Resolve 14 Archives - Tech Trends

Product Review: Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve Micro Panel

Tom — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 08:07:14 +0000

Tech Trends puts Blackmagic’s most compact plug-and-play control panel through its paces.

Blackmagic has just launched a major update to its fantastic video production suite Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve, bumping it to version 18.5 Beta so I have borrowed the smallest – and arguably the cutest – from their range of control panels to test.

The software is designed to work with an attached control surface & this is the most compact panel in the Blackmagic range
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Designed specifically for colour correction and working exclusively with DaVinci Resolve, this Micro Panel is a plug-and-play beginner/intermediate colourists dream. While DaVinci Resolve’s onscreen colour controls are very small and can be a bit fiddly, it is possible to grade effectivly with only a mouse, however the software is designed to work best and fastest with an attached control surface like the Micro, that features damped knobs and large trackballs to facilitate those fine tuned colour adjustments.

The delicate colour grading adjustments are almost impossible to make with a mouse
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The Resolve Micro Panel is a beginner/intermediate colourists dream
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In typical Blackmagic style they have redesigned professional level equipment that would have cost tens of thousands of pounds not so long ago, and dropped it in the laps of filmmakers around the world for a fraction of the price. This ties into their mission of democratising the industry and offering creative media tools at very affordable prices for everyone.

The essential colour controls are all present on the Micro Panel
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Retailing at about $860/£750 the Micro Panel is the smallest and cheapest of three new control panel offerings, with each step up including more Resolve functions, options and controls built into the panel. The essential colour controls are all present on the Micro Panel but you will have to jump back to the mouse to adjust curves, qualifiers and use keyframes plus many other features of Resolve.

DaVinci Resolve Micro Panel is perfect for independent editors and colorists that need a truly portable solution, great on set to create looks and evaluate color and lighting, ideal for quickly grading video in broadcast trucks, educational uses and much more!

Blackmagic are democratising the industry, offering creative media tools at affordable prices
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This limited toolset is offset by the size and convenience of the Micro Panel. Weighing just 3.5Kg and measuring 17 inches (43 cm) across, it will fit on most desks and tuck away neatly when not in use. The Micro is also the only one of the three new panels to connect via USB-C which carries both power and data, helping keep the desk uncluttered and leaving you with a free power socket.

The Micro is the only one of the three new panels to connect via USB-C
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Don’t let the small size and low price fool you though, this is a beautifully built panel, made of cast aluminium with a lovely matt texture and the knobs and trackballs have the same buttery smooth feel as the more expensive options, enabling precise micro adjustments as you grade.

The DaVinci Resolve Micro Panel is incredibly small but professional. It fits perfectly next to a keyboard for simultaneous editing and color grading, and is great for use with a laptop for on location grading!

The principal controls on the panel are the three large Ring-Trackballs with the ball controlling hue and the ring contrast. Above each ball are three reset buttons, RGB, ALL and LEVEL. RGB resets the hue Trackball, Level resets the ring contrast and All resets, well, all of them. On the right hand side are 18 buttons for basic grading functions including saving, comparing and storing grades, moving between nodes and shots, and at the bottom the three simple Play, Reverse and Stop transport buttons.

The limited tool set is offset by the size and convenience of the Micro Panel
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Above the central Ring-Trackball are Log, Offset and Viewer. Log switches the trackballs into Log mode, Offset turns the right Ring-Trackball controller into an Offset control, the left Ring-Trackball into Color Temp and the Middle Ring-Trackball into Tint. The Viewer button simply pops you in and out of Fullscreen mode. Knobs run along the top of the panel with controls for Y Lift, Y Gamma, Y Gain, Contrast, Pivot, Mid-Tone Detail, Color Boost, Shadows, Highlights, Saturation, Hue and Luma Mix, running left to right. These knobs control the sliders under the Color Wheel panel in Resolve where they are split over two pages.

Having all the basic functions at your fingertips makes grading fast and fun
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The only real drawback others have raised is the lack of assignable buttons on the Micro, but bearing in mind it is designed to plug and play with any DaVinci Resolve system from version 12.5 up and only works with Resolve, I personally don’t see this as a problem. What you get with the Micro Panel is a solid, well-designed tool that cannot fail, after a little practice, to improve your grading and speed up your workflow. After getting the hang of the layout grading became much more fluid and I spent more time thinking about the actual grade than about fiddling with the mouse and struggling to make the changes I wanted, it was also a noticeable help with my RSI and I felt less sore after a day’s work than I expected. The extra micro control it will give you over your grades alone is worth the price but having all the basic functions at your fingertips also makes grading fast and fun.

RRP: $860

Tom Atkinson is a Digital Producer & Photographer at R3Digital and Reviews & Dept. Editor at Tech Trends. Connect on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter @R3Digital

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The post Product Review: Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve Micro Panel appeared first on Tech Trends.

Democratising the Tools of Media Production

Tom — Wed, 14 Jun 2017 08:16:29 +0000

Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve 14 is set to shake up the industry, but is that good news for the pros?

Traditional media companies and production houses have been driven to innovate, or die
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For people like me who have worked at the cutting edge of television, advertising, corporate and entertainment production for the past couple of decades, the game has changed almost beyond recognition. Looking back at when I managed a post production facility in Soho – which is still clinging on to its status as the beating heart of the UK film and television industry – I can’t quite believe the budgets we allocated to keep on top of the latest technology. Each step up in quality (Linear to Non-Linear, SD to HD, then HD to 4K+) meant extremely expensive upgrades to camera hardware and media storage systems, and I wince when I remember the slow and buggy development in NLE software and the expensive and logistically demanding upgrade cycle for the associated hardware – manually stripping out and rebuilding edit suites to house the latest kit. Then there was the nightmare of software licensing and the difficulties and expense involved when upgrading and dealing with system compatibility issues. And there were always issues aplenty, trust me.

The media production industry has changed beyond recognition over the past 20 years
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It is not just the facilities that have had to change with the times though, it’s the people and the whole mindset of the industry. The production process was once staffed primarily by people with very specific single skillets: camera people, sound technicians, sound mixers, off-line and on-line editors, graders, producers and directors all of whom knew the value of their skills and the very clear, very rigid boundaries of their roles in the process.

Production professionals are more likely to have broader skill-sets
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No more. The democratisation of the industry has seen technology put 4K capable smartphones in everyone’s hand and awesomely powerful laptops within the reach of every graduate. Riding its own version of Moore’s law, media production has seen quality skyrocket as average production budgets plummet. In other words, high-quality production has become streamlined to the point where client’s expectations are so high, and their budgets so relatively low compared to previous industry standards, that only small, multi-skilled & adaptable companies can hope to turn around a profit or even keep afloat. Small teams of one or two multi skilled, tech savvy producer/directors, camera operator/sound recordists, animator/editors, armed with a basic kit, a DSLR, a laptop and an Internet connection have taken over video production for clients large and small, and I should know as I am one of them!

Technology enables small teams to produce high-quality content that was previously prohibitively expensive
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Some might say I’m painting a rather gloomy picture here, but I actually think change is to be celebrated. I marvel as I look back at all the advances we’ve seen since the days of VHS cameras and Non Linear editing, and at the end of the day, in an industry built on technology, change shouldn’t really come as a surprise. There have been winners and losers along the way, of course – this rapid evolution has seen the old business model for post houses suffer and the big beasts of production hardware and software driven hard to innovate and provide users with cost effective and flexible tools that make production quicker and easier. Established technology companies like Apple that once dominated the sector seemingly gave up innovating for it, while others (like Adobe) stepped up to make huge changes to their products and licensing systems, embracing the demands of new, versatile and mobile, laptop based users.

This new landscape also presented a huge opportunity for smaller ambitious companies to expand. One such company is Blackmagic Design from Australia, last week I attended a pop up product demo and training session to launch their latest version of DaVinci Resolve. Ironically this was on Greek St, the same Soho haunt where I managed my first post production house, what seems like a lifetime ago.

The event was massively oversubscribed, and no wonder: With the launch of DaVinci Resolve 14, Blackmagic have done the unthinkable (as far as a production professional is concerned): they have broken the boundaries between professional editing, colour grading and audio post and put them all into one easy to use piece of software. Oh and by the way, a limited feature version is free – yes free – while the full version is only £239 ($299) or get that for free when buying one of their cameras.

To put that into some context, this is less than my annual Avid Media Composer subscription, and it comes with lifetime updates for free! Not only that, but a new high performance playback engine and Optimised Media support means it will run on any well specced, mid-priced laptop. putting incredible power in the hands of everyone.

There are hundreds of improvements and advances since version 12.5. The edit panel now functions like a fully fledged NLE, offering incredible playback and scrub speeds and all the established edit features and functions of the competition as well as a few innovative new options like Audio Overlays, which pops the audio waveform right there with your clips in the source window, an awesome feature when you are editing dialogue.

A new Overlay Edit function lets you drag video only, audio only or video and audio to the timeline straight from the source window, no more drag, drop, select unwanted tracks and delete! It also comes with a useful selection of effects built in and will work with any third party OFX packages out there. The Colour page also gets access to over 20 new effects plus a new Warper, Stabilizer and Face Refinement Filter to touch up those eye bags, wrinkles and pimples.

Grading also benefits hugely from the speed improvements in version 14 and reviewing grades feels very quick indeed, but the show stopper in here is the addition of Fairlight, a professional audio solution designed for film and TV post production.

Working in perfect synch with your edit timeline each track on the new Fairlight page gets realtime EQ adjustment plus independent dynamics processing with an expander, gate, compressor and limiter plus VST plugin compatibility.

I am going to have to play more with this but the demo was seriously impressive. Not only can I use my current VST plugins but I can finish the mix inside my NLE without exporting to another application. The multi-channel recording feature is another huge step up from my current NLE and give me great flexibility in the mix. On top of this, new collaborative features enable multiple editors and colourists to work simultaneously on projects and timelines speeding up the workflow.

My favourite feature in 14, though, is the new Timeline Comparison Tool which graphically illustrates the changes made between versions of timelines and enables you to inspect, reject or approve them one by one.

Having all this creative power at your fingertips feels extremely empowering
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There are too many groundbreaking features in Resolve 14 to discuss them all here and yes, to be able to fully exploit its capabilities I will have to put in some time to learn the interface and gain some new skills in sound mixing and finishing, but at every step I will be taking more control of my productions with more creative results and I will become less dependent on hiring facilities and single skill operators to get me the deliverables my clients need. And that, according to Simon Westland, Dir. of Sales EMEA for Blackmagic, is exactly what they were aiming for in developing the Resolve 14. To solve real problems for production professionals.

“It’s about what toolset a user wants and what problems we can fix for that user, that drives our product development,” he explains

For me, that mindset is the real game changer. Giving people the ability to go from edit to grade to audio mix in a single clip is a massive shift, as is the fact that exporting and round tripping to other applications for colour correction or audio post is now a thing of the past. It all translates into dramatically speeding up production and keeping costs down, and that feels tremendously empowering. As good old Bob Dylan so aptly puts it, The Times, They Are A Changin’, but that’s not such a bad thing after all.

Tom Atkinson is a Digital Producer & Photographer at R3Digital and Reviews & Dept. Editor at Tech Trends. Connect on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter @R3Digital

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