Resolve v20: Thinking about Studio purchase-some Qs

Lately, a lot of DaVinci Resolve 20 demonstration videos have been popping up in my YT feed. I've watched about a dozen of them and the new features are enticing.

I've been playing with the free version of Resolve going back at least ten years of versions.
I've run into numerous limitations which bounced me back to using Premiere. Among those were:

No full screen video on monitor #2 (required BMD hardware graphics card to do this, I was told back then)
No support for common CODECs like that used by DJI drones from 7 years ago.
Program seemed to crash a lot on my Dual Xeon with 128GB RAM.

Some of the video presenters talked about licensing and that the license can be activated on up to two PCs at a time, if activating a third, the oldest license will deactivate. Off line machines have to activate with a dongle. **is any of this information factually correct?**

I'm reading through current discussions here and it seems a lot of folks are having crashes with the neural powered features. That gives me a bit of pause before I drop $295 on a license.

I'm tempted to try the current free version again (last version I tried was v17) and see if things have improved. But I am also not sure if full screen second monitor as 1:1 pixel video display is available on only the Studio version or the free version. The lack of that, CODEC support and frequent crashes have, in the past, deterred me from investing in the learning curve of this different workflow.

A few years ago, Nodes were alien to me. However, having been working with Blender software for some years, I slowly got used to using nodes in their Compositing Editor. So I think it should not be that hard to learn Resolve's nodes features.

At any rate, if some of you familiar with the software can shed some detail on some of these questions I have, it would help in my making a decision.

Also, what BMD hardware control surface at moderate cost would give me a good jog shuttle, and some basic edit features in the $300 and under range?

And lastly, I see Resolve 20 is in beta. When does this go RTM?

Some of the video presenters talked about licensing and that the license can be activated on up to two PCs at a time, if activating a third, the oldest license will deactivate. Off line machines have to activate with a dongle. **is any of this information factually correct?**

Yes, this is correct. I have an activation key and can run it on both desktop and laptop at the same time. Without internet access Resolve will not open, it just closes if a connection is not established. I also had an issue with the v18 beta that was eating my license key when I opened it. When it ran out of keys it automatically reset everything and gave both of my keys back. This problem was sorted out and I haven't had the problem since, but I can confirm that the keys are immediately reset when you try to install it for the third time.

Also, what BMD hardware control surface at moderate cost would give me a good jog shuttle, and some basic edit features in the $300 and under range?

I have the Speed Editor, it costs $400 and comes with a license of Resolve Studio. If you were budgeting $300 for Resolve Studio plus an additional $300 for a control surface, this would be under that. The jog wheel is incredible feeling, but unfortunately, it was designed to be used on the Cut page (which I never use) and it has limited functionality on the Edit page. It is also completely locked down so you cannot remap the keys to be more useful (there are 9 multicam buttons in the center of the unit that are completely useless to me). In terms of editing with it, I gave up trying to make that work on the Edit page. I'd watch some demo/tutorial videos on it and see if it'll work for what you need.

No full screen video on monitor #2 (required BMD hardware graphics card to do this, I was told back then)

You can use Clean Feed if you want to, but be aware that it's not color accurate. You can get a more accurate feed from a Blackmagic video display card (and a calibrated display).

No support for common CODECs like that used by DJI drones from 7 years ago. Program seemed to crash a lot on my Dual Xeon with 128GB RAM.

More codecs are added every year, and all the DJI drone footage I've ever received for sessions has been easy-to-handle H.264 or H.265. Resolve is stable for me, but your miles will vary. There are ways to optimize systems specifically for Resolve; Puget Systems is one source for info you could check out.

Some of the video presenters talked about licensing and that the license can be activated on up to two PCs at a time, if activating a third, the oldest license will deactivate. Off line machines have to activate with a dongle. **is any of this information factually correct?**

We just buy multiple licenses so there's never any risk of a machine suddenly not working. The cost of Resolve software is so trivial, it's not a problem for us. If you had owned Adobe Premiere for 10 years, that would've been a $6000 subscription fee over that period of time for the Adobe Creative Suite.

I'm reading through current discussions here and it seems a lot of folks are having crashes with the neural powered features. That gives me a bit of pause before I drop $295 on a license.

