Updated DR Manual dated August 2020

This morning a new version (August 2020) of the DaVinci Resolve Manual appeared on the support page. This manual is 255 pages longer than the previous version released in March which is included in the latest software releases.

Looking at the Table of Contents, I see that most of the additional pages are used in Part 7 which describes how to use Fusion.

Thanks for the tip.

Now if we could just get users to read it before posting inane questions. Cmd/Ctrl-F in the PDF people! RTFM.


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Well spotted!

Looks like they've worked on bringing over information missing from the Fusion manuals since version 9.0.2. For example there's a new section "Animating in Fusion's Spline Editor" that is significantly longer than the information on that subject contained in both the prior Resolve 16 manual, and the Fusion Studio 16 manual. Its structure is very similar to that of the Spline Editor section in the Fusion 9 manual.

This is good news. I'm glad they're working on filling in the gaps in documentation that occurred as a result of the UI updates that started in Resolve 15's Fusion page and made their way to Fusion Studio in 16.

Fingers crossed we might soon also get the long-awaited update to the Fusion Scripting Guide which was last released for Fusion 8. Perhaps for v17? I suppose now it could be a unified Resolve & Fusion Scripting Guide.

I was looking for a change sheet. Do they not post that?

For manuals? I've never seen one.

Having read through quite a few of the new pages, I'll say again that it's great that this documentation is being updated. But I'll also add that I do hope this documentation is not a final version which will be released with any version of Resolve, because it needs some clean-up before that happens.

There's numerous references to things that only apply to Fusion Studio, and there's at least one place that refers to "Fusion and Fusion Studio" (page 1274), which has presumably been copied wholesale from the Fusion 9 documentation, back when "Fusion" (the free version) was still an active product. That's no longer true, and even if it were surely that's not relevant to discuss in the Resolve documentation.

Then there's two entire chapters that don't apply to Resolve at all - Chapter 64 on Bins, Chapter 65 on Fusion Connect. Both of these are Fusion Studio features which don't exist in Resolve and presumably never will, as they don't make any sense in Resolve.

To be fair this version of the document hasn't actually been released with any version of Resolve. It's possible it wasn't even meant for public release on the support site yet. So I'll withhold judgement on these errors. But I do hope stuff like this gets cleaned up before this new documentation is distributed with an actual product.

One more example: There's documentation here for Primatte. My first thought was "Great! Finally this is documented again." Then I realised that Resolve (Studio) doesn't include Primatte, so again this doesn't apply. I am still pleased to see it documented, as presumably that means it will also be documented in the next update of the Fusion Studio manual. But again, if the tool isn't going to be included in Resolve Studio (which is a big shame, but that's a whole different discussion), then the documentation for it shouldn't be in the Resolve manual.

PS:



Hmm

For manuals? I've never seen one.

Using a program like Framemaker, which is specifically made for manuals like this, will generate an automatic change list from manual version to manual version. From that change list you can pair down to sections, or even chapters, as opposed to every single change.

I use to use it all the time when I worked on technical manuals. It was nice to see the high-level changes you made.

This morning a new version (August 2020) of the DaVinci Resolve Manual appeared on the support page. This manual is 255 pages longer than the previous version released in March which is included in the latest software releases.

Thanks for the head's up on this, Michael.

Last I used Framemaker (on a NeXT Cube, no less) it was an amazing program.

Last I heard, a very long time ago, it was bought buy Adobe and buried (killed) to avoid competition with their own products. Which was a shame, as FM didn't really compete, it was specifically designed for long and complex documents, something none of the others never really did.

Has it been revised/updated? There was nothing quite like it.

For manuals? I've never seen one.

Using a program like Framemaker, which is specifically made for manuals like this, will generate an automatic change list from manual version to manual version. From that change list you can pair down to sections, or even chapters, as opposed to every single change.

I use to use it all the time when I worked on technical manuals. It was nice to see the high-level changes you made.

Then there's two entire chapters that don't apply to Resolve at all - Chapter 64 on Bins, Chapter 65 on Fusion Connect. Both of these are Fusion Studio features which don't exist in Resolve and presumably never will, as they don't make any sense in Resolve.

To be fair this version of the document hasn't actually been released with any version of Resolve.

This manual has now been released with 16.2.7. Reading through it further, I realise that this documentation is designed to be a single document combining both the Fusion page and standalone Fusion Studio. There are several sections which are split into two, one part for "on the Fusion page" and the other "in Fusion Studio". Presumably in the next Fusion Studio release, the entire PDF will be identical to Parts 7 & 8 of the Resolve manual.

I suppose that's not unreasonable, and will certainly simplify the process of updating the manual going forward. I do think it makes it harder for a new Resolve user to parse the documentation, as they will be constantly skipping over parts that don't apply. But it's definitely better to have complete, combined documentation than it be separate but only have partial coverage, as was the case before.

That said, I still don't understand why whole chapters would be included in the Resolve manual that don't apply to that product and never will. I really don't think the Bins and Fusion Connect chapters have any place in the Resolve documentation, and surely it'd be simple to exclude them from this manual while still including them in the Fusion Studio PDF.

Also I found this on p967:



Searching for "Chapter XX" finds three references total - p967, p1378, p1460.

Also: Chapter 53, p991 under "Node Editor" has a screenshot of the Color page, not the Fusion page: