DaVinci Resolve 21.1

I've been using it for many years, and it's grown in power and functionality with every release. BMD has offered free upgrades to Pro users (with no subscription) for many years, which is refreshing given the current state of software licensing.

For those upset with the new agent integration, keep in mind that one of the big knocks on DaVinci Resolve is that it's hard for beginners. Powerful tools like color grading and nodes take years to truly master (and that won't change), but making it easier for users to collaborate with the agents they already use to help learn and perform basic tasks should help with the learning curve.

Ultimately, professional video editing is an art. An agent might save time with asset management, project/timeline setup, etc., but it won't replace the real experience and taste required for larger projects. I would rather spend the extra time on the nuanced/deeper creative work.

Not even BMD is safe from the agent apocalypse:

> DaVinci Resolve 21.1 now supports integration with AI assistants such as Claude, Claude Code and ChatGPT Codex, allowing customers to analyze projects, organize media, adjust settings and batch render using everyday conversational language. Customers can ask their AI assistant to create highlight edits from long form video, remove unwanted clips and render deliverables, so they can spend more time being creative rather than getting bogged down in repetitive tasks.

I've edited well over a thousand hours of video on my (Debian) DaVinci Resolve workstation. It's a rock-solid video editor that I can spend a day in without having to worry about a crash.

But I desperately wish Blackmagic would bring support for VST3 plugins and JACK to Linux. Or, at the very least, allow me to use my MIDI control surface in Fairlight on Linux.

As it stands, I have to do all of my audio production in Reaper, and that's a bit cumbersome.

I've had Claude Code drive DaVinci Resolve before in three ways: - Generate .otio files that are imported. Unfortunately, .otio doesn't fully support everything Resolve can do. - Resolve has a scripting engine. Claude can write Lua scripts, then execute the script (through UI Automation) - Computer Use. It's quite token intense, but it works.

I didn't try it, but for the paid version, someone also built a MCP server based on the scripting engine.

I'm programmatically adding analysis to sim racing lap guides, therefore my flow is probably different from the usual editing flow, but I have to say I found Claude Code + Opus to be quite capable of making edits with computer use.

  pacman -S davinci-resolve-free

After Effects still has some features that keep me stuck with it, but I'm excited for more competition. Adobe seems to be paying attention somewhat.

Seems like an unusually boring Resolve release. There's nothing there I particularly want to try out. Nothing wrong with that, I've just got used to every release having a ton of shiny new stuff in it.

I guess the agentic stuff is probably exciting to somebody.

As an anecdote, I recently needed to colour-grade some short footage for personal purposes. My workflow at the time was to essentially ask an LLM for guidance on how to use DaVinci Resolve to perform the task, step by step. I would make an adjustment, take a screenshot of the controls and the result, and repeat that process a handful of times, eventually ending up with a pretty nice result.

I can definitely see the utility of something like this for cases where a media budget just wouldn't have existed in the first place.

Off topic, but can anyone share their experience with DaVinci Resolve on Linux? It seems that they only officially support Rocky.

AI? Yawn...

Is it still a PITA to install? If I have to install a custom Linux distro to be able to run your app, it's not a good time.

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I don't see how companies like this can survive going forwards. DaVinci Resolve is effectively ~200 Astra/Fable prompts, maybe even fewer if you're willing to forgo polish.