DaVinci Resolve for iPad
blackmagicdesign.com
blackmagicdesign.com
The full DaVinci Resolve is nuts: it covers a complete, Hollywood-level workflow of DAM, editing, grading, sound, and VFX (with probably the most generous freemium model in existence, by a good margin). The iPad version covers one of the two edit workflows (the one more tailored to broadcast than film) and color grading, which will cover quite a few use cases without anything else. I can especially see this being used by serious YouTubers and independent content creators.
I wonder if the asset management module is planned, as that would seem to be the next-most broadly useful module.
"DVI-to-DVI Connection
Connect one end of the DVI cable to the DVI connector on the SDI Output card and the other end to the "north" DVI connector on the NVIDIA Quadro FX 4600/5600 card as shown. The SDI output will not work if the cable is not connected to these two connectors."
So it was an external pass thru type system that just converted DVI to SDI. They joined the daughter card via external oddball cable rather than making an internal ribbon cable connection.
Not much need for them, either. As long as you have an HDMI output (or a DVI output with a passive HDMI adapter cable), there are HDMI-to-SDI converters. Blackmagic sells 'em for like 70€ apiece - I've disassembled one, it's essentially a HDMI decoder, an FPGA that does the protocol translation and an SDI encoder/transceiver.
psst, rumors say that Grant Petty wrote the original drivers for AJA. wikipedia doesn't even seem to have an entry for AJA the company.
When I used Resolve several years ago the system requirements were high but you could mitigate that by using a proxy workflow.
(Even though half of its users try to use it for that, get stuck, post on the forum, and then get the other half yelling at them because "it's not an NLE". 17 and 18 took things in the right direction, but it's still going to take a few more versions before people giving it a shot because they think it's a free Premiere or After Effects get burnt)
Edit, because people seem to not understand how Resolve is fundamentally different from a "normal" NLE like Avid's or Adobe's (suggesting they don't actually use Resolve, which is fine, but downvoting because you disagree is kinda weird when it really isn't like normal NLEs):
Resolve has NLE functionality, but it didn't start as an NLE, and its main focus wasn't to "be an NLE". This is first and foremost grading software, born out of wanting the best tool for grading cinema/broadcast video, the thing Black Magic sells cameras for. And of course, the best grading software needs a minimally functional edit view because you can't grade clips if you can't work with clips. And so it had that.
And while BM has been steadily improving that view and wants to morph Resolve to a more general purpose video editing suite (and in the processing become more like a real NLE rather than software with NLE functionality) you're still in a node-graph-based grading suite, just with NLE bells and whistles. A lot of what you'd do to your clips or layers, you still do in the "color" view in Resolve.
If you think you downloaded an NLE, that's going to be weird and unexpected. If you know you're working in grading software that also has a pretty great NLE functionality at this point, things make a bit more sense. Of course, the cry for "real" NLE behaviour is strong, and if many of your users want something (and your name isn't Adobe) you start adding what users want, to the point where BM now wants Resolve to become a full video editing suite, so we're getting there. But slowly. And it won't truly "be an NLE" until probably several version from now.
I don't know why you're saying it's not a "real" NLE.
Video Sequencer docs: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/3.3/video_editing/introdu...
Compositor docs: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/3.3/compositing/index.htm...
It's still clearly built to help animators tie together renders, with most of the actual "editing" happening in the NLA tools. But it's also not the hack/kludge experience that it was in the 2.x series.
One thing that Blender has over Resolve on Linux is the ability to import ANY mp4 source video. Stupid licensing issues prevent Resolve (and even the paid Studio version) from doing that.
The Cut page (as opposed to the Edit page) is what's apparently to be included on iPad, but it's 100% as legit a NLE as any other. I wouldn't call After Effects a NLE per se, but the node-based corollary to AE in Resolve is called Fusion and doesn't appear to be (initially) included on iPad.
