I've been using it for many years, and it's grown in power and functionality with every release. BMD has offered free upgrades to Pro users (with no subscription) for many years, which is refreshing given the current state of software licensing.
For those upset with the new agent integration, keep in mind that one of the big knocks on DaVinci Resolve is that it's hard for beginners. Powerful tools like color grading and nodes take years to truly master (and that won't change), but making it easier for users to collaborate with the agents they already use to help learn and perform basic tasks should help with the learning curve.
Ultimately, professional video editing is an art. An agent might save time with asset management, project/timeline setup, etc., but it won't replace the real experience and taste required for larger projects. I would rather spend the extra time on the nuanced/deeper creative work.
No offense whatsoever. But this whole line "but it won't replace the real experience and taste required for larger projects" is not how I see it. I wish people are more humble at this juncture of AI progress. This is not to say humans won't play a part but saying xyz cannot be replaced is a big stretch. Saying its not there currently is okay but saying it won't replace I don't see where that's coming from.
The way I see it, it’s all about how you use it. Let people have tools; their output stands on its own legs.
As pro software, the UI has a learning curve. Many YouTube videos are out of date, or unnecessarily drawn out.
Additionally, as a hobbyist, project settings, color spaces, clipping, etc can be tricky to miss.
I’ve already been using Claude to (1) help me with UI, (2) QA my delivery, and (3) occasional fixes for audio repair; waveform sync (can’t afford time codes).
I make all creative decisions - including most menial ones - myself, I wouldn’t have it any other way; I enjoy the act of creating. I welcome this integration.
I’m sure some users are gonna agentically grade or whatnot. I don’t like it, but I’m also don’t believe in telling other people what they should do with their own work and creative process.
> But this whole line "but it won't replace the real experience and taste required for larger projects" is not how I see it.
Why not? Personally (although I'm not saying others have to see it this way too), I'd wait until I can see what AI can replace, before believing so, rather than the opposite.
So far, AI isn't able to "set direction" at all in any sensible way, especially for a creative project like TV or movies, the results are just too bad (today). Although it's excellent at "following directions", which is why these new APIs are great and exciting, it lets people who are good at setting direction to leverage these tools to have the direction concretely followed by something, without having to create a group of collaborators.
Until we've seen proven that AI can indeed "set directions" ("have taste"), I think it's fair to assume they're unable to do so in a way that it produces something that humans generally enjoy. And very far from the kind of masterpieces a human can create.
Because there has to be demand for it. There are hundreds of tasks that could be automated right now, and people still choose to do them by hand. Just because something is technically replaceable doesn’t mean it will be replaced and editing is a deeply personal part of the process for almost every director. It will change, but for serious work, it will never be a sure shot job handled entirely by AI. Sure, for low effort marketing videos you’d outsource to Fiverr, it’ll happen sooner or later but that’s not what we’re talking about here.
> ...but for serious work, it will never be a sure shot job handled entirely by AI.
Maybe not entirely handed by AI but when AI starts doing it better than most and in a fraction of the time, for a fraction of the cost, why do you think it wont be at least partly delegated to AI?
Because there is no demand for it to be fully handled by AI. Nobody is denying that parts will be handled by AI but that’s also you moving the goal post.
> DaVinci Resolve 21.1 now supports integration with AI assistants such as Claude, Claude Code and ChatGPT Codex, allowing customers to analyze projects, organize media, adjust settings and batch render using everyday conversational language. Customers can ask their AI assistant to create highlight edits from long form video, remove unwanted clips and render deliverables, so they can spend more time being creative rather than getting bogged down in repetitive tasks.
I have videographer friends, and this is exactly what they've been asking for. Their dream is to be able to say "sync the A and B camera footage, chunk the whole interview down into segments, and then pull together the highlights based on this outline."
Not every application of AI is "do the creativity for me."
I would not be surprised if engineers who laid the groundwork for this back then would be happy with this workflow.
I am reminded of an interview I saw about the Stranger Things intro (before mainstream audiences got weird about the show). The producers wanted a practical effects intro, and consulted with people who actually made 1980s intros the show was trying to replicate.
The old guard said the show’s producers were crazy to do it with practical effects and should just use CGI since this was what they would have done, if they had the technology.
Edit: oh god, there is a nearly identical HN post from 2024 from me that I do not remember making. I swear I am not an LLM. I am also hoping that I am not an old man telling his stories over and over either: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40453073
Is it that surprising that a bunch of old guys don't have the same energy and excitement as the new ambitious up-and-comers?
George Lucas seemed pretty satisfied when filming the Star Wars prequels to plop himself down in a chair in a room with a giant bluescreen set where he didn't have to walk around and direct in a hot, sandy desert for hours like in the original films. But the movies looked a lot worse for it.
I just watched the entire cycle of Don Quixote films by/about Terry Gilliam. That is a master class in how to ensure that your magnum opus is the worst film you've ever made.
If we can get the environmental impact of this stuff ameliorated (a big if), this is the real benefit of this kind of AI assistance imo- it transforms everyone into a director and frees them from being a surrogate for a director.
See also: 3D modeling. Autodesk Fusion's interface is truly awful and people put years into learning it to do complex things. The MCP server functionality they added, though still in its infancy with Claude and what it can do, vastly lowers the barrier to entry for people just looking to get into making basic things. They can focus on the actual creative process rather than fumbling with the awkward tooling.
A lot of professional skill nowadays is misdirected from ‘knowing how to do the thing’ into ‘learning how to use a computer to do the thing’.
The role of music producer includes a large chunk of ‘knowing how to program synths and samples and drums and effects’. The role of industrial designer includes a lot of ‘knowing how to model things in CAD’. Even roles like academic researchers require skills like ‘formatting LaTeX’.
I’m genuinely quite excited for a shift in human computer interaction which reduces that ‘knowing how to do things on the computer’ tax.
But there are a whole swathe of jobs where a lot of what people do is ‘know how to do the thing on a computer’. Some of that is really because the bureaucracy has been embodied in a computer system so for example the job of handling an insurance claim seems to involve a lot of ‘knowing how to operate the claims computer system’ - actually that person’s skill is ‘knowing how to navigate the claims bureaucracy’.
Completely agree. How many people over the past 20 years have been musically gifted, but found ProTools or Logic impenetrable? The AI unlock is about enabling that creativity, not replacing it.
AI is elevating one’s capability but not replacing it.
Then you have experience and skills.
Someone with zero skills in music will be able to make a 'song' but a savvy producer would use tools differently and could leverage them to actually make something creative.
Anyone can make an app those days (or a website or whatever) but mileage varies based on one's nature, also the gotchas of someone with zero knowledge of a field could result issues that someone with experience would've noticed and resolved much earlier or avoided completely.
Me with zero knowledge in architecture can "design" my house but I wouldn't trust my plan without someone looking at it.
AI and AGI provides great lengths in empowering but it might also introduce the false feeling of being capable.
Creativity, capability and motivation still takes important place even with AI.
Exactly. Sometimes I just need a 3D printed part to finish a DIY project, I don't want to waste hours designing it. I had my fair share of time playing around with SketchUp when I was a teenager, but that's it.
I'm not complaining either, I wouldn't call myself a video editor, but I do end up spending some of my time in Resolve, and anything to remove the dreadful monotonous tasks of editing interviews is welcome. Although Resolve already makes it pretty easy, with the "edit by moving the transcript around" feature which is amazing. Anyway, I'm happy about being able to sick Codex at Resolve now :)
For example: the guys on youtube using AI to make new Star Wars movies [1] still did tons of work putting it all together, including the 3d renderings and editing, and they are leaning on old scriptwriting/dialogue from a 1991 Star Wars book. AI is just helping them automate the process and generate some visuals/voice acting, but it still takes a skilled artist with lots of technical knowledge to guide it in the right direction and properly utilize their existing tools/workflows... and most importantly good taste.
It's already possible, but in my opinion it will never be popular. In some ways this has already been proven through other media; ChatGPT can easily generate a novel, but how many people are reading pure-AI novels?
These 'integrations' everywhere just mean we get more APIs that can be accessed programmatically, which I think is good for users, even if you don't plan to use to use AI. It's like the optimistic web 2.0 APIs everywhere days
No no, if you've ever spent serious time editing, it's a big deal -- if they pull this off correctly, it will be a game changer.
Editing has so much grunt work, where you just have to spending time organizing, collecting files, renaming things, finding missing files... Just tedious project management stuff that is excellent for an AI to do.
I've edited well over a thousand hours of video on my (Debian) DaVinci Resolve workstation. It's a rock-solid video editor that I can spend a day in without having to worry about a crash.
But I desperately wish Blackmagic would bring support for VST3 plugins and JACK to Linux. Or, at the very least, allow me to use my MIDI control surface in Fairlight on Linux.
As it stands, I have to do all of my audio production in Reaper, and that's a bit cumbersome.
I've had Claude Code drive DaVinci Resolve before in three ways:
- Generate .otio files that are imported. Unfortunately, .otio doesn't fully support everything Resolve can do.
- Resolve has a scripting engine. Claude can write Lua scripts, then execute the script (through UI Automation)
- Computer Use. It's quite token intense, but it works.
I didn't try it, but for the paid version, someone also built a MCP server based on the scripting engine.
I'm programmatically adding analysis to sim racing lap guides, therefore my flow is probably different from the usual editing flow, but I have to say I found Claude Code + Opus to be quite capable of making edits with computer use.
I had AI write a program to edit with resolve. It does transcription, looks at the transcript and decides where to make cuts. If does a decent job and saves me a bunch of time.
Would be SO sick! I feel like there is such a big appetite for it and people would do the free labor to support it. I wonder what keeps it in this horrible purgatory of install hell.
This aur package [1] works well for me. Unfortunately the new maintainer removed the automatic download and you need to manually download the zip via the form on Blackmagic's website (however not even the email is validated).
As an anecdote, I recently needed to colour-grade some short footage for personal purposes. My workflow at the time was to essentially ask an LLM for guidance on how to use DaVinci Resolve to perform the task, step by step. I would make an adjustment, take a screenshot of the controls and the result, and repeat that process a handful of times, eventually ending up with a pretty nice result.
I can definitely see the utility of something like this for cases where a media budget just wouldn't have existed in the first place.
I’ve been using it in Linux for >2 years, including their special cutting keyboard (blanking on the name).
Works without a hitch, including multi monitor, gpu acceleration etc
I use it on Manjaro, installed via AUR.
That said, IIRC it only works with nvidia GPUs and requires X11, and is supposedly finicky to get the environment right for (but the AUR gets it right for me)
Seems like an unusually boring Resolve release. There's nothing there I particularly want to try out. Nothing wrong with that, I've just got used to every release having a ton of shiny new stuff in it.
I guess the agentic stuff is probably exciting to somebody.
I don't see how companies like this can survive going forwards. DaVinci Resolve is effectively ~200 Astra/Fable prompts, maybe even fewer if you're willing to forgo polish.
I'd give you $100K no questions asked if you manage to get something even close to Resolve with 2K Astra/Fable prompts, polish included. You vastly underestimate how much work goes into "polish" when software with huge surface area is decades old.
Black Magic Design's primary business is selling cinematography hardware. Anyways, those ~200 prompts are going to cost you more money than a license once you factor in the cost of your own time. Value proposition of AI still ain't there, and it probably won't be until the hardware bubble pops, and it very well might never pop without market intervention. This is assuming your 200 prompts is a realistic figure, which I'm frankly skeptical of.
For those upset with the new agent integration, keep in mind that one of the big knocks on DaVinci Resolve is that it's hard for beginners. Powerful tools like color grading and nodes take years to truly master (and that won't change), but making it easier for users to collaborate with the agents they already use to help learn and perform basic tasks should help with the learning curve.
Ultimately, professional video editing is an art. An agent might save time with asset management, project/timeline setup, etc., but it won't replace the real experience and taste required for larger projects. I would rather spend the extra time on the nuanced/deeper creative work.
As pro software, the UI has a learning curve. Many YouTube videos are out of date, or unnecessarily drawn out.
Additionally, as a hobbyist, project settings, color spaces, clipping, etc can be tricky to miss.
I’ve already been using Claude to (1) help me with UI, (2) QA my delivery, and (3) occasional fixes for audio repair; waveform sync (can’t afford time codes).
I make all creative decisions - including most menial ones - myself, I wouldn’t have it any other way; I enjoy the act of creating. I welcome this integration.
I’m sure some users are gonna agentically grade or whatnot. I don’t like it, but I’m also don’t believe in telling other people what they should do with their own work and creative process.
Why not? Personally (although I'm not saying others have to see it this way too), I'd wait until I can see what AI can replace, before believing so, rather than the opposite.
So far, AI isn't able to "set direction" at all in any sensible way, especially for a creative project like TV or movies, the results are just too bad (today). Although it's excellent at "following directions", which is why these new APIs are great and exciting, it lets people who are good at setting direction to leverage these tools to have the direction concretely followed by something, without having to create a group of collaborators.
Until we've seen proven that AI can indeed "set directions" ("have taste"), I think it's fair to assume they're unable to do so in a way that it produces something that humans generally enjoy. And very far from the kind of masterpieces a human can create.
Maybe not entirely handed by AI but when AI starts doing it better than most and in a fraction of the time, for a fraction of the cost, why do you think it wont be at least partly delegated to AI?
the "never" is what gets me here.
> DaVinci Resolve 21.1 now supports integration with AI assistants such as Claude, Claude Code and ChatGPT Codex, allowing customers to analyze projects, organize media, adjust settings and batch render using everyday conversational language. Customers can ask their AI assistant to create highlight edits from long form video, remove unwanted clips and render deliverables, so they can spend more time being creative rather than getting bogged down in repetitive tasks.
