Blackmagic Design releases DaVinci Resolve 20.1
A recording of Blackmagic Design’s livestream of its announcements for NAB 2025. You can see a preview of Apple Vision Pro support in Da Vinci Resolve 20.1 at 2:36:30 in the video.
Blackmagic Design has updated DaVinci Resolve, its free colour grading, editing and post-production software, and DaVinci Resolve Studio, its $295 commercial edition.
DaVinci Resolve 20.1 adds support for new workflows for creating immersive content for Apple’s Vision Pro extended reality headset.
There are also updates to the software’s core toolsets, including the Color, Cut and Edit, Fairlight and Fusion pages. Below, we’ve rounded up the key features for colorists and effects artists.
Support for new workflows for creating immersive content for Apple’s Vision Pro
One key change in DaVinci Resolve 20.1 is support for new workflows for creating immersive content for the Vision Pro, Apple’s high-end XR headset, in the macOS edition of the software.
According to Blackmagic Design, changes have been made throughout the software to enable users to “ingest, edit, grade, mix and professionally deliver media” for the Vision Pro.
Of those, perhaps the largest are support for the Apple Spatial Audio format, and support for direct monitoring of immersive content.
The Fusion page, DaVinci Resolve’s compositing toolset, gets a new immersive option in the 360 Views menu in the viewer, and a new immersive patcher tool.
Blackmagic Design also recently launched the Ursa Cine Immersive, a new professional camera system specifically designed to capture content for the Vision Pro.
Color page: workflow improvements
For users working on content in more conventional formats, there are also updates to DaVinci Resolve’s other toolsets.
Colorists get workflow improvements to the Color page, including the option to change timeline resolution from the color viewer, and better safe area display selection in the color viewer.
Resolve FX: new ColorTone Diffuser and updates to Film Look Creator, Glow and Light Rays
The Resolve FX effects toolset gets a more substantial update, with a new ColorTone Diffuser that emulates the look of light-based lens filters.
The Film Look Creator introduced in DaVinci Resolve 19.0 has been updated, and now features natural and strong split tone modes.
There are also updates to the Glow and Light Rays effects: both get new atmosphere controls, while Light Rays get separate RGB sliders and shimmer controls, and Glow gets a new secondary glow option.
Fusion page: better deep compositing, and support for Magic Mask 2
Compositors get a number of updates to DaVinci Resolve’s Fusion page.
The deep compositing toolset introduced in DaVinci Resolve 20.0 gets another update, adding the option to cache deep composites to disk.
It is also now possible to make selections based on regular expressions when working with the Cryptomatte ID matte-generation system.
The Fusion page also now supports another key feature from the 20.0 release: Magic Mask 2, the new version of the software’s AI-based matte-generation system, initially only available in the Color page.
In addition, the Shape Duplicate tool has been updated, with “style, jitter and aligned rotations”.
Other changes include the option the option to edit individual tool controls from the Inspector context menu, and the option to downscale clip compositions to timeline resolution.
Updates to the Cut and Edit and Fairlight pages
We don’t cover video editing or audio mixing on CG Channel, but you can find details of the changes to the Cut and Edit and Fairlight pages via the links at the foot of this story.
Price, system requirements and release date
DaVinci Resolve 20.1 and DaVinci Resolve Studio 20.1 are compatible with Windows 10+, Rocky Linux 8.6, and macOS 14.0+. The updates are free to existing users.
New perpetual licenses of the base edition are also free.
The Studio edition, which raises the export resolution from 4K to 32K, and adds AI features, stereoscopic 3D tools, and collaboration features, costs $295.
Read a full list of new features in DaVinci Resolve 20.1 and DaVinci Resolve Studio 20.1
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