Blackmagic Forum

Can someone shed some light on an issue I had forever in Resolve:
Resolve sometimes does not "see" fonts that all other applications on the same machine see. Some fonts show only on the EDIT page, but not in a Text+ node on the FUSION page. A MultiText node on the FUSION page does not see fonts that I can use in a "Basic Title" on the EDIT page, but does see fonts that are on the system, but not activated. These fonts are not visible in the EDIT page's "Basic Title"
Drives me nuts.

These are the things that stop me from switching to Resolve for motion graphics work.

Any thought that might help?

My understanding is that's "just the way it is". Text and Text+ see fonts differently.

I'm no authority on Fusion, but I can tell you that Resolve's "Text+" and "MultiText" title generators are both "Fusion" based text tools... as such they are constrained by Fusion's code base for font and text rendering support which, for example, doesn't include fallback font substitution. As a result, in Fusion, text can only be rendered if and when the needed character glyphs are explicitly defined within the chosen font. Conversely, the Edit page's "Text" title generator (Basic Text) uses an entirely separate easy to use text engine which follows basic system level font support... but lacks the power and flexibility of the Fusion text elements.

Thanks for your thoughts. That makes sense in a way. Does anyone know what fonts fusion sees or how to control this?

As far as I know, Florian, Resolve's Fusion-based text tools should see and list all valid fonts installed in your system's font directories ie (on macOS) /Library/Fonts and ~/Library/Fonts, unless you are using Resolve 20's new whitelist feature to show only specific fonts (Preferences >> User >> Editing >> Text >> Display only specific fonts).... note that whilst Apple's built-in Font Book utility can mark fonts as 'inactive' it does not move inactive fonts out of the font directory, so Fusion-based text tools will still see and use those fonts (as it does not use Apple's built-in font management).

Andy Mees wrote:As far as I know, Florian, Resolve's Fusion-based text tools should see and list all valid fonts installed in your system's font directories ie (on macOS) /Library/Fonts and ~/Library/Fonts

That's what I suspected but that does not be entirely true. For example I'm using AVENIR NEXT, which is a system font installed in /Library/Fonts, but Fusion (and Fusion effects for that matter) only see some of the versions of the font. In my case it does not see the CONDENSED versions.

This really needs to be fixed!

Yeah, this is a complaint that goes back years and years (at least 7 years, I think). I'm not sure why a font that can easily be seen in TextEdit or MS Word cannot be seen in all modes of Resolve (Text, Text+, and Fusion).

If we get into trouble and have some exotic font that we can't see in the mode we need, we have no choice but to render it out in Photoshop and then bring that in as a TIFF or PNG graphic. Not my favorite workaround, but you do what you gotta do. Also when you need kerning and very precise spacing, that's the only option I know of.

Florian Gintenreiter wrote:

Andy Mees wrote:Resolve's Fusion-based text tools should see and list all valid fonts

That's what I suspected but that does not be entirely true.

Yeah, I chose my words carefully... "should see and list all valid fonts"... but there does seem to be something about some specific fonts / weights / styles that Resolve, for some reason, sees as being invalid... I've no idea what that reason is but I'm guessing something malformed (from Resolve's perspective) that causes it to trip up. As with any bug though, its needs to be something the devs can replicate so that they can isolate and fix the problem.

Florian Gintenreiter wrote:I'm using AVENIR NEXT, which is a system font installed in /Library/Fonts, but Fusion (and Fusion effects for that matter) only see some of the versions of the font. In my case it does not see the CONDENSED versions.

It's good that you can point to a specific font and source as it means the devs can look closely at that specific example (hopefully) and see what they can see...

...that said, I just looked on my own system here (MBP M1, Resolve 20.0 build49, macOS 14.7.5) and I can clearly see the Avenir Next Condensed family, listed in the Text+ font menu, seemingly without any issue, so you might need to be really specific about what weight and/or style you're not seeing.



[Devs: If you want to investigate another example of possible Font mishandling weirdness, try installing Noto Sans Hebrew and then see if your install of Resolve makes as much of a mess of it as mine does in the regular/basic Text effect font list... see here]