Not every application of AI is "do the creativity for me."
I am reminded of an interview I saw about the Stranger Things intro (before mainstream audiences got weird about the show). The producers wanted a practical effects intro, and consulted with people who actually made 1980s intros the show was trying to replicate.
The old guard said the show’s producers were crazy to do it with practical effects and should just use CGI since this was what they would have done, if they had the technology.
Edit: oh god, there is a nearly identical HN post from 2024 from me that I do not remember making. I swear I am not an LLM. I am also hoping that I am not an old man telling his stories over and over either: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40453073
George Lucas seemed pretty satisfied when filming the Star Wars prequels to plop himself down in a chair in a room with a giant bluescreen set where he didn't have to walk around and direct in a hot, sandy desert for hours like in the original films. But the movies looked a lot worse for it.
However it can lead to AI "doing the creative for them" and them out of a job in the near future.
See also: 3D modeling. Autodesk Fusion's interface is truly awful and people put years into learning it to do complex things. The MCP server functionality they added, though still in its infancy with Claude and what it can do, vastly lowers the barrier to entry for people just looking to get into making basic things. They can focus on the actual creative process rather than fumbling with the awkward tooling.
The role of music producer includes a large chunk of ‘knowing how to program synths and samples and drums and effects’. The role of industrial designer includes a lot of ‘knowing how to model things in CAD’. Even roles like academic researchers require skills like ‘formatting LaTeX’.
I’m genuinely quite excited for a shift in human computer interaction which reduces that ‘knowing how to do things on the computer’ tax.
But there are a whole swathe of jobs where a lot of what people do is ‘know how to do the thing on a computer’. Some of that is really because the bureaucracy has been embodied in a computer system so for example the job of handling an insurance claim seems to involve a lot of ‘knowing how to operate the claims computer system’ - actually that person’s skill is ‘knowing how to navigate the claims bureaucracy’.
> Computers aren't the thing. They're the thing that gets us to the thing.
That was that character’s take on Jobs’s ‘bicycle for the mind’ concept.
Then you have experience and skills.
Someone with zero skills in music will be able to make a 'song' but a savvy producer would use tools differently and could leverage them to actually make something creative.
Anyone can make an app those days (or a website or whatever) but mileage varies based on one's nature, also the gotchas of someone with zero knowledge of a field could result issues that someone with experience would've noticed and resolved much earlier or avoided completely.
Me with zero knowledge in architecture can "design" my house but I wouldn't trust my plan without someone looking at it.
AI and AGI provides great lengths in empowering but it might also introduce the false feeling of being capable.
Creativity, capability and motivation still takes important place even with AI.
IIRC House MD was one of the first shows to use digital (5D mkII).
Soon there will be AI generated shows. Perhaps entirely personalized.
Youtube, generate me a TNG episode.
It will never be that simple.
For example: the guys on youtube using AI to make new Star Wars movies [1] still did tons of work putting it all together, including the 3d renderings and editing, and they are leaning on old scriptwriting/dialogue from a 1991 Star Wars book. AI is just helping them automate the process and generate some visuals/voice acting, but it still takes a skilled artist with lots of technical knowledge to guide it in the right direction and properly utilize their existing tools/workflows... and most importantly good taste.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4gZR1BDzOw
Which is maybe why Mechanical Turk will be shutdown in 3 weeks. No more people laundering AI.
[0]: https://www.mturk.com
If the chat-bot/spy-ware aren't integrated, than I don't see a problem with LLM plug-in opt-in support. =3
smh
But I desperately wish Blackmagic would bring support for VST3 plugins and JACK to Linux. Or, at the very least, allow me to use my MIDI control surface in Fairlight on Linux.
As it stands, I have to do all of my audio production in Reaper, and that's a bit cumbersome.
I didn't try it, but for the paid version, someone also built a MCP server based on the scripting engine.
I'm programmatically adding analysis to sim racing lap guides, therefore my flow is probably different from the usual editing flow, but I have to say I found Claude Code + Opus to be quite capable of making edits with computer use.
1: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/davinci-resolve
[1] https://github.com/zelikos/davincibox
I can definitely see the utility of something like this for cases where a media budget just wouldn't have existed in the first place.
Works without a hitch, including multi monitor, gpu acceleration etc I use it on Manjaro, installed via AUR.
That said, IIRC it only works with nvidia GPUs and requires X11, and is supposedly finicky to get the environment right for (but the AUR gets it right for me)
I guess the agentic stuff is probably exciting to somebody.