It's a Beta. New features take time to stabilize. Again, many of us paid $995 for a license in 2010 and thought that was a bargain (and I still do).

I'm tempted to try the current free version again (last version I tried was v17) and see if things have improved. But I am also not sure if full screen second monitor as 1:1 pixel video display is available on only the Studio version or the free version.

I believe that's a Resolve Studio feature.

A few years ago, Nodes were alien to me. However, having been working with Blender software for some years, I slowly got used to using nodes in their Compositing Editor. So I think it should not be that hard to learn Resolve's nodes features.

There are nodes and there are nodes. Blender and Resolve Color are completely different programs; you might compare the compositing features of Resolve Fusion to Blender.

Also, what BMD hardware control surface at moderate cost would give me a good jog shuttle, and some basic edit features in the $300 and under range?

The Resolve Edit Keyboard will do this for under $500.

And lastly, I see Resolve 20 is in beta. When does this go RTM?

The last few versions of Resolve took about 4-5 months to be finalized, from about April to August. I have no clue if that'll be true for Resolve 20.

Thanks for all the thoughtful responses.

I did do some hunting around and it seems Speed Editor with the Studio license is an unbeatable deal.

Somewhat dismayed to hear that most of its features only work on the Cuts page. Feature request item?

Modern motherboards have almost no slots for extra cards these days. Capture card, sound card, GPU and all the slots are filled. Newer boards I've looked at from Asus have only TWO slots! Seems the nVME provisions are taking up board real estate that used to go to PCI slots. So no possibility of adding a BMD card, unfortunately. I can calibrate color through nVidia Control Panel on my RRTX3090, so as long as I can get clean output on a designated monitor, that's fine, as that's what I've been doing on Premiere CS6, which was the final version I owned with a perpetual license.

I'd noted that with many types of footage, on the free version it would come in "media offline" or some sort of red screen warning, so that had kept me from investing more time in learning it.

So v20 may release this summer? If I buy the license bundled with Speed Editor, will I get the beta v20 or v19?

Firstly, on the software support .... you have no idea what an incredible deal BMD studio is ... it's a one off purchase ! for like 6 months of Adobe support.
You even get support from their techs included. I bought a license like 10yrs ago and even bought again almost because I felt that I should. So version 10, 15, 19, 20 whatever comes with your license. Maybe there will be an upgrade cost someday. It really is a no brainer purchase.
Next up media offline .. I have never used the free version, but almost certainly this will be down to a change that has occurred since you last used the project. So maybe the drive letter where the media is stored is not consistent and it could be drive F instead of drive E etc .. you can set this in a PC.
Also there is a very neat way to manage a change of directory in davinci .. there's a small red icon top left of screen that you click and re-direct it to your new storage location.

In terms of screen out .. have search around for what suits your system best there are many options options out there, like small external boxes as well as internal cards if you machine can take it. Be aware that some of these cards will come with limitations .. so they might not do 60p at UHD etc just think what do you need to be viewing / working in. Then you can even hook up a nice quality domestic monitor normally via HDMI

Just to add, most of the functions on the Speed Editor work fine in the Edit page.

Just to add, most of the functions on the Speed Editor work fine in the Edit page.

Yes, the features that exist technically "work", but since the Speed Editor was not designed to be used on the Edit page it is missing features making its usefullness on the Edit page very limited. I've tried it and didn't care for it, so I just stay with the mouse for editing. I do use the Speed Editor when scrubbing through media though, so it's a great "Speed Finder", but not so much a "Speed Editor".

As a couple examples, when there are multiple clips are on different tracks the Speed Editor splits through all of the clips and you can't split only one clip from the Speed Editor. There also isn't any way to move up/down tracks to select the clip (or clips) you want to edit from the Speed Editor. I just searched these again to see if maybe something had been improved, but didn't find anything. So unless I missed something, it still doesn't appear to be very useful on the Edit page.

I'm testing the v20 beta on my dual Xeon workstation now.

In the system preferences, I note two things it does not see:

Capture device: "none"
My JVC DVS3U DV Firewire tape transport is connected and powered on. Premiere can see it and use it.
and
Monitor device "none"
Again, Premiere can see my DCI 4K display and automatically use it as a full screen 1:1 pixel display.