My original response:
"close enough to a NLE"?? What the--
DaVinci Resolve has included a standalone non-linear editor since 2014. Today it has every major feature one would expect from a NLE-- with the noted exception of a lack of some codecs in the Linux version due to licensing issues, AAC being conspicuously one of them. So ffmpeg is often needed for transcoding media. I have a fair amount of familiarity with Avid, Final Cut Pro (7, not X), and to a lesser degree Adobe Premiere, and some experience with other NLEs from OpenShot to iMovie to Lightworks to Blender's NLE. Not only is DVR a feature-packed NLE- it ALSO includes a ProTools-like audio editing component called Fairlight, a node-based 2d/3d After Effects-like component (which integrates neatly with Blender) called Fusion, and a best-in-class color grading tool, for which Resolve is probably best known, which has roots going back to the DaVinci color correction systems of the 1980s.
DaVinci Resolve has not one NLE interface, but TWO-- the traditional Avid-like Edit page, and a new "Cut Page" (the one that appears in the iPad demo videos), which I think first showed up in DaVinci Resolve 17 (18 is current) and that is meant as a faster UI for doing a rough assembly that heavily integrates with the "Speed Editor" specialized hardware. For a while, there were deals where the Speed Editor came free with a ($300) Studio License. Now, I think it's $400 maybe (?) The paid Studio version includes extra features like more plugins (many of which use neural networks to, say, infer depth or separate objects from backgrounds), headless python scripting, 3d audio, 8k export, and pro stuff like that.
I'm presuming the iPad version will also work with the Speed Editor (it can connect via bluetooth or USB).
And since you mentioned it, the Fusion-style node system is considered superior by many pros to the older layers-based system used by After Effects, which is why it has been adopted by newer software from Unreal to Blender to nuke, etc. Also, you can drop effects "on" clips and layers-- this can be done in the Edit page as per tradition, and works as expected.
Since DaVinci Resolve is meant to run in CentOS, I've helped collaborate on a method for running it in a Linux container as well for anyone who might be interested:
I don't know if you ever played FPSes in the early days of Quake, Doom, etc. but remember how you used to just play with a keyboard and it was okay, but then you switched to mouselook and it was just a whole 'nother world?
That's what the Speed Editor does.
Soooooooooo interested, but sadly it seems NVidia-only.
If Blackmagic would put some of their port-to-iOS muscle on a make-it-work-with-AMD team, it'd be useful to me. Alas, I have a knack for picking losers.
You can add effects onto clips in the Resolve NLE. If you just want to use Resolve as an NLE (ie. you don't want to colour-grade your work or do complex VFX in Fusion), you don't need to go near a node graph.
Perhaps there is some pedantry to be done about whether it is an NLE or has an NLE. No dispute that it used to be colour grading software and the NLE was bolted on later (like a decade ago).
While it was primarily grading software, Black Magic has stated its intent for it to be used as a general purpose video editing solution.
The Edit Page isn't node-graph-based, it's a timeline with tracks and clips. What NLE functionality don't you have in the Edit Page?
What do you think the Cut page is? What do you think the Edit page is?
It's not just "an" NLE, it has two slightly different kinds of NLE.
Resolve is: “The world's fastest and most advanced professional NLE.”
How is a tablet going to fare?
DaVinci's own hardware requirements listing are considerably tamer. For Mac users, they want 8GB ram minimum and a Metal or OpenCL GPU. Reportedly it works really well on entry level M1 Mac Minis. 2 versions ago worked pretty well on my 2012 Mac Mini with 16GB RAM, and supposedly newer versions run better. I've also run it on Windows with Intel graphics and it worked (not great but it worked), and on a Windows PC with an 2014 mid range GPU works extremely well for HD projects.
It isn't hard to picture them being able to tune it down to use less RAM, especially considering that that removed Fusion from the iPad version which is the most RAM intensive part of the program.
I'm not sure how well I will like using it from touch, but since the basic version for iPadOS will be free, I'll be tempted to try it on my iPad Air.
You can likely find some out of touch people to proselytize to somewhere else on this thread.
The iPad has been sitting in this limbo state where they are way more powerful than most people expect but still not really worth it when you can get a MacBook for the same price and do more.
As to your storage concerns USB-C iPads, apart from having up to 2TB of internal storage and up to 16 GB of memory, support external drives just as well as any laptop. The time when high end iPads had below low end desktop specs is long gone.
That said 90% of users are probably going to be working with compressed 4k video because they don’t notice the difference and it saves time.
