Resolve 17 – New Fusion Features

The new release of DaVinci Resolve 17 looks very promising from a Fusion perspective. It includes small, mostly incremental, but very effective enhancements.

If you asked last week about what should be improved with the DaVinci Resolve 17 upgrade, most people would have said stability and performance. If you asked further you might hear about audio support and about improvements to the way edit effects can be applied.

It seems Blackmagic Design was listening – because that’s pretty much what we got. Instead of overwhelming us with impressive new features, they have worked on stability and performance improvements throughout multiple v16.x upgrades and have now added just a few but impactful features.

Audio is now cached and played back in Fusion and you can see the waveforms in the Keyframe Editor. This is great for timing your animations. Whether it’s VFX that follows the beat in a Music Video or the classical muzzle-flash that should better sync with the sound of the gunshot.

On the Edit page in DaVinci Resolve 17 we can drag and drop Fusion effects directly onto clips and even stack them up. Who says layer-based and node-based editing need to be opposites? This approach seems very straight-forward for editors and for creating simple to operate, reusable effects. Yet, the full power of Fusion’s node-based Framework is accessible with one click.

Finally, we also get some additions for motion Graphics. The new Shape tools provide a performant way of creating simple vector graphics.

Here is the full list of topics that I discuss and demo in the tutorial:

• Audio and Waveform support
• Markers in Fusion
• Bookmarks in the Node area
• Option to customize the toolbar
• More Fusion UI Layout Presets
• Enhancements to the Effects Library in Fusion and the Edit Page
• Options to layer Fusion effects in the Edit
• New Shape Tools
• Anim Curves Parameter
• New ResolveFX Tools

… and just in case there are any doubts: The upgrade is free for all existing DaVinci Resolve Studio users and the extremely capable free Version is also available.