For you Studio owners, does this feature work with a normal nVidia GPU and multiple monitors?

I do have a pair of BMD Intensity Pro 4K capture cards, but they are not 4K, as they are limited to 3840 pixels. My Sony FS7s shoot 4K and I was unable to get 1:1 pixel mapping to the 4K display with the Intensity Pro 4K in the dual Xeon. I also tried them in my newer Z390-A based i7-9700K system, but Windows would not detect the card, no matter what I tried.

Must have DCI 4K 60 capability. Seems a simple thing to do what Adobe's been able to do for 20 years. I'm hoping this is a limitation of the free version and not a problem with Studio as well.

The work flow is so alien to me that it's going to be a learning curve, so the hardware MUST work perfectly if I'm going to invest time in learning this new system.

I have to agree with the sentiments here on the value of studio. For what you get, it is absolutely incredible. This is coming from a former Avid Media Composer editor. I am very pleased with studio and would be even if it was 2x the price.

I would also point out that the studio version is only as good as the hardware you are running it on. If your hardware is underpowered or insufficient, you won't have the best experience.

I'm running on a dual Xeon E5-2697 with 128GB RAM. Machine cost me $17K to build. Basically the same system Pudget Systems sold for $30K. It's quite powerful, albeit a few years old.

I spent some time playing with the beta tonight. Could not get clean output to second monitor, like I see in demo videos. Still trying to figure that one out.

Played with the title graphics. That stuff is awesome. No other way to put it. Love the effects, wipes/transitions.

My workstation isn't connected to the virusnet. If I buy the Speed Editor, does it come with the dongle so I don't have to connect to the internet to start it up every time?


Whoa, I just checked B&H Photo's price and it went from $395 yesterday to $525 today!

Mark, Video Clean Feed is only available in the Studio version.
Probably the most important component is the GPU. You don't say what GPU you have but the more Vram it has the better as all picture processing is done with it. My old 6GB GTX 1060 does struggle on occasion but as I'm only doing things for me it's not too much of a problem. Having said that it quite happily supports 3 HD monitors, two for the UI and one for Clean Feed.

With my current Premiere setup, I have UI on one monitor and clean feed going out to my DCI 4K display as well as my DCI 4K projection room for clients to watch the edit in progress. Can it do two clean feeds like Premiere?

Still not sure how the activation works with no internet. I only have one 'sacrificial lamb' connected to the internet, but my main workstations are on a separate LAN, safe from attacks from the outside.

Only problem is now the price went up since 14 hours ago, by $130... $395 was looking attractive, but $525 is getting up there.

Well, I just took the plunge. Bought a new Speed Editor with Studio license from B&H Photo just now. $525, but if it's a lifetime of upgrades, it's a bargain.

With the second clean monitor output, it will be quite usable.

The more I play with the free version, the more I like it.

It runs effortlessly on 32 cores. I've played with earlier versions, pushing FIVE DCI 4K video clips in PiP collages around the screen with effortless playback. I reckon v20 when it is RTM, will be even more impressive.

B&H ships overnight to CT, so I'll be installing Studio tomorrow and I'll no doubt have questions!

But I think v20 has finally become the NLE that will drag me away from Adobe.

BTW, is there a downloadable manual on every feature and how to use in Studio?

I learned past software by either taking classes (went to NJ to take a 3 day course on Maya), or buy tons of books on software and learn that way.

A definitive manual on every feature and function in Resolve Studio is what I would like to find and study. I can see just from playing with the free version that there is a TON of functions that are way beyond the Adobe world and makes Adobe look like Windows Movie Maker by comparison in terms of power and complexity.

I'm "playing" with it now and hunting for info on each feature as I go along. What makes it more difficult is that instead of having a feature and just watermarking it, the free version is missing some features, so tutorials fail because I can't find the talked about feature. Anyway, tomorrow solves that problem.

The version 19.1 Reference Manual comes with the version 20 Beta, accessed via the Help menu.

But the best resource for learning Resolve is below.

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/produc ... ning#books

Whoa, I just checked B&H Photo's price and it went from $395 yesterday to $525 today!

Oh that's a bummer.

I got my Speed Editor when Markertek still had the deal going on where a purchase of Resolve Studio included a free Speed Editor. Since there was no extra cost, I pounced on it before researching the Speed Editor and I didn't know how limited it was going to be for my use. But at no extra cost, I got a very nice jog wheel so I can't complain too hard for that price.

But if it is going to be $200 more than Resolve, then Blackmagic really needs to unlock the buttons now and make it more usable on the Edit page. This has been an ongoing request since 2021, but so far Blackmagic hasn't done anything about it.

The ability to customise keys on Speed Editor:
viewtopic.php?f=33&t=138781

This wouldn't even require a firmware update to the Speed Editor. How hard would it be to treat the speed editor just like a regular keyboard and remap the keys inside of Resolve to perform a different function? That should not be difficult task for them.

Bonus points if we can combine modifiers keys from the regular keyboard (Ctrl/Shift/Alt) with the buttons and jog wheel on the Speed Editor for additional flexibility. Using the jog wheel for navgation would be great:
Jog scroll vertical (as normal)
Ctlr+Jog to zoom horizontal
Shift+Jog to scroll vertical
Ctrl+Shift+Jog to zoom horizontal

If Blackmagic makes improvements like this to the Speed Editor then they could easily justify the $200 price tag. But currently it would certainly not be worth it for me. The Speed Editor is now more expensive than DAW controllers like the Behringer X-Touch ($190) which has a jog wheel, programmable buttons, and a single motorized fader for audio automation. I need to look into how nicely the X-Touch plays with Resolve, but this might be the best inexpensive control surface to get for Resolve now. At least until Blackmagic stops clamping down on the Speed Editor and lets us customize it.

There’s a Mac program out there called Command Post that makes the speed editor work with fcpx and Premiere. I wonder if it might be usable with Resolve as well to customize its use. Anyone played with it?

The version 19.1 Reference Manual comes with the version 20 Beta, accessed via the Help menu.

But the best resource for learning Resolve is below.

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/produc ... ning#books

Thank you, thank you, thank you! This is perfect! Now I have something I can study at my own pace.

There’s a Mac program out there called Command Post that makes the speed editor work with fcpx and Premiere. I wonder if it might be usable with Resolve as well to customize its use. Anyone played with it?

Never mind. The doc for said program explicitly states

DaVinci Resolve will totally override CommandPost when running, even if DaVinci Resolve is just running in the background

The funny thing is that as long as CommandPost works it means the speed editor is actually LESS functional in Resolve than in any other NLE - at least on a Mac.

I just imported some Sony FS7 footage and all that Resolve loads is audio. The video part of the file is ignored. Is Resolve ONLY meant to open Black Magic Design camera footage? Sony not compatible?

Wait... I remember about 8 years ago, opening five of these FS7 clips in an older version of Resolve and being blown away how the program could play five 4K XAVC clips simultaneously and smoothly. That was also the free version. Something's not right with this new version. Lost capability. hope Studio isn't broken like this, or it's a deal-breaker.

[Shrinivas Ramani]

Codec support relies more on format and platform than on source. It is possible that you're recording in a different format or flavor. To debug, please:

A. Use MediaInfo to determine the stated codec and format of the clip. To prevent confusion from wrongly coded files, include a sample clip in your response, include a detailed description of your setup (OS version & build, hardware, driver versions) so other users with comparable setups can test.

B. Check the latest codec support document to compare and determine what recording format to use.

Note that some formats (including some from Sony cameras) are available only in DaVinci Resolve Studio.

Hope that helps
Shrinivas

Thanks. I have a question now about licensing Studio.

I got the Speed Editor this morning and a card with a license key. Do I just enter that in the free version, or do I need to download the Studio version? But the website has only free and buy online options.

Thanks. I have a question now about licensing Studio.

I got the Speed Editor this morning and a card with a license key. Do I just enter that in the free version, or do I need to download the Studio version? But the website has only free and buy online options.

Download the Studio Version, and use the key there. You will always need to download the Studio Version in the future -- it's the classic mistake to update with the non-Studio version and suddenly things no longer work.

Go to the main BMD page, then select Support at the top and scroll down the list of "Latest Downloads".

I can't download the studio version without entering payment information though.

Oh, found the link. It's not the main download--rather hidden. Thanks! Downloading now!

Finally got Studio 20 up and running.

