DaVinci Resolve Studio 20.1 Update Released by Blackmagic Design

The following features have been added or updated in DaVinci Resolve 20.1

Key Features

Apple Vision Pro spatial and immersive video workflows in macOS.
Direct monitoring of immersive content in Apple Vision Pro.
Support for Apple Spatial Audio Format.

Cut and Edit Page

Improved easing behavior for multiple keyframes.
More consistent easing for curves, keyframes and inspector controls.
Improved curve editor for active curves, ease, locked parameters.
Ability to adjust curves from the timeline keyframes and curves tray.
Keyframes are now displayed beyond clip edit points.
Ability to set a shortcut to switch between curve and keyframe views.
Curves option to disable auto zoom graph height for custom zoom.
Support for built in MultiText character level styling.
Support for MultiText indent, align and paragraph level styling.
Ability to import CSV files as column-aligned MultiText text boxes.
Additional smart reframe mode to affect pan only, tilt only or both.
Support for custom guides and snapping in the timeline viewer.
Ability to toggle extents for selected safe area overlays.
Ability to create subclip from edit timeline in out range.
Support for find in media pool for USD based geometry clips.
Options to sync media pool audio using in, out and marker.
Ability to sync audio for stereoscopic 3D videos.
Menu action to move playhead to mouse pointer using the C key.
Menu actions for full extent, detailed and custom zoom for timeline.
Timeline tab action to load to source viewer.
Configurable actions to explicitly enable or disable clip.
Audio and video only insert controls in the source viewer.
Improved right to left language handling in transcriptions.
Ability to view transcriptions for clips on the source timeline.

Fusion Page

Support for new immersive option in the viewer 360 Views menu.
Support for new immersive patcher tool.
Support for Magic Mask v2 in Fusion.
Support for caching deep composites to disk.
Option to downscale clip compositions to timeline resolution.
Improved DoD and RoI support for deep image compositing tools.
Improvements for USD Renderer for overscan.
Edit individual tool controls from the inspector context menu.
Improved shape duplicate tool with style, jitter and aligned rotations.
Support for swizzler to create alpha only multi layer outputs.
Support for swizzler background channels.
Support for regular expression based selection in Cryptomatte.

Color Page

Improved color viewer safe area display selection.
Ability to switch timeline resolution on the fly from the color viewer.
Improved cache retention for copied versions and timelines.
Improved magic mask retention for copied versions and timelines.
DCTL Support for ACES 2.0 Core.

Resolve FX

New ColorTone Diffuser emulates light based lens filters.
Natural and strong split tone modes in Film Look Creator.
New Split Tone with additional controls.
Separate RGB sliders and shimmer controls in light rays.
Secondary glow ability in glow.
New atmosphere controls in light rays and glow.
Ability to regrain skin smoothening areas in face refinement.

Fairlight Page

Support for half speed timeline playback.
Action to enable focus mode using the W key.
Ability to record in 32-bit floating point.
Audio waveforms are now accurate when