DaVinci Resolve 11 Now Available in Public Beta
DaVinci Resolve 11 is now available to download as a free public beta. Version 11 of everyone’s favourite free colour grading software was announced at NAB and only a few months later you can now get a hold of it for free for yourself! Download it here.
I blogged about all the new features in DaVinci Resolve 11 back in April, so check out this post – DaVinci Resolve 11 New Features – for a full run down of the nearly 140 new features, as well as more videos like this one from Alexis Van Hurkman taking you through both the colour grading and editing capabilities.
In this excellent half hour demo from the Las Vegas Supermeet, Alexis showcases just how powerful the editing capabilities are within Resolve 11. He also took the time to demonstrate how easy the collaborative workflow is between editor and colourist. Well worth a watch!
The Best New Features in DaVinci Resolve 11
By far my favorite color upgrade in #Resolve11 is the denoise, white & black clipping for qualifiers. Stronger keys = stronger grades.
— Rob Bessette (@robsbessette) June 24, 2014
Colourist Rob Bessette was fortunate enough to have access to Resolve 11 during the private beta test period and so he’s had a head start on the rest of us in whittling down his favourite new features, which he has helpfully put together in a short blog post here.
“I’m a big fan of the qualifier tab in Resolve. It’s an incredibly powerful tool. Quite frankly, I feel it’s a little under appreciated and people tend to gravitate towards the fancier tracking tab. To me, tracking is a last resort. I almost always try to key before I track (obviously the situation has to be pertinent to the correction at hand). If there are any options that I can have the will tighten up the accuracy of my HSL key then I’m going to be one happy camper.”
Alexis Van Hurkman, who has not only re-written the 852 page manual (!) for DaVinci Resolve – which you can now find in the Applications > DaVinci Resolve folder, rather than as a separate download from the Blackmagic Design site – but he’s also written several books on colour grading that you really should check out too. If that wasn’t enough to keep him busy, he has created some excellent video tutorials, available from Ripple Training, which he will be completely overhauling for Resolve 11, so keep your eyes peeled for those too. All the while working as a professional colorist. All of that is simply an introduction to say that you should check out his blog post about the new release of Resolve 11 and why he’s excited by the latest update.
One of the main themes of Resolve 11 is vastly expanded editing tools; you now have a video editor living directly alongside your grading environment, in which you can cut from scratch and immediately switch to grading with a single mouse-click. Or, if you’re like me, you can go back and forth between cutting and grading continuously, making grading tweaks to scenes right in the middle of your edit, creating quick matches when insert shots don’t look right, or creating that day-for-night look you need to make a particular scene work.
Lastly if you want a video walk through of some of the best of these new features, then London based colorist Dan Moran has a 15 minute tutorial over on Mixing Light.com, a subscription based colour grading training site. Dan covers the new UI changes, dual monitors, using the new colour matching tool, render caching and much more, sharing plenty of great tips along the way. If you really want to see Dan’s insights but don’t want to pay, you can grab a 24 hour test drive with full access to the site for free!
Add me to the long list of happy Resolve users. Great job! @rohit_bmd @Aussie_Pete @Blackmagic_News alpha output on OFX nodes works great! — Josh Petok (@joshpetok) June 24, 2014
Other colorists are equally happy with the new Resolve 11 too. In this tweet colorist Josh Petok mentions the alpha output on OFX nodes, which you can use for green screen keys. It’s also worth reading through the full conversation from Rob Bessette’s tweet below (click the date stamp) about why that new little icon will be so handy!
This little icon is going to save me a lot of headaches. Right, @patInhofer? #Resolve11 pic.twitter.com/G7lpl1sBjA
— Rob Bessette (@robsbessette) June 24, 2014