DaVinci Resolve 17: professional video editing software for free, reviewed

By Calvin Jones

With action cameras, drones, gimbals, DSLRs and of course your average smartphone today capable of shooting high quality 4K video, more people than ever before are shooting reams of the stuff. But how do you take all of that high quality video footage and turn it into something that tells a story or promotes your small business or startup?

DaVinci Resolve 17

That’s where video editing software comes in. Good editing software helps you organise your video clips; sift through them to find the scenes you want; add and re-arrange those scenes on a timeline; add and manipulate audio tracks, transitions, titles and effects, modify colours and much more.

As more of a stills photographer than a video fan I’ve come a little bit late to the video party, but when I received the Mavic Air 2 as a birthday present late last year all that changed. With a 4K video camera in the sky, I started shooting a lot more video, and very soon realised that the basic video software bundled with my Windows 10 laptop just wasn’t going to cut it.

That’s when I stumbled across Blackmagic Design’s Davinci Resolve 17.

DaVinci Resolve is a remarkable piece of software that’s up there with leading commercial video editors like Adobe Premiere Pro and Apple’s Final Cut Pro for professional grade video projects. It began life as a specialist color correction tool and is widely regarded as the colour-grading standard by film-makers. Resolve is used by professional colourists on Hollywood feature films and high-end TV shows around the world. Over recent years though, DaVinci Resolve, now owned by Blackmagic Design, has grown to incorporate everything you need for video post production in a single product and includes:

• Comprehensive media import and portability features
• A dedicated “cut” page designed for speed, helping you cut your media clips and audio onto a timeline fast
• A fully functional, pro-grade non-linear editor (NLE)
• A dedicated motion graphics and visual effects engine (Fusion)
• The best colour correction tools in the industry
• Studio-style audio mixing with Fairlight
• Comprehensive delivery options so you can render your finished project into whatever format you need.

And the best thing about DaVinci Resolve: the price. You can download a fully functional unrestricted version of Davinci Resolve with all of the above features for… drumroll… absolutely nothing.

Zero Cost Professional Video Editing Software

That’s right, Blackmagic Design makes the standard version of Davinci Resolve available for free. You simply visit the Blackmagic Design website, download it (it’s a hefty 2GB+ download mind you), install it, and you’re ready to edit your next video masterpiece.

DaVinci Resolve is available for Windows, Mac and Linux, and unlike a lot of free video editing software, this isn’t a free trial or a time-limited version. Your footage isn’t watermarked, the software isn’t hobbled with restrictions that curtail your ability to work, and it doesn’t have any constraints for commercial use.

There is a paid (but still great value) version of DaVinci Resolve designed for Professional Video Editors and Colourists — it’s called DaVinci Resolve Studio and it adds some advanced professional features and improved performance on high end systems. The main differences between the free version of DaVinci Resolve, and Studio are:

• The free version’s output is limited to 4K at 60 fps. It lets you import and work with higher resolution files (6K, 8K, etc.), but your final timeline can only be exported to a maximum of 4K60 (which is ample for most projects).
• The Studio version of the software makes better use of hardware acceleration on high-performance GPUs (and even multiple GPUs) for video encoding, making for a smoother, faster editing experience. If you have costly high-end graphics hardware, the increased performance of the Studio version is worth the upgrade on its own.
• Advanced facial recognition, noise reduction, magic masks (intelligent recognition, masking and tracking of familiar objects and people) and other features powered by Blackmagic Designs Neural Engine AI are only available in DaVinci Resolve Studio.
• The Studio version of DaVinci Resolve comes bundled with more visual and audio transitions and effects than the free version.

There are a few other differences, but those are the key ones.

It’s easy to get started with the free version of DaVinci Resolve, and use it to create professional-grade video projects without limitations or constraints for as long as you want to. If and when you feel the need, you can upgrade to DaVinci Resolve Studio, knowing that the skills, workflow and project files you’ve developed in the free version will transfer seamlessly.

At €299 for a lifetime license (you also get a Studio license bundled with a lot of Blackmagic Design’s cameras and video-editing hardware) it offers outstanding value. For that you get a license key that allows you to activate DaVinci Resolve Studio on up to two machines, with free upgrades to all future versions of the Studio version for life. In a field where costly monthly or annual software subscriptions are rapidly becoming the norm, that’s a refreshing change.

1. For a limited time, to mark the release of DaVinci Resolve Studio 17, BlackMagic Design is bundling the new Speed Editor when you buy a DaVinci Resolve Studio license, making it even better value (the Speed Editor is a dedicated mini keyboard/editing console with jog wheel designed to make scrubbing through, cutting and editing on DaVinci Resolve’s Cut page quicker and easier — it normally retails at €299 — look out for a review of the speed editor here soon) .

It’s hard to argue with free though — and for many vloggers, youtubers and small business marketers out there, the free version of DaVinci Resolve will have more than you need to deliver outstanding video projects.

Editing with DaVinci Resolve

DaVinci Resolve, even the free version, is a professional-grade video editing software package. That means it can be a little daunting when you first open it up. With so many features and options available there’s great flexibility, letting you do pretty much anything you could ever want to do in video post production, but that raft of features and options is a little overwhelming if you’re just starting out.

Fear not. The trick is to ignore the fancy stuff to start with, and concentrate on the basics. The great thing about learning video editing in Resolve is that as your skills and your video editing needs evolve, you know the software has the chops to deliver. Even with the free version, you’re unlikely to outgrow the programme and need to transition to another platform.

If you’re in any way familiar with non-linear video editors (NLEs), media bins, timelines and the like, you’ll find the main Edit Page interface of Davinci Resolve quite similar. You have a place to browse and sort your source media, a preview window or windows, and a timeline to show what you’re working on. One of the unique things about resolve though is the way you can seamlessly move between “pages” or tabs designed to make each stage of the editing workflow quicker and easier.

The Media Page

You can import media into a DaVinci Resolve project in multiple pages/views either by choosing an option from the menu and selecting your media files in the dialogue, or by dragging and dropping media files directly from your file manager/finder into the media pool in Resolve. However, there’s also a dedicated media page specifically designed to help you import all of your media at the start of your project.

The Cut Page

Built for speed, the Cut Page was a new addition in DaVinci Resolve 16 as a simplified alternative to the Edit page, designed to help editors on a deadline select clips and get their media onto their timeline efficiently. Using keyboard shortcuts it’s incredibly quick to select in and outpoints on media clips and insert and arrange those selections onto your timeline in a variety of different ways. The cut page works seamlessly with the DaVinci Resolve Speed Editor — a dedicated mini-keyboard/hardware console designed to speed up the editing workflow.

The Edit Page

The edit page presents one of the most advanced and feature-packed professional non-linear editors (NLE) in the industry, and is the page where most editors will spend most of their time. It can look a little intimidating at first, but the basics are easy to get to grips with, and the software will grow with you as your skills evolve. Programmable keyboard shortcuts help make editing quicker and easier, and if you’re moving from another popular video editing platform you can even map your old keyboard shortcuts directly to Resolve to help with the transition

The Fusion Page (Video FX and Motion Graphics)

You can apply basic effects, transitions and titles directly in the Edit page, but when you want to take things a step further, the Fusion page gives you access to professional node-based compositing for titles, motion graphics and advanced video effects right inside DaVinci Resolve. No need to migrate between programmes to get the advanced video effects you need — simply switch to the Fusion Page and apply them directly to a clip on your timeline.

The Colour Page

Simply the best colour management and manipulation tools in the industry. Period. I won’t get into the details here, but from basic colour grading to the most advanced colour correction features available, DaVinci Resolve’s colour page is second to none.

The Fairlight Page (Audio FX and advanced mixing)

You can apply basic audio transitions and effects directly to your timeline in the Davinci Resolve edit page, but for more advanced audio effects and mixing the fairlight page offers professional mixing panels and audio filters to help you achieve exactly the sound you’re looking for.

The Deliver Page (rendering and output)

The Deliver Page is where you go to render your finished project and output it to a file for delivery to your client or upload to your chosen platform. It includes presets for popular channels like YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter and others, but also has custom controls that give you granular control of your output resolution, file format, codec, bitrate and more. The Deliver page makes it easy and intuitive to optimise the output of your video to match your desired destination.

A word about System Requirements

Video editing is one of the most demanding tasks you can ask of a computer, so to get a seamless editing experience in DaVinci Resolve or any other professional NLE you’ll need a decent system. How decent depends on the resolution, frame-rate and bitrate of the footage you plan to edit. I’m running DaVinci Resolve Studio on a laptop with a 10th Generation Intel i7 processor 16GB RAM and a dedicated 4GB Nvidia GPU. It runs fine with footage up to 4K 30 on a 1080p timeline, but playback in the editor starts to stutter at anything above that, or on clips with video effects applied.

There are some clever tricks you can use in Resolve to streamline your editing workflow with high resolution footage: using low-resolution proxy media, decreasing playback resolution in the timeline and pre-rendering effects, for example. Just be aware that you will need a high performance system if you want to edit 4K or higher footage “out of the box”. That’s not a limitation of DaVinci Resolve, it’s the same with any video editing software.

Support and Training

While Davinci Resolve looks intimidating to start with, there’s a lot of great material out there to help you get to grips with the basics quickly. The DaVinci Resolve training resources on Blackmagic Design’s own site are a great place to start. BlackMagic Design trainers walk you through the basics of using key elements of the software in tutorial videos, and there are free downloadable PDF guides and lessons for key areas of the software. You’ll also find thousands of video tutorials on YouTube covering everything from basic editing to advanced effects in DaVinci Resolve, and there are a wide range of third-party training options, forums, social media groups and other resources available online.

Conclusion

While I’m a comparative video editing novice, I was looking for software that could grow with me as my confidence, skill and requirements evolved. I wanted something low-cost, at least at first, but that wouldn’t constrain what I could do. Davinci Resolve ticked all of those boxes and more.

I’ve been using the free version of DaVinci Resolve for the last four months to edit 4K footage from my Mavic Air 2 and my Panasonic Lumix G9.I switched to the DaVinci Resolve Studio a few weeks ago and haven’t looked back. Before picking an editor, I looked at all of the main players, and some of the more obscure options out there, and downloaded a few to see which was the best fit. Weighing up all the pros and cons I chose DaVinci Resolve, and I’m really glad I did.

If you’re looking for a video editor that gives you everything you need, and then some, for your next video project, at a price that can’t be beaten, I’d highly recommend downloading the free version of DaVinci Resolve and taking it for a spin. You’ve got nothing to lose, and while there is a bit of a learning curve, it’s easy to pick up the basics, and it could just revolutionise your approach to video.

About the Author

Calvin Jones is an author and online content specialist based in West Cork Ireland. Alongside his writing projects, he runs Ireland’s Wildlife, helps small business clients improve their websites and reviews the latest tech gadgets.

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