Got monitor clean feed up, but it's only using part of the 4K monitor. There's a 3-4" border around the video. It's not full screen.

SOLVED: Timeline was set to UHD from the free version limit. I changed it to DCI and now it fills the monitor.

That AI subtitling is mind-blowing! Playing with the tutorial video, which has really bad audio pickup, off mic sound quality. One click in the Cuts timeline and in seconds, it generated subtitles accurately for the whole interview, even though the audio was at -35dB and full of room echo. I wanted yellow text with a black outline, so I selected all the subtitle blocks and changed the attributes in the Inspector and voila--yellow subs with a black outline for the entire interview!

I've got 4000 pages to read in the main manual, but so far, I'm impressed!

You can use special versions of ChatGPT to learn Resolve:

https://chatgpt.com/g/g-JJOW5UAjq-davin ... ditor-guru

https://chatgpt.com/g/g-d3TLDzQsM-fairl ... und-master

https://chatgpt.com/g/g-tAgxPYifJ-davin ... ing-expert

https://chatgpt.com/g/g-HGVx9dOHf-davinci-vfx-guru

Be aware that it might still hallucinate an incorrect solution from time to time.

Never mind. The doc for said program explicitly states "DaVinci Resolve will totally override CommandPost when running, even if DaVinci Resolve is just running in the background".

Ah, that's unfortunate. My guess is it wants to block anything that doesn't expressly come from Resolve itself.

I'm trying to convert some old DV footage to HD. I've had some limited results, but Resolve keeps crashing or causing the workstation to reboot.

I've enabled Neural Engine for deinterlacing (which does a nice job).
I also enabled superscale and set up the render to 1920x1080. I get about a minute or so into the render and weird things happen. The first time, Resolve just stopped, froze, mouse pointer, keyboard frozen. Hard reset. Second time, screens both went black, but the app monitor had these weird blue bars at the top, looked like inverted city skyline. Shortly after the machine self rebooted.

I ran the process again, this time while watching Task Manager. Using 6% of system RAM and 30% of GPU VRAM at the time it crashed again.

Not sure what the issue is. Maybe this will be fixed in the final release, hopefully.

Well in three days you went from "Should I buy it" to bought with a speed editor. And a slew of questions.

I did a similar path about three years ago. I started with Premiere 2 in 1993 and upgraded every second version through CS 2. Then the subscriptions started so I stayed put. (I had a real job).

Yes Resolve is different and it will take time. Enjoy the journey. Blackmagic provides a huge amount of FREE classes. And a 4,032 page manual; learn to use "advanced search" in your favourite pdf reader. Darren Mostyn has some good videos and Cullen Kelly is the master of the color page. Both are on YouTube.

Re your digital 8 video footage. You have two choices:
1. Use premier to import them as avi's and then import into Resolve,
I set my project settings at 1024 X1980, resize @ smoother, Deinterlace quality @ Davinci AI Neural
engine and scale full frame with crop. My timeline is 29.97. Stay away from AI Super Scale on the edit
page.
2. Get a http://www.ImmersionRC.com PowerPlay., $220 Eur. (plugs into your camera or vhs player,
and converts to 1920X1080; 60fps, h.264 @ 8mb/s.

I disconnected my internet and was able to launch a Resolve Studio project.
I use 4 monitors with a MSI GEForce RTX Nvidia 3080 Ti.
Yes v20 seems to have some bugs but by the time you have figured some of it out they will too.
PS: Chapter 49 in the Davinci Resolve 18 manual is entirely devoted to the Speed Editor, (39 Pages).

read the entire thread, Mark hope the speed editor does work for you. One thing that came to mind in differences between free and studio is that pretty much all of the noise reduction features are limited to studio version only. Any of the heavier stuff works better. thankfully they don't have the limitation of exporting in 4k anymore that the free version had back in like 2020 or so.

I was debating the speed editor myself months ago but found a better alternative. It might be too late for you, but maybe anyone reading may find this useful, or if in the future you want to switch. One option to get customization with a keyboard / small accessory with dials is those programable keyboards you can find on eBay that range from $15+ which i've used mine to programed to quickly access my frequent used options.
Mine has 2 dials which one I use to scrub through timeline (with click feedback) and the other to zoom in and out as I can't zoom in / out with trackpad like you can in any other NLE.

