows for the easy addition of new Pages, as the developers have just done with Photo.
DaVinci Resolve Studio 21: AI tools
- AI tools speed up workflows
- Seriously useful features like background cataloguing
Version 21 of Resolve Studio brings a wealth of new features for the free and paid-for versions, like the aforementioned Photo Page. There are also some interesting and welcome additions, like a spell-checker, as well as emoji support, and being able to see nodes – which are always a challenge for Resolve newcomers – as a list.
This makes them look more like the effects you’re used to from other competing video editors. All that and more is great, but what truly sets Resolve Studio apart is its AI tools, and version 21 introduced some much needed ones, some impressive ones, and some deeply troubling ones.
But let’s start with the positives: AI IntelliSearch. The concept isn’t anything new, as Adobe Premiere Pro has had that ability for a while, and even Apple introduced the same for Final Cut Pro recently (imagine trailing behind FCP…). What this does is ever so useful, especially if you have to deal with a ton of media: select all the clips you need to sort, then right-click, and go to AI Tools > IntelliSearch > Analyse for Search.
If this is the first time you’re doing this, you’ll need to download some ‘packages’, namely ‘AI IntelliSearch Faster’. You can also take the opportunity to grab the ‘Better’ search package, along with any others you’d care to install.
Resolve Studio will then analyse your chosen clips, and depending on how many you have, this could take a little time. Once done, use the regular search field to look for anything specific, like clips containing a ‘person’, a ‘tree’, or an ‘insect’, and after a few seconds, your media pool will only show clips with what you’re after.
Another useful new feature for large projects, is the ability for the algorithms to detect a slate, and catalog your footage based on the information contained on it. You no longer need to manually type in all that info – it’s all done for you upon request. This is what complex algorithms are supposed to do: making cataloguing and organising easier for us humans.
DaVinci Resolve Studio 21: Clips
- Use AI to fix clips without costly reshoots
- Your mileage may vary here
Then we have tools designed to fix problematic shots – those whose focus was a little off, for instance. Ultra Sharpen is an effect that will help salvage such shots… but it doesn’t work miracles: don’t expect a clip whose focus was way off to be rescued in that way.
AI Motion Deblur takes this a little further and aims to sharpen up blurry moving shots. This works by Resolve creating entirely new clips based on the original. You access this feature via the AI Tools menu, just like you do to initiate IntelliSearch. I could see a difference between the original and the improved clip, but I wasn’t able to replicate the remarkable improvements you see in Blackmagic’s promotional pages. You’re given options prior to rendering a new clip, such as choosing an ‘Extreme’ or ‘Standard’ model (the former is selected by default), rendering at the source resolution or not, or using more GPU memory to improve the quality. I turned everything on, and that did actually make for a better output.
These tools are definitely worth checking out if you need to fix some clips and have no alternatives. They’re definitely better than if they weren’t there.
AI Cinefocus lets you alter the focus of footage after it’s been shot. If your foreground and background are pretty much even focus-wise, you can use that feature to add depth of field to your clip, and choose to focus on the foreground, background, or move between the two over time, thanks to a few convenient sliders in the Inspector sidebar. This is a surprisingly powerful filter, with easy to manipulate controls.
DaVinci Resolve Studio 21: Face reshaper & transformer
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- A common tool for complex AI algorithms
- Improve – or degrade – a person’s face with just a few clicks
If you’re used to manipulating images in Photoshop and the like, you’ll have no trouble understanding these three new tools Resolve Studio are introducing in this latest version. One of them lets you remove blemishes from people’s faces. The process is but a drag and drop away, with a slider to alter the extent of the effect’s power. It’s as simple as you can get, and you don’t even need to put on your makeup!
Face Reshaper is an odd one. After it’s detected the face you wish to alter, and analysed your clip, tracking your subject over time, you’re able to make changes to their facial features – make the eyes wider, reposition the nose, thicken the left eyebrow, and even alter every change you make over time. It can be a little disconcerting, but it can have its uses, especially if you wish to simulate cartoon-like effects in live action footage, or give viewers that ‘uncanny valley’ feel.
And speaking of uncanny valley, there’s AI Face Age Transformer. Remember how we laughed at Marvel’s original de-ageing technology, only to later be impressed with what all those Disney dollars could achieve? Well now it’s possible to replicate this from the comfort of your own editing chair. More or less.
The technology is impressive and works the same way as the Face Reshaper tool, but instead of altering your face like it’s made of putty, you tell Resolve Studio the age the person is and how many years you’d like to add or remove to them (the offset is limited to 50 years either way).
I found aging a person yielded better results, as adding more wrinkles feels more convincing than smoothing out a face (anyone remember those “almost people” from Doctor Who? I kept thinking of that when I used the filter to de-age myself), but it’s still highly impressive what you can achieve with a personal computer these days: de-ageing for the rest of us!
DaVinci Resolve Studio 21: AI speech generator
- An amazing – yet terrifying – feature
- Could be used for nefarious reasons
I’ve touched on a lot of AI tools found in Resolve Studio 21.
What comes next, though, is as amazing as it is terrifying: AI Speech Generator. Now this is not new. Resolve Studio already allowed you to clone someone’s voice, but you needed a recording of about 10 to 15 minutes, then you had to record yourself speaking and Resolve would then graft the generated voice onto your speech cadence… this was a lot of work, especially compared to what you can do now…
As with IntelliSearch, should you be trying this for the first time, you’ll need to download an additional package. It’s just as free, and is pretty much a seamless experience.
Resolve Studio’s Speech Generator comes bundled with two male and two female voices, which sound pretty much as you’d expect a generated voice to sound… but that’s not even close to the interesting part: there’s also the option to choose a ‘Custom Voice’. In order for that to work, you need to load a recording of the voice you wish to copy. 10 to 15 seconds of clean audio will do, although there’s a hurdle.
A tiny little hurdle: the audio must be a WAV file – not even AIFF is acceptable. This means that if you record someone with your phone, you won’t be able to use that audio – until you convert it into the approved format (which frankly isn’t hard to do).
You then only need to type in your script, click on ‘Generate’, give Studio a few seconds to work its magic, and a new audio clip will appear in your timeline sounding… exactly like the original. You have a few parameters you can alter, such as speeding up or slowing down the speech, altering the pitch, or adding some variation to the audio. Each change you make necessitates the generation of a new audio file before you can check the result, but once you’ve found the right balance, you can churn out clip after clip.
Considering how little this filter needs to work its magic, the result really is truly impressive. It’s so good in fact, it’s concerning. It’s far too easy to make anyone say anything they never said, nor would ever say.
Now of course, Resolve Studio is not the only software capable of doing this; frankly, the genie’s been out of that particular AI bottle for a while, and it’s far too late to put the cork back in. I can see so many potentially useful ways this could be of benefit to a video project, but I also know scammers and nefarious people are also going to love this.
Should I buy DaVinci Resolve Sstudio 21?
Buy it if…
If you’re serious about video editing, need a powerful all-in-one software package which includes the creation of special effects and powerful audio tools, love very useful and well implemented AI tools, and especially appreciate an affordable one-time fee.
Don’t buy it if…
The additional tools go above and beyond what you’re looking for in a video editor, you don’t need to export video at 32K, would rather not deal with AI algorithms, and feel the free version of Resolve is more than powerful enough for your needs.
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