DaVinci Resolve’s AI Leap

For years, DaVinci Resolve has been the industry standard for colour grading. But no one expected the significant shift the 2013 release, Version 10 would bring to the market, with the introduction of its very own video editing suite. The new tools successfully solidified its reputation as an all-in-one comprehensive tool for post-production.

Blackmagic Design then expanded its capabilities by integrating Fusion for visual effects and Fairlight for audio editing. These firmly established it as a can’t-do-without platform for both professional and newbie video editors and colour graders. Building on this success, in Version 16 it released proprietary AI engine, the DaVinci Neural Engine.

Now, with Version 20, it has taken those foundational features and made significant advancements, firmly positioning DaVinci Resolve at the forefront of AI-powered creative software.

In this latest release, the Blackmagic team has focused on enhancing key areas across the board – editing, colour grading, visual effects and audio. Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned professional, these improvements make working on projects feel seamless and intuitive. The user interface remains simplified and sleek, maintaining its reputation as software for pros, but with fewer barriers for newbies.

With just a few clicks in the Cut page, you can cut a sequence, apply a LUT in the Colour page and export your final project – no fuss, no friction. The real game changers, however, are the AI-powered tools. They transform previously time-consuming, complex tasks into quick, simplified actions, saving you heaps of time, supercharging your ability to be creative and pushing the boundaries of what users can achieve.

Having always favoured DaVinci Resolve for colour grading, I was most impressed by the new features for editing and overall workflow. This release came at a perfect time, and with multiple interviews and multi-cam projects going on I put the new AI features to the test.

I was recently working on a series of interviews for a corporate client. With the help of my new best friend AI IntelliScript, I not only saved time editing, but the whole process was also far more efficient. What AI IntelliScript essentially does is take your script and create a timeline from the clips you have provided, matching the audio to the text. What’s even more amazing is the fact that if you have multiple cams, you have those angles with the same script overlaid. This is a MAJOR timesaver, enhancing workflow – where before time was spent going through content and making cuts and taking the best bits, now everything is cut accordingly and layered. All you have to do is fine-tune the edit.

By coupling this feature with the new addition to the Fairlight page, which allows you to remove silences via AI IntelliCut, I was able to go through the entire edit quickly and with great ease. Both these new additions are game changers.

The other new AI enhancements really drive home the fact that this version was truly made to enhance the workflow of every user and cut back on the small monotonous steps we all had to go through. The company has truly harnessed the new advancements in AI and tailored them to users’ unique needs.

With the market now saturated with short-form vertical content, clients request both landscape and reel formats for videos. With the enhancements in this version, it’s safe to say Blackmagic has been paying close attention to the market – and it has delivered. Simple new updates like the Vertical Resolution switch give users the ability to quickly and efficiently convert the entire timeline to vertical format; no need to mess around with manually entering the resolution anymore.

This once again saved me time on my project. The client had also requested extra snippets for social media, so I just toggled Vertical Resolution and finished everything super smoothly without the hassle of manual adjustments. And what’s amazing is this carries through the whole software; even when colour grading in the Colour page, the ease of the video being in vertical is a plus. Simple little enhancements to the Cut and Edit pages have made the entire process of editing in DaVinci Resolve seamless, really making the projects fly by, which in today’s fast-paced market is a plus.

The new Fairlight features are also impressive. While other software has offered similar features for a while, Blackmagic brought them into this version of DaVinci in a very user-friendly way, ensuring that it doesn’t feel overwhelming. As someone who prefers to keep everything in one piece of software – especially when deadlines are tight – the new AI Music Editor is great at making sure I no longer need to sit and manually extend music tracks. It takes out the tedious hassle of making sure everything sounds seamless. For the interviews project I was working on, I simply used the tool to extend the track over a five-minute interview and no longer had to spend time on tedious tweaks.

As I said, the market is now full of reels and videos with mini-interviews and soundbites. Blackmagic has enhanced and polished existing features like AI Voice Isolation. Just having this as an option to play around with is fantastic. You don’t need to keep jumping back and forth turning off your music and other tracks – just flick the switch and you can hear only the speaker.

And still on the Fairlight page: the craziest new feature that really amazed me was the AI Voice Converter. I cannot express how many times I have worked on a project and the client comes back stating they don’t like the way they said a specific word, or their flow of speaking. Instead of going through the whole process of re-doing an entire take, I can now simply adjust a few parameters to change the voice, dramatically cutting down turnaround time. These small but powerful enhancements, and many more on this page, really make the entire audio process extremely user-friendly and greatly expedite workflows.

The Colour and Fusion pages each have powerful little upgrades that really make a difference in how a user works, and the speed at which they work. The most notable for me is the new AI Magic Mask v2, which takes masking to a whole new level. Blackmagic has really enhanced the speed and the accuracy of the feature, making the user’s life easier and the end product all the more amazing.

The Fusion page has been given an update that pushes DaVinci Resolve more into the content creation space with Animated Subtitles. Users no longer have to manually do animations or use third-party apps to create animated subtitles – they can simply add the effect in the Edit page and in Fusion edit the finer details and settings, making the entire process fast and smooth. Another notable mention is the ability to view your colour-graded clips directly within the Fusion page. This has saved me a ton of time since I no longer have to jump back and forth to visualise colours while adding effects.

Overall performance and compatibility have also been improved, which is always welcome, especially when managing multiple aspects of a project in one go. The ability to select where you save your project files is another welcome change that really just makes things easier when it comes to organising and keeping track of projects. Further enhancements to codec support and general little tweaks have given the software a great boost without creating any performance issues. Essentially, this version has been made to primarily make sure that users and their workflows are evolving with the market, but in a very intuitive way that doesn’t overwhelm.

While a lot of these features and updates are only in the paid Studio version of DaVinci Resolve 20, I would say having them in your arsenal is worth the investment. Blackmagic has once again thought about its users and made sure our wants and needs are met.

Nina Sargsyan is Creative Director at DBN Production in Dubai.