Blackmagic Design releases DaVinci Resolve 17.4

DaVinci Resolve 17.4, which is said to transform the speed of DaVinci Resolve to work up to five times faster on new Apple Mac models with the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips, is now available from Blackmagic Design. With this speed increase, customers are able to play back, edit and grade 8K projects even faster and can work with up to 12 streams of 8K footage.

DaVinci Resolve 17.4 also increases the decoding speed of 12K Blackmagic RAW files, making it over three times faster; H.265 rendering is also 1.5 times faster, according to the company. Plus, DaVinci Neural Engine performance is up to four times faster. Support for ProMotion 120Hz displays makes playback and editing smooth and HDR viewers are also supported on the new Apple MacBook HDR displays.

The latest version also adds Dropbox Replay integration for video review and approval. Frame accurate coloured markers, comments and annotations made in Dropbox Replay are almost instantaneously synced to the DaVinci Resolve timeline. Plus with a simple login, customers will only have to sign in once. Other features include quick and easy render set up with dedicated Dropbox and Dropbox Replay presets as well as automatic background uploads that are monitored for status and confirmed when complete.

For subtitling, DaVinci Resolve 17.4 includes automatic resizing of backgrounds and cursor placement when creating captions, as well as nested timeline subtitle tracks now auto-populating the main timeline to speed up creating captions.

There are also improvements to the edit page such as better functionality for position curves in the timeline. This creates a more custom transition from one point to another when applying zoom or image position adjustments. Customers will also be able to use DaVinci Resolve Speed Editor to switch between cameras in multicam clips on the edit page making it faster to cut programs together. Additional support for asymmetrical trimming allows users to adjust a transition’s in point without affecting its out point or vice versa, enabling them to fine tune work more quickly.

DaVinci Resolve 17.4 adds greater support for automatic colour management and for ACES 1.3, including gamut compression, so customers can now more accurately display wide gamut images to be certain they are getting the best representation of the source image.

A new Resolve FX called custom mixer allows users to combine effects and make adjustments to grades with finer control. Plus, a 3D keyer adds the ability to make finer adjustments to the key and matte finesse settings to make it easier to create clean masks with more accurate keys and finer edges. For DaVinci Resolve Studio, there’s also a new film halation which will add the effect of a glow or light reflections around high contrast edges, giving images a more filmic look.

“This amazing update gives customers massive performance gains on the new Apple MacBook Pro models with the M1 Pro and Max processors. It completely transforms workflows and unlocks some incredible creative potential. What’s exciting is simply by downloading this free DaVinci Resolve update customers will get all these features for free,” said Grant Petty, Blackmagic Design CEO. “To have the capability now to easily edit and colour grade Blackmagic RAW 8K footage in HDR and all on a laptop while you’re miles away from the studio is incredible. Plus the ability to easily collaborate on projects with Dropbox Replay makes it such an exciting time for our customers to be out there creating content. We’re very excited to see what our customers can do with this amazing update to DaVinci Resolve.”

DaVinci Resolve 17.4 is available for download now from the Blackmagic Design website.