Blackmagic Design has announced that the public beta of DaVinci Resolve 12, its professional editing and color correction software, is now available for download from the Blackmagic Design website (www.blackmagicdesign.com). 

"The new DaVinci Resolve 12 is the software’s biggest update ever and includes powerful new features, making it both the world’s most powerful editing system as well as the world’s most advanced color grading system," says Grant Petty, CEO, Blackmagic Design. "The DaVinci Resolve 12 Public Beta will allow customers to start testing and integrating it into their facilities, and will provide us with valuable feedback that will greatly assist us in finishing development so we can launch an extremely reliable and robust product."

With this public beta, the DaVinci Resolve product line has also been renamed to better reflect the models of DaVinci Resolve available. The free DaVinci Resolve Lite will now be renamed to just DaVinci Resolve. It's a complete professional editing and color grading solution for individual editors working on SD, HD and Ultra HD projects.

The US$995 paid version of DaVinci Resolve Software has been renamed to DaVinci Resolve Studio. This will help customers understand that it includes many additional and powerful features that are needed by larger facilities, says Petty. DaVinci Resolve Studio is for customers that need to build advanced editing and color correction systems with multi GPU support, DCI 4K, 3D stereoscopic tools, multi-user collaboration tools, remote rendering and much more.

DaVinci Resolve 12 also includes new features that have not been previously announced. This includes new support for Intel Iris and Iris Pro GPUs. This is a major update that required significant engineering work to complete. Support for Intel Iris and Iris Pro GPUs dramatically improves performance on a wider range of systems, including laptops, says Petty. This will greatly assist editors and colorists who are working remotely and on-set.

With the growth in customers working with high resolution media and native RAW camera files, DaVinci Resolve 12 can now create optimized media proxies with custom settings for both the codec and resolution for even faster editorial performance. Also, a new Smooth Cut transition uses proprietary DaVinci optical flow algorithms to create a transition between different parts of an interview so you don’t have to cover jump cuts with b-roll.

DaVinci Resolve 12 is available for Mac, Windows and Linux computers with three versions available:

° DaVinci Resolve 12 is free for customers to download and is a full professional editing and color grading system that is suitable for independent users working on SD, HD and Ultra HD projects. The free version supports all of the same file formats and has the same exact image quality as the paid version of DaVinci Resolve. The free version is designed for editors and colorists who need a dependable and professional tool to grow their business.

° DaVinci Resolve 12 Studio is $995 and has all of the same features as the free version, but also adds support for multiple GPUs, 4K output, motion blur effects, temporal and spatial noise reduction, 3D stereoscopic tools, remote rendering, and collaboration tools that let multiple users work on the same project at the same time. DaVinci Resolve 12 Studio is recommended for professional studios and collaborative workgroups.

° DaVinci Resolve Advanced Control Surface is $29,995 and includes the award winning DaVinci hardware control panel which was designed with input from professional colorists to help them work faster and be more creative. The DaVinci Resolve Advanced Control Surface lets colorists manipulate multiple parameters simultaneously, giving them more control and creative options than is possible with a standard mouse and keyboard.