Buttons I have is J K, In Out marks, M (markers) A (arrow) B (blade) P (make source full screen) Z (fit source rectangle to fit to size; if I zoom in too much or pushed it out of the way by scrolling)

When I was researching I was going to send $900 for the keyboard but it's large and heavy to lug around and customization isn't there either. So after much searching I found this.... https://dygma.com/pages/defy the defy keyboard is fully customizable and what I did like is that for instance in a photo editor like Lightroom or Capture One I can map one key (button) to run an array of actions like if you need to go to file>option A>option B>Toggle (example) and speed up your process. Also with whichever program you're in the shortcuts you program stay with that program so its not like my mini %15 keyboard that what I programmed them to do is all they do. it reverts to saved settings depending on what program you switch to. in editing its a game changer. Hope this helps someone!

Edit: had to wait for my comment to post to make the change, but there is another keyboard called "Raise 2" from same company that allows keyboard to actually connect and minimal. all I was getting at with suggesting this is giving more control options to editors. they can be pricey but nonetheless another option.

Hi Mark
I think that you will find that you'll love Davinci Studio. It is an endless journey of learning ... in a good way.
A couple of things in your posts:
Firstly on media codex, For me the experience is that Davinci is the software that is MOST likely to play some media, I think that I have only once had a file that other software played when Davinci would not. Moreover, Davinci is far more likely to actually manage full speed playback than any other software.

On the interlaced footage, I am just finishing a film that has a bunch of archive interlaced footage. Yes the high setting on the neural engine can produce good results. Upscaling depends on so many issues. In the case of interlaced footage the Superscaler is not your friend - I guess BMD just have not spent time & resources on managing that process, but I do highly recommend using it when you can, try using a pukka monitor card out and a good quality monitor, in general you should see that, superscaler can deliver amazing quality & detail, significantly better. An interesting test might be to deinterlace your DVs at native resolution and then re-import as progressive and superscale. See if it's better

Good luck

My workstation isn't connected to the virusnet.

You inspired me. I'm tired of worrying about my setup and gonna do the same thing with a dedicated and disconnected work station just for editing.

Sorry for my long absence. I just had cancer surgery (went into ER with internal bleeding on April 18) and was released after surgery finally last Sunday. To the good, I spend my time in the hospital watching hundreds of DaVinci Resolve videos. So by the time I got home, the first thing I did was hobble over to the workstation and fire up DR.

I'm reaching a point now where I can do serial type editing very rapidly, thanks to the layout/workflow.

Some features that blow me away:

The fact that compressors and EQ are right there in the mixer--no need to hunt for a plug in and load it,
The ability to convert dialog into transcript/subtitles in mere seconds,
Depth map in conjunction with Lens Blur--game-changing!
Voice replacement, AI voice training models,
Fast, fast, fast!!! rendering speeds.

There's more, but you get the idea.

The only thing I have not yet figured out is how to properly set up a multicamera long form concert video with 5.1 surround audio tracks. XDCam footage is broken into 4GB chunks and every time I try to make a multicam, I end up with 29 camera angles from four cameras.

Slick things I've done in Resolve Studio: Translate a Japanese language program into Japanese with English subtitles. (Resolve can transcribe Japanese and make Japanese subs. I export transcript, send to ChatGPT, request translation to English while maintaining time codes, which results in an .SRT file with English transcript, which I just drag and drop onto a new track and bam! English subtitles on my Japanese program! Mind-blowing.

I love DR so much I bought a second Speed Editor (the price came back down--paid $525 for the first one in early April and paid $395 for the second one this week. Now both my workstations have DR on them. The AI features run much faster on the RTX class GPU in my second workstation, while general video editing runs faster on the dual Xeon workstation.

I've had to connect some of the time to the internet to validate licenses having installed TMPGenc Authoring Works 7, which meshes nicely with DR.. markers become chapters in the BD authoring environment and I'm able to produce BDMV discs in minutes now instead of hours. Bought a stack of BD-RE to make testing more economical.

Right now, the only video file it can't read is AVCHD from the little Canon camera we used for the conductor close up in the orchestra. Only a tiny camera would fit in the nook of the orchestra shell, so a full sized pro camera was out of the question there.

Interesting suggestion about de-interlacing DV footage and rendering and re importing it to try superscale. I'm thinking it's one of those beta bugs that may be fixed in a later release.

I do own several ShuttlePro v2 controllers. Only one still works. They seem to just quit working after a year or two. I wanted something more substantial and since I'm commiting to DR, a dedicated controller that would make operation more efficient. So far, I like the controllers, and I've mastered a few of the functions. Things like Split and Trans seem to have a narrow window of double-tap speeds in which this work. Too fast or slow and nothing happens. Have to get the right rate of double tap. I can see them making this a little more tolerant of variable speeds different people double tap buttons. Love the feel of the jog wheel!

Overall, DaVinci Resolve Studio is like a Swiss army knife, except it does everything it does very well.
If I can master the multicam concert video production in DR, I can finally ditch Premiere.

[Peter Chamberlain]

In the media pool, select all the clips from the same camera, in metadata set a camera name/number.
Do the same for each camera.
Now the metadata can guide what’s really the same camera vs just another source

I see an option "clip attributes" but I'm worried that if I change the name there it will change file name on disc as well. I don't see the option to edit metadata. Am I looking in the wrong menu?

Where is Metadata Edit Option?

Annotation 2025-05-04 142119.png (144.19 KiB) Viewed 1290 times

I tried a simple test first: took just 3 clips, cam 1,2 & 3 and create multicam timeline. When I drag that onto my timeline, only camera 1 has picture, as can be seen, the other two are black.

Cam 1, 2, 3 loaded, but 2 & 3 black screen

Annotation 2025-05-04 144241.png (491.81 KiB) Viewed 1282 times

After hours of experimentation, I think I have this worked out for surround multi-cam editing.

Part of the problem was that the video in the multicam monitor would not appear properly until I toggled in and out and back into the multicam mode.

Then getting some of the footage assembled (just three clips, one from each camera, representing 13 minutes of the concert program and getting it synched up.

Remaining is to get the three cameras perfectly synched. Still working on that process, but I have it roughed in now and I can do a multicam switch with the Speed Editor's CAM 1-9 buttons. That's working well.

Surround Multicam

Screenshot 2025-05-04 205532.jpg (205.58 KiB) Viewed 1256 times

I think one of your problems is that those cameras do not create really unique file names.

To do what Peter suggested you have to go onto the Media Page, there you can easily adjust the meta data entries for camera name/number. This won’t alter your file names on disk.

Is this metadata in the Clip Attributes menu shown below? The original filename on disc is shown in the name field. If I change that to "Camera 1 part 1" (the 90 minute concert is broken into 13 minute 4GB chunks by FAT32 recording SxS media in camera) it won't affect filename on disc?

How should I name them to a) differentiate between cameras and b) stack all the sequential 4GB clips in chronological order?

Clip Attributes

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Changing the name here WILL NOT rename the file on disk.
Changing things in Resolve almost never writes back to the actual files.
There are a few exceptions - the "Delete Permanently" command for one - but they're rare and usually called out in dialog warnings.

As Peter said, the main thing to do is "set a camera name/number for each camera" and make sure every clip has such. Then Resolve will know where each clip came from and can do much better in grouping them.

Thank you for clarifying that this is non-destructive to the file on disc.

Can you suggest a naming convention (with consideration that these are 4GB chunks, many in a 90-minute concert) that will not only allow Resolve to recognize cam 1,2,3,4, but also first, second, third and so on chunks of consecutive video clips?

Such as "cam 1 - part 1" "cam 1 - part 2" etc.

It’s setting the camera field that’s important, not the clip names. The clip names would be better constructed by using % vars like %Program Name-Day %Shoot Day-Cam %Cam # and using any other vars as you prefer to describe the clip. You just fill out the metadata and the name gets constructed automatically.

Pardon my denseness, DR is new to me, especially in this mode of use, but is this the camera field you're referring to? I've labeled them 1, 2, 3, etc. after reviewing each clip to determine angle.
I think this is an important setup process to get this to work predictably and efficiently.

I have SOME file naming ability in camera, but the "%" symbol is not allowed. At the least, I can set each camera to pre pend the file with CAM1, CAM2, etc.

Media Pool

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