The apple website does not mention anything, but that cannot be right. ?
https://www.apple.com/de/shop/buy-ipad/ipad-pro/12,9%22-disp...
If BMD did not support this fuction for Resolve, they will have a hard time competing against LumaFusion.
However I think LumaFusion will be very carefully monitoring this market. It is theirs to lose.
Has there been some development in this area?
So for copying files over it's bit slower, but for working with stuff it could be a pretty big issue. I really don't know; I haven't tried it as my iPad Pro is an earlier non-TB model.
This is on a tablet with no proper I/O, running an OS with no user-accessible file system. And, based on screen shots, this software presents essentially the same UI it does on the desktop... which is totally inappropriate (if not unusable) on a touchscreen with one's fingers.
So now we have something that is profoundly gimped by the hardware, for which you have to buy MORE hardware (a Pencil). But the Pencil is only supported by the most expensive iPads.
In the end, you're paying as much as (or more than) you would have for a MacBook Air; a real computer running a computer OS with proper I/O, keyboard, and high-quality video and audio output. It's only marginally bigger than an iPad Pro, and... get this... it has A HEADPHONE JACK, which the iPad Pro does not.
All of that makes the MacBook Air a far better portable solution for Resolve than a tablet will ever be.
So, yeah, ten years ago they ought to have been able to cope with editing.
I doubt this is true. In 2006 (so 16 years ago) I bought a mid-tier Windows laptop with a 80 GB IDE HDD and I was cutting uncompressed DV avi files on it in Adobe Premiere just fine. Real time preview and everything.
oh, didn't know that. Good to know, I stand corrected then :)
I'm not sure what consumer monitors you're using, but they are certainly not "extremely off". You're making it sound like shades of green on the iPad turn into muddy brown on a monitor, which isn't true.
> "but if you were doing any visual production work..."
...then you would press the menu button on your monitor and adjust so that your monitor is usable. The default settings on your LG do not represent every monitor out there. A lot of monitors have good out-of-box colour.
> $700 LG
The monitor market is competitive. Watch reviews and choose a monitor with good out-of-box colour if you can't be bothered calibrating. Something like the ASUS Proart, or numerous others.
Even the factory calibration on every single Mac in my house (there are several, including a brand new M1 Air) has been notably off until calibrated.
The unfortunate thing about the iPads is that though they cover the DCI-P3 space there is no way to calibrate them. My Pro is significantly off my calibrated iMac and Air.
Is there a way to connect an external drive on an iPad?
Supported file formats include H.264, H.265, Apple ProRes and Blackmagic RAW, with clips able to be imported from the iPad Pro internal storage and Photos library, or externally connected iCloud and USB-C media disks.
Personally I am still waiting for someone to really get the proxy workflow right - it still requires too much manual control and planning. Someone needs to create a very robust asset management plane that does a better job of autolinking files when they are accidentality unlinked (could be easily done with a simple AI analyzing video content of different files along with an audio analyzer).
I'm hoping that the iPad app will push BM to be the ones to do this. Given that the concept of a filesystem on an iPad is very different (yeah, the Files app exists but it's terribly buggy if you are using network shares and stuff) and the need for auto-linking goes up quite a bit.
If their MVP iPad app evolves into something that "just works" across devices, then I think they will have a really good value proposition in a field where short-form or fast produced social media content can be done on the go.
I use a 4tb samsung ssd and on usb-c , it's pretty much as fast as you need it to go, and if you need more space, you can get 8TB ssd's - it's more expensive, but it's easy enough to get.
It would not be swamped, no.
You can hook up a 10gbps Ethernet adapter[0]
I use one myself, and I appreciate how its raw format output provides flexibility to adjust colors. I edit them in Davinci Resolve, one of the best software for color grading also made by Blackmagic.
The syncing feature may just push me to use Resolve full time, since it'd let me do basic cutting and even color grading on the iPad and any intensive work on my computer seamlessly.
Unless one were really constrained by weight or items, I don't know why someone wouldn't just edit on their Macbook.
I think it's great that you can do this on an iPad; I just wonder how useful it really is. The Macbook Air is pretty small and lightweight already.
It would be interesting to see a side by side editing session comparison with two people, one using an iPad, and the other using a laptop.
For some things, you need a tablet ("LOL what could that possibly be?" Oh, I dunno, does your laptop have multiple very-high-quality cameras built-in with all kind of fancy depth-sensors and AR-related hardware, an accelerometer, et c.? GPS and/or cell radio? Touch & drawing input? Stupid-high idle battery life, with near-instant-on from any level of sleep? Sure, some have some of that, but how many have all, especially without peripherals? How comfortable is it to use while standing, or while walking around? How good's your laptop at replacing a scanner? Reading PDFs or ebooks while on the go?)
The more things i-devices can do well-enough that were previously desktop- or laptop-only means more times you don't need to have both devices to be able to do all the things you want to do.
It's harder to go the other way (making laptops/desktops good at the things tablets are good at—most of those require adding more, expensive hardware, and changing or hybridizing the form factor) so the trend is in the direction of making tablets more and more capable.
There isn't a company in the world that has a larger R&D budget than Apple. If $200 billion dollars in liquid funding can't design a decent, freedom respecting tablet, then Apple hasn't fixed much of anything (in my opinion).
All of these comments "why use ipad instead of Macbook to do x" has been answered a long time ago. The massive market sale through rate for the ipad ecosystem answers the justification better than anyone on this site can answer.
Same for the Lightroom/Photoshop on iPad folks - why use lightroom on ipad? so you can do it on the go without opening up your macbook. And use the pencil.
Also I think Resolve is a Qt app so maybe it wasn’t a total pain to port - Apple also likely paid them to do it I would guess.
The Facebook movie was really spot on with the "A million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? A billion" line
It's the best system among all the bad systems out there.
It talks about the fact that progress isn't linear and that societies don't inevitably become more hierarchical, and I agree that seems right. In fact I could argue that capitalism is precisely an example of societies becoming more decentralised as Europe moved away from feudal and state monopoly systems, and individual financial, association, labour and property rights became established. At the same time monarchic and imperial systems gave way to democratic forms of government, with a few autocratic bumps along the road.
So to me liberal democratic capitalism is much more similar to the egalitarian societies encountered by European imperialists than it is to those imperial systems of the time. The only difference is that technological advances in transport, communication and the management of complexity have massively scaled up economic activity and the benefits that flow from it.
But then from what I can Tell Mark Fisher denied that there is such a thing as an economy. I'm not sure I rally get what he meant. anyway thanks for the references.
mark fisher doesn't deny economy, he takes a materialist perspective on it. his book 'capitalist realism' is probably a good starting point (i've only read his other works, that one is supposed to be a concise read of his thesis)
cheers for taking the time to broaden your perspective
It has always been a joke. Now it just ain't funny anymore.
At announcement (Sept 2021), the 9th gen was $329 US, which was €280 (at the time). Plus +23% VAT gives us €345.22. The actual retail price was €399 - 15.5% higher?
At announcement, the 10th gen is $449 US, which is €459. Plus +23% VAT gives us $564.75. The actual retail price is €599 - 6.5% higher.
The hike is the increase in the base price, plus the exchange rate, plus the accompanying tax. We're actually closer to parity on this release than the last release.
(Also - you must admit rounding 399 to 300 is rather disingenuous.)
It's still $329 in the US, which is €336 here, or €413 after tax. So it's 9% higher than parity - better than it was (at release), but not as close as the 10th gen is.
What I tend to see in apple's european pricing is three (well, 2.5) things. One is that they're ridiculously hooked on round numbers. 413 is never going to be 413 on the sticker. And two, is that it's very rare that they change the sticker price after it's released. (Sounds silly when they've just bumped the 9th gen & ipad mini, but I'm genuinely struggling to think of any prior examples).
So the .5 is that this means their prices include what's essentially a gamble on the currency. It doesn't just reflect where the rate is now, it reflects where they think it's going. This time last week, we were paying less dollars for the 9th gen than the US was - and they've taken the unusual step of actually correcting for that. In short, the house always wins.
I just don't buy the theory that the increase is a punishment for the EU's decision on usb cables etc. The EU and US prices are aligned within roughly the same margin they're usually aligned by. It seems people don't realise how quickly a 20-something% shift in currency and a 20-something% tax rate add up (on top of the increase on the US price), and they'd rather grasp at theories than calculators.
Also, when it comes to a market, typically sellers have to adjust pricing to market conditions or they move categories. 340EUR is already cost for a premium Android tablet and iPad just started at that price.
A few years ago someone made a website showing it being cheaper to fly somewhere to buy an Apple product and still save money despite also paying for the airline ticket.
I will say one thing, even in the US - buying from Apple is rarely the best option. Other sellers (Amazon.com or electronics stores) generally have better prices.
This makes sense if you think about it. If Amazon.com has a 10% off deal relative to Apple.com, people would hit the buy button immediately. Amazon gets a cut, and Apple adds a user.
If Apple also has the same 10% off deal, it is no longer as attractive of an offer and would reduce conversion rates. People might try to search if anywhere else has a better price, etc, and get distracted by other things.
Apple's cost of business in europe is also going up from fines and requirements to e.g. migrate charging. so it's not surprising that is passed through to european customers.
also there are plenty of good substitutes and Apple has always been more of a premium brand so i don't think the "financial vulnerability" argument holds water here.
Worth keeping in mind. They're quite able to wind down business in Europe if the alternative is being forced to build their devices in a way they don't want.
Raising prices to match the extra cost of doing business in Europe is a no-brainer. If that means it's no longer profitable to sell to the subcontinent, no problem, they'll just... stop doing that.
This assumes Apple's management has the stomach for the resulting negative revenue growth and the subsequent reaction from Wall Street.
Also, a huge chunk of their cash offshoring / tax minimization strategy is based in Europe: they'd revert to USB-A charging ports if the choice was between that and shutting down the Irish office.
And the MEA is peanuts compared to the first E when you think about money available to spend.
It says right there, in every single one of Apple's quarterly and annual reports:
> Europe includes European countries, as well as India, the Middle East and Africa
I do believe the day is fast approaching though I was hoping it was going to be with this iteration.
I’m an FCPX user and always felt that was a big black mark against FCPX. For instance, it seems designed to manage your media on a per-project basis, and can’t easily be shoehorned into having a single large (organised) library accessible from many loosely-coupled projects. Disconnected original media drives don’t have graceful failure states - even when using a local proxy workflow. Tagging, sorting and displaying large media libraries always feels quite cumbersome. That kind of thing.
Keen to hear whether DVR is more sensible - I’m quite keen to give it a go if so.
I'm excited about the possibilities this could bring. For now I mostly just have a lot of questions. This sounds like it will be for smaller production work, like vlog/podcast/promo shorts where the iPads limited storage will be capable.
The cut page is a nifty idea, it makes tasks like interview string-outs and cut-downs a fairly straightforward process. I don't know a single editor who uses it though.
Color wise, assuming I can sync my stills and take the iPad on the go, would be useful in some scenarios. But that's an expensive commodity. Generally when we go to color, it requires far more storage than an iPad is capable of.
I want to love it. But right now, I'm far more skeptical of its real world usefulness. I mostly just have a lot of workflow questions. I was personally hoping for something that was more of an extension of the desktop app than a standalone product.
One thing Blackmagic needs to do is bring the advanced Resolve features into the support realm and workflow documentation. The collaboration server and the cloud sync are mystery products. There's almost no formal support or documentation on how they work, how to solve a sync issue or overwrite when they happen, or to get actual feedback on issues from real engineers.
Since it runs on an iPad, I assume it uses the system libraries to support H.264 files properly, but I can't pass up the chance to grumble about the HyperDeck Studio Mini. It says it supports H.264 files, then you find this deep in the manual:
“HyperDeck Studio Mini will play back H.264 files recorded on a HyperDeck Studio Mini, but not H.264 files recorded on other video equipment.” —https://documents.blackmagicdesign.com/UserManuals/HyperDeck...
Also, it pretends the files it doesn't like don't exist at all, rather than telling you.
But I just can't wrap my head around the Resolve workflow. To do really basic stuff it seems to have a huge learning curve. I have no doubt it is powerful, but there is a point where I just can't justify the time to learn it. (I use a lot of video in my job as well as hobby/family stuff, but I'm not a professional video editor per se)
Is this anyone else's experience? Is it really only targeted at professionals? I was very excited to see that they are giving away such a sophisticated product for free, but man....
* Create project *and set the frame rate before importing video clips, because you can't change it once you've got clips*.
* Choose "DaVinci YRGB Color Managed" under project settings, Color Managment - this is more flexible for coloring later on.
* Add your media, then choose any clip(s), right-click and and create timeline from it.
* Use NLE functions to make the edit.
* Color grade (and stabilise clips).
- Turn on Scopes -> Waveform (UI bottom right) and set the white balance by dragging the 'dot' in the middle of the Offset wheel.
You want the red/green/blue waves to overlap where there's a region of grey/white in your video frame.
This can be tough if you have no grey/white, but you can copy color settings from other clips.
- Adjust other settings as necessary.
* Deliver/export.Never understood how they could have the audacity to call it an iPad 'Pro' when none of Apple's actual by-name 'Pro' software was - or, to this date - 5 years later - still is.
No 'Logic Pro', no 'Final Cut Pro'...still no Xcode, either. Other than illustrators/designers, can someone please explain to me what 'Pro' can use an iPad 'Pro' for any serious professional-grade tasks?
The mind boggles.
Similar to a game console, I purchase hardware for the software it can run. I don't care if it's as powerful as my equivalent MacBook Pro; because there's nothing I can use to take advantage of that power.
I really wanted to like editing videos on the couch on my iPad Pro (2018 model) 12inch with pencil in LumaFusion, and it's cool at first because "editing on an iPad".. then screen real estate reality set in. For me anyway. Video editing tasks and projects vary greatly in scope, and some projects would be great on the iPad. Maybe I'll try again later, but after getting an ultrawide monitor I discovered that yes, I really do want a timeline that wide.
I am very curious to see how their foray into iOS goes here. Could be huge. Frankly I just feel like I lack the imagination for what this opens up. Can’t wait to experiment!
Why do sites like this totally neglect the page title and meta attributes for sharing in social media such as Open Graph?
At bare minimum, why not include <title>Blackmagic Design Announces DaVinci Resolve for iPad</title> in the <head> element?
I checked the page with Facebook’s Sharing Debugger and found:
og:title: Media | Blackmagic Design og:description: All items on this website are copyright […]
On the other hand, M1/M2 ipads pro should be way more powerfull than the Surfaces if you need to do some heavy editing/color grading. And it seems they optimized this version for the pencil use.
The training materials (I've linked to them below) are second to none, not just for video editing tools but for any software I've ever seen. Have a look at them - there are some training videos and several very comprehensive books backed up with high-quality sample material.
On a PC, you'll need a decent graphics card but I managed with a Core i5-4570, 16GB of RAM, and a GT1030 - I am a patient man, though, and don't mind kicking off a render and going for a cup of tea with a good book.
Dig through the training material:
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/uk/products/davinciresolve/...
The LIDAR is there to serve as a playground for the app developers, including in-house. A glorified dev board. I doubt iPads themselves will be a part of Apple's XR plans.
iPads are serving as a proxy for the Reality headset today. Meaning, you can go to https://www.apple.com/augmented-reality/ right now to get a preview of how Apple will be selling Reality to customers.
We don't yet know how Reality will work with iPads/iPhones, but one can read the tea leaves by thinking about how Apple will leverage technologies like Handoff, Continuity, AirPlay, etc. It's not crazy to think that Reality will leverage nearby devices for storage, connectivity, and even compute and GPU.
In other words: Rather than wondering if iPads will be part of Apple's MR plans, I recommend thinking about how iPads will increasingly be part of Apple's MR plans.
I don't if there are CPU or GPU requirements.
Error 666: Software does not exist yet - exiting
This crash was annoying so many people - finally BMD did something about it!
Desktop video editors are notoriously unstable (assuming since you didn't specify). It's probably not the same codebase, and it'll be operating under clearer constraints the developers can target for maximum stability and performance.
just saying the desktop version crashed after launching it
hope it's fixed now
in the mean time, I can use avidemux and other things to do simple video editing
I'm very sorry if my irrelevant comment upset you