DaVinci Resolve 12 Might Just Become Your New Favorite NLE

Editing in DaVinci Resolve 12
For two years, DaVinci Resolve has been slowly and surely transforming from a dedicated color correction tool into an all-in-one solution for editors and colorists alike. In version 12, it achieved full NLE status.

The past two releases of Resolve hadn't necessarily been touted as a replacement for your current NLE, but instead as a complimentary tool for making small editorial changes during the grading and exporting processes. With version 12, however, Blackmagic is now billing Resolve as a fully-featured editing platform that can take any project from empty timeline to rough cut to finely-tuned picture lock. Add to that all of the powerful grading and color-management capabilities already present in Resolve, and it's clear that Resolve 12 might very well become a one-stop shop for all of your editorial and color needs.

We managed to grab the seemingly un-embeddable videos from Blackmagic's website to show you just how powerful of an editing platform Resolve has become. In this first video, you get a crash course in most of the editing features in Resolve 12, including it's advanced dynamic trimming operations:

One of the major concerns with previous versions of Resolve's built-in NLE was that it had no multi-cam editing capabilities, a feature which some editors rely on heavily to speed up their cutting process. In version 12, Resolve now has a solid multi-cam feature which looks to rival the quality and ease of use of those found in other NLEs. Take a look:

All in all, Resolve 12 looks to have just about everything that an editor could want in terms of editing and media management functionality, and the program can even be set to use preset keyboard shortcuts from other NLEs like Premiere, Avid, and Final Cut, or your own custom shortcuts, which should make transitioning to Resolve from another program fairly simple.

The best part of this is that beginning filmmakers wanting to learn editing now have an incredibly powerful and fully-featured NLE to start with that is free of charge. Of course, you can always invest in a Creative Cloud (or Avid) subscription, or buy FCPX outright, but if you're just starting out and want to dip your toes in the proverbial waters of editing, Resolve 12 seems to be a viable option for beginners (and professionals).

Resolve 12 is expected to be released to the public in July, and like previous iterations, will be available in both a slightly limited free version and a full version for $995.     

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Your Comment

33 Comments

Or, you can buy a $500 BMPCC and get Resolve free with the purchase!

I love Blackmagic.

May 27, 2015 at 3:34PM, Edited May 27, 3:34PM

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Jared Adamo
Creative Director / Producer
219

*BMPCC is actually $1000 again
**The BMPCC only comes with DaVinci Resolve Lite, which is already free

May 27, 2015 at 3:38PM

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Chuck McDowell
1st AC
572

Rimshot !

May 28, 2015 at 12:28PM

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Not my tempo.

May 29, 2015 at 11:40AM, Edited May 29, 11:40AM

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What do you mean again? Was it ever $500 ??? When?

June 3, 2015 at 3:53PM, Edited June 3, 3:53PM

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Love Resolve 11 Lite and so looking forward to an upgrade!

May 27, 2015 at 3:39PM

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Looks like a fantastic feature and better yet, its completely free. Im sure the people that want to use a free NLE to get started will enjoy this along with having a powerful grading tool.

May 27, 2015 at 4:22PM

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Gvickie Xiong
Editor/Cinematographer/Director
810

Looking forward to what they will add, hope it will be going in the direction of the FCP7 workflow

May 27, 2015 at 4:26PM

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The future is amazing.

May 27, 2015 at 4:54PM

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Edgar More
All
1347

Seems a lot like Premiere Pro.

May 27, 2015 at 5:07PM

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Sure. Except Premiere Pro costs money and Davinci Resolve Lite doesn't. The lite version is always full featured enough for most people and you can't beat free.

May 28, 2015 at 3:58AM

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Brendan Plake
Freelancer
102

Does it take plugins ?

May 28, 2015 at 12:29PM, Edited May 28, 12:29PM

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OFX Plugins only, so depends on the plugin author.

May 28, 2015 at 12:42PM

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Wow. It certainly looks like they thought of everything. Premiere should be very worried. I'm impressed how much they've added so quickly. It bodes well for the future of the product. Let's just hope It's not too buggy.

May 27, 2015 at 7:01PM, Edited May 27, 7:01PM

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Stu Mannion
writer/dir/dp
924

That's the big question. Started to love Resolve 11 last year on my brand new Mac Trash Can and did some test sequences but even with a new machine it was way too buggy--green streaks on rendered footage, artifacts on slowed down audio, and somehow the interface was just too clumsy. I had to redo in Premiere even though Premiere is slow as Molasses on the new Macs.

May 28, 2015 at 12:05AM

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J Robbins
776

I'm running Resolve 11 on a Hackintosh, quad intel 4770k with no problems. I have cycled through a GTX 780, then GTX 980, and recently an R290x 8gb video card without issues. The nMP were having OpenCL issues early last year with AMD cards, but that's not Blackmagic's or AMD's fault. Apple handles OpenCL on their platform.

You may have also had problems with overheating of your cards (another problem brought up last year), or were running out of memory. Not sure about audio problems, though, and yes, I also felt the interface to be clumsy.

May 28, 2015 at 12:47PM

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Anybody here has experience with the build in noise reduction in the full version?

May 27, 2015 at 11:27PM, Edited May 27, 11:26PM

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Gilles van Leeuwen
Filmmaker
386

Great move. Fingers crossed!

May 27, 2015 at 11:28PM

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Nuel Oyebade
Film Editor
79

Hmm the Multicam editing is exactly how FCPX does it. Glad to see they're growing though

May 28, 2015 at 12:44AM

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Charles C.
Editor/ Director/ Director of Photography/ Wannabe Thinker
1245

A big step forward. I can try it for easy project. When I have to do multicam editing however I remain on EDIUS.

May 28, 2015 at 12:53AM

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Iliyan Petrov
Director
83

Same here, but also for grading, Edius does the job 'realtime'.

May 29, 2015 at 10:24AM

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Stewart Fairweather
Cinematographer
489

Looks promising!

May 28, 2015 at 1:06AM

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Erwin Hartsuiker
CineVideo-NL videographer
790

I'm excited about 12 and I'm really hoping there is a smart way to select and organise within clips. For all it's clunkiness, FCPX does this very well with keywords and 'favourite' selections.

Also - and I'm sure this is just me being foolish - 'free' makes me feel uneasy. Resolve seems to work very well, but doesn't like being left open if my machine sleeps and crashes without saving afterwards. Can I reasonably expect fixes and good support from free software?

May 28, 2015 at 1:06AM

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the edit page on 11 is (for me) very slow. dropping frames and stuttered playback. the color page is fine. i hope they have fixed this on 12.

May 28, 2015 at 3:03AM

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Mike Keelin
Editor/Colourist
90

I had the same issue on 11. That's what makes me tentatively dismissive of this for now. At least, for the pro market. Buggy as it is it could still be useful for the super low budget world that don't have access to a real NLE. Gotta start somewhere, I guess. Then again maybe they'll fix it for this release if they are getting serious.

May 28, 2015 at 9:38AM

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Joshua Bowen
Editor
686

Once Fusion for Mac comes out I think BlackMagic might be my choice for post production workflow. If both live up to their claims they could replace a lot of software I currently use for editorial and vfx.

Shoot, edit, color correct, add vfx, and finish. All from one company, all integrated. Very exciting.

May 28, 2015 at 3:49AM, Edited May 28, 3:49AM

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Kevin Greene
Editor
779

For FREE its amazing. Don't think anyone with money is switching over to it as a primary NLE though. Kudos to BM for forcing everyone else to keep moving ahead. Adobe is certainly taking notice improving PPro's grading capabilities in 2015. How can anyone not like combining ACR-like controls and Premiere? That's just AWESOME and has to be a direct result of Resolve muscling in on its territory.

This is good for everyone.

May 28, 2015 at 5:21AM

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Josh.R
Motion Designer/Predator
1123

Gee, you "managed to grab the seemingly un-embeddable videos"...
Really? an article on something that was news a month ago, and you are proud about the picking of videos that we all have seen?

As much as I like NoFilm, lately, the majority of the stuff here either gravitate towards articles published on other blogs or stuff that you don't even author.

Is this all NoFilm has..?

May 28, 2015 at 7:07AM

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rush
88

From what I've seen in the demo videos this will become my new NLE and along with Fusion I'm all set. It's great because now I will abandon Adobe CS6 altogether. Since I'll never subscribe to their CC software. Why, a local design shop I work with lost two days of productivity because CC couldn't phone home for some reason and the apps wouldn't start. The reason I'll never adopt a software rental workflow. They also lost clients because they couldn't deliver on time. Kudos to Blackmagic design for providing great tools at reasonable prices and for free!

May 28, 2015 at 1:03PM, Edited May 28, 1:08PM

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Ron Marvin
Director of Photography
380

Seems like an impressive combination of Premiere Pro and FCPX with the obvious inclusion of DaVinci's Grading Features. Excited to test it out.

May 29, 2015 at 12:44AM

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Aaron George
Director | Photographer
92

Never cottoned to FCPX, and it's definitely time to move off FCP7, I'll give this a shot.

May 29, 2015 at 11:41AM, Edited May 29, 11:41AM

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Does anyone have an insight on what the main differences between the Lite and Pro versions will be?

June 1, 2015 at 10:51AM

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Joe O
Videographer/Editor
354

June 1, 2015 at 2:32PM

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Ron Marvin
Director of Photography
380