Blackmagic Design has released DaVinci Resolve 18.1 and it is a huge update

Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve 18.1 has been released and it has so many impressive features.

It is so impressive to see Blackmagic take features that other people do (read Adobe) and do leapfrog them with more impressive features.

I was very happy just to have adjustable keyframes in Fairlight Audio Automation. Without having an audio board, vector keyframing for Automation Curves makes this so much easier for many cases than riding levels, and I used that extensively in my short film to do my final mix.

Above and beyond that though are the AI Based Voice Isolation as well as the Built-in Dialogue Leveler. The dialogue leveler does what adobe did with it’s essential audio panel, and takes it to the next level. While Adobe can level clips, it levels whole clips in the timeline, while Blackmagic does it for the the whole track, being able to level different parts of a single clip! This feels like something that should have been added to Adobe years ago as an incremental upgrade, but Adobe does seem to go in on new features more than new features (and yes this is new to DaVinci as well).

Daily Beast on the lost art of DVD Special Features, thanks to Streaming

Liz Arcury at Daily Beast has this article. I just talked about Jonny Elwyn’s favorites, but this is another article that hits home for me, as I cut so many great DVD behind the scenes.

The really sad part is that most streaming is going to end up with commercials anyway, because that is the only way for it to make money, sadly the best part of streaming will go away. And so many movies are not available on streaming and almost none of their special features are available anywhere.

Even the one place that still does some special features, Disney does not go in depth enough. And I miss audio commentaries too.

Working on Lord of the Rings was a dream job, but BTS features got smaller and smaller, till they were nothing but using EPK footage, and now even that is gone for most features. It is really sad for film students, and film lovers.

Oliver Peters at DigitalFilm did a quick review of the DaVinci Resolve Speed Editor

Worth a quick read.

It is an interesting device, and it does work well for the Cut page, but the multicam buttons are fucking useless, as no one would be using that many angles and be using this, but the wheel is pretty amazing.

Really it needs to be able to customized, or maybe just make a smaller version without all the useless buttons.

Jonny Elwyn on the Best DVD Extras for Film Editors on Film Editing

From Johnny Elwyn, and I of course appreciate it after working on DVD Extras for years, including Lord of the Rings, King Kong and some of the Hobbit.

It really is such a shame that there are basically almost no special features being produced anymore, as they barely have any for streaming except for a few for Disney+.

I did love doing special features, but now there is basically only the EPK footage to make very crappy and short special features.

Engadet on Microsoft’s update to the Surface Studio, with last gen tech

D. Hardawar wrote this article on the long awaited update on the Surface Studio with 11th gen intel chips and RTX 3060 graphics.

This was such intesting hardware, but why not update for 4 years, then user older hardware for such an expensive device? Seems like something Apple would have done years ago, and Windows Users would have done nothing but complain about.

Save as Popup Window Closes with right arrow in newest Adobe Apps on Mac OS Ventura

This was driving me buggy, I thought it was just Ventura, or maybe Default Folder, but it seems to affect just Adobe Apps right now. Went to Adobe Support Community to report it and luckily someone already did.

Thanks for reporting this problem. We are aware of this issue and currently investigating a fix. It is unfortunately affecting After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Media Encoder, so all three will need an update to fix this issue. Any fix will become available in the Beta builds, and then the next public release.

John, After Effects Engineering Team 

You can currently use the mouse to get around this, but it is fiddly, so lets hope they fix it fast.