Blackmagic Design has announced DaVinci Resolve 17.3 and has also dropped the price of its URSA Mini Pro 12K.

Blackmagic says the new version of DaVinci Resolve adds support for a new processing engine that makes it work up to three times faster on Apple Mac models with the M1 chip making play back, editing and grading 4K projects faster, and allows users to work on 8K projects on an Apple M1 notebook.

The new processing engine uses tile based rendering. Blackmagic says this will give users up to 30% longer battery life on laptop computers when working in DaVinci Resolve.

Resolve 17.3 is available for download now from the Blackmagic website.

Blackmagic has also announced a new lower price for the Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 12K of US$5,995. This price reduction has come from efficiencies in manufacturing and an improved supply of 12K sensors. Blackmagic says the price drop, combined with the new faster rendering engine in DaVinci Resolve 17.3, with its speed improvements when working in 4K and 8K resolutions, “will make high resolution workflows more accessible.” and “much lower cost” so “a much wider range of customers will have access to feature film production.”

DaVinci Resolve 17.3 also supports a new option on Mac computers with M1 for H.265 hardware encoding. Customers can choose to prioritise speed vs quality when rendering, further improving render times up to 65%. Also, DaVinci Resolve will now decode AVC Intra files using the media engine built into the Apple M1 chip, making decoding and playback faster when working with these file formats.

New Resolve FX controls have been added, such as new grid shapes and greater control when using mosaic blur. Keyer garbage mattes now have rotation controls, making it easier to remove unwanted items from view while new saturation and gamma controls on the glow plugin allow greater control and subtlety over lighting effects. Aperture diffraction in DaVinci Resolve Studio has new anamorphic aperture controls which allow a wider range of lenses to be emulated.

Fairlight audio also has improvements in latency with new drivers that allow adjustments to the input buffering and processing latency. This allows optimisation of the process for customer specific hardware, which makes recording and playback easier and smoother. Better Fairlight export dialog means customers can export selected clips or tracks directly from the Fairlight page and include clip levels, fades, EQ and effects or iXML metadata as well as being able to normalise clips to match different loudness standards. This makes it easier and faster to pass on audio for further processing or inclusion in a larger project.

DaVinci Resolve 17 has over 300 new features and improvements including HDR grading tools, redesigned primary colour controls, next generation Fairlight audio engine including Fairlight audio core and support for 2,000 real time audio tracks, plus dozens of other time saving tools for editors including a redesigned inspector, new bin sorting and metadata clip views.

“This is truly an amazing update that gives customers huge performance and power efficiency gains on Mac models with M1, and it totally transforms your computer, simply by downloading this free of charge DaVinci Resolve software update” said Grant Petty, Blackmagic Design CEO. “This speed increase is stunning and it’s hard to believe. I have not seen a speed improvement this large since the original 68000 to Power PC transition back in the 1990’s and it is just amazing. Who would have thought just a year ago that multiple 4K streams could be played back and edited natively on a MacBook Air, but it’s easy now on DaVinci Resolve with M1. The engineering team has worked so hard on this new image processing engine for DaVinci Resolve, and it is an incredibly exciting time to be developing software for the Mac!”

DAVINCI RESOLVE 17.3 FEATURES

Apple Silicon Performance

* Up to 3x faster new processing engine enabling 8K edit and grading.

Fairlight

* Improved thru-latency and adjustable processing and input buffers.
* Improved export dialog with naming, metadata and format control.
* Timeline clips can be selected from the Fairlight edit index.
* Improved Fairlight timeline ruler resolution.
* Buses can be reordered by dragging in the track index.
* New audio I/O preference options with support for separate I/O selections.
* Improved mix-down support for LRC, 5.0 and 7.0 track formats.
* Improved edit, nudge and fade behavior for linked clips.

Colour

* Colour Warper supports persistent default grid resolutions.
* HDR color controls support persistent default zone presets.
* Active playheads can be switched by clicking on the split screen viewer.
* New anamorphic aperture controls for Resolve FX Aperture Diffraction. Studio only.
* New shapes and finer mosaic control for Resolve FX Mosaic Blur.
* New rotation controls for Resolve FX Keyer garbage mattes.
* New sat and gamma controls and faster performance for Resolve FX Glow.

Cut

* List views in the media pool can be sorted from column selection.
* New badge to easily identify still clips on the timeline.

Edit

* Edits from sub-clips can now be match-framed to original media.
* Shape and iris transitions can be rotated from the inspector.
* Play around selection now works with transition selections.
* Newly added subtitles retain playhead position to allow text preview.
* Compound clip instances in the timeline can be renamed.
* Fusion compositions can be renamed from the inspector panel.
* Options to name and use full clip extents when creating a subclip.

Fusion

* DRFX bundles can be double-clicked to install on Windows and Linux.
* Support for viewing the node type by holding Ctrl/Cmd-Shift-E.

Codecs and Deliver

* DaVinci Resolve Studio support for audio encoding in the encoder plugin SDK.
* Hardware accelerated AVC Intra decodes for on Apple Silicon.
* Support for decoding and encoding JPEG-HT .JPH image sequences.
* Improved H.264 and H.265 decode performance in Windows Intel systems.
* Optimized H.265 encodes for speed on Apple Silicon systems.
* Support for decoding MKV clips with VP9 video codecs.
* Improved decode performance for MKV clips with AAC and AC3 audio.
* Support for embedding MPEG2 bitstream captions in XDCAM clips.

General

* Improved startup speeds for disk databases with many projects.
* Support for simplified database creation and connection process.
* AAF imports now support translation of simple nested clips.

 

Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 12K Features
• 12,288 x 6480 12K Super 35 sensor.
• Use for feature films, VFX and high end TVCs.
• 14 stops of dynamic range and native 800 ISO.
• New Blackmagic RAW for real time 12K editing.
• Blackmagic RAW optimized for Metal, CUDA and OpenCL.
• Generation 5 Color Science with new film curve.
• Shoot up to 60 fps in 12K, 120 fps at 8K and 240 fps at 4K.
• Dual card CFast recording at up to 900MB/s.
• PL mount included and optional EF and F lens mounts available.
• SuperSpeed USB-C for recording to external disks.
• Includes DaVinci Resolve Studio for post production.
• Compatible with new Blackmagic URSA Mini Recorder.

Jon Creamer

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