DaVinci on the Mac

PVC has notes on DaVinci Resolve software, Blackmagic Design takes DaVinci into brand new territory by Scott Simmons and BlackMagic Resolve on Mac OSX by Steve Hullfish. By the way, the Editblog pictured DaVinci Resolve running on a Mac laptop just after NAB 2009.

Alexis Van Hurkman had more observations in Notes From NAB and Notes From NAB, Part Deux, and "was told that of the two NVidia cards installed, the one doing the heavy lifting was the GTX 285 (the other being the base GT 120 card that’s handling the UI). This is definitely an affordable option, though it’ll be a change for all the Apple Color users (myself included) who’ve set up their systems based on the ATI graphics cards that have long been recommended."

The new software is $995, which is a foot in the door (or training version) on the way to many thousands for proper hardware. Oliver Peters and others on the FCP-List make several points about features and workflow:

"It is ideally suited for projects where the show is LOCKED. That's the standard workflow for prime time dramas and most feature films. That's increasingly harder to rely on these days as producers want to make changes right up to air. Color, too, is extremely weak in a workflow that requires interactivity (more than one roundtrip) between the NLE and the grading app. From this POV only integrated grading within the NLE truly works. That would include MC, FCP, Symphony, DS, Smoke and Quantel iQ/eQ/Pablo to varying degrees."

"[and]... Two different workflows. You have to roundtrip with Color because it can't output to tape. daVinci can capture and output to tape via a Decklink card. Which has the added advantage of allowing you to easily color correct an existing master. daVinci also allows you to 'notch' a tape which means you can find the edit points on a finished master either via an EDL or by scene detection. So here is a workflow. You have finished your show in FCP/MC/Premiere? Vegas, whatever. Export a QT Reference movie on your shared storage. create an EDL. Open the movie in Resolve and use the EDL to notch it. Color correct with a superior tool for the job. Now export to tape or DPX files."

Patrick Inhofer added: "My understanding is that the Resolve Reconform tools are truly outstanding. It enables a colorist to start working before show lock, reimport the EDL and it'll manage all the corrections properly."

Update: on the AE-List, Jack Tunnicliffe said he was "impressed by the performance he was getting and said it wouldn't bog down until he started loading up secondaries, which are unlimited, by the way. Nice to see the user shapes for B splines now instead of just ovals and squares, as well as a true 3D tracker, which was extremely accurate and fast." Also, David Basulto interviewed Grant Petty for Post magazine:

Update 2: there were other interesting threads at Creative Cow and REDuser (fact and opinion may mix too freely).