They'd rather add agentic AI support instead of adding proper codec support on the free Linux version (which is already supported on Windows).
smh
smh
Why can Openshot, Kdenlive, any other Linux-native video editor edit MP4 files but DaVinci cannot, unless you pay for it?
Genuine question.
Primarily because Resolve is meant as a tool for professionals - and as a result it can’t get away with using things like Ffmpeg under the hood.
Ffmpeg (for example) doesn’t use officially licensed codec SDK’s to handle certain codecs - it uses reverse engineered tooling.
If you’re working on a personal project or something that is just getting pushed to YouTube that won’t matter 99% of the time.
However if you are working on a professional color grading pipeline for a project that might go to broadcast or into theaters, there are very specific QA tests that the final rendered product must pass - and these unofficial reverse engineered rendering tools often result in rendering errors that can fail these QA tests (and in a way that is basically impossible to troubleshoot).
It’s already enough of a challenge to manage a color pipeline using the officially licensed tools - they can’t really risk that kind of issue with their pro and semi-pro customers.
That said, it’s important to note that MP4 is a just a container/wrapper, not a codec.
So an mp4 file might contain video (or just audio) that is rendered using one of many possible codecs depending on what was chosen by the person doing the render. That will determine whether Resolve whether the free edition of Resolve will support it or not.
I appreciate that it can be confusing for users that patents can still apply to techniques where implementations exist that are both libre and gratis from a copyright perspective, but this has been an issue for Linux-adjacent software distribution for ages—like, see how Debian used to put certain stuff that was encumbered by patents in the US but not in other jurisdictions in special “non-US” repository sections, that sort of thing. It's not Black Magic's doing that the codec space is like this. I wish people wouldn't make so many mocking assumptions sometimes.
This looks similar to using Microsoft provided Media Foundation codecs. No idea why Black Magic doesnt do it like Linux Chromium browsers.
I would be moderately surprised if whatever arrangement is going on there allows full use of the codecs for video editing software and not just for consumer decode of Web resources.
I'm not really sure what actual claim you're making regarding the relevance of “pro-patent views”, but I might interpret it as something like “Red Hat is more likely to play it safe, whereas less IBM-enculturated distributions are more likely to bet on interpretations that let the users take on the risk”. Which I think is probably true; for instance, https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/xqn20n/comment/iqbmv... describes how other distributions chose differently and moved to re-enable the proprietary codecs by default. (Some of them seem to be based in friendlier jurisdictions, mind. I'm not completely sure where BMD is, and I'm not sure how much it matters given they want to sell worldwide, but their full corporate name resolves most strongly to Australia: https://opengovau.com/business/30098098287 and Australia doesn't seem to exclude software from patentability: https://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/patents/what-are-patents/what...)
Anyway, if that's what you meant, I don't think that distinction is nearly as applicable to the situation with Resolve. BMD isn't a producer of a Linux distribution containing a broad variety of stuff, where “users happen to do stuff with the open source software we provide that violates some patents” can maybe be waved off as not their responsibility. BMD is very obviously directly operating in the commercially-distributed professional video tooling market, so codec licensing will be something they have to deal with as a keystone part of their business. Adding something to their software to actively enable people to do professional-style encoding for those codecs without the patent licenses would be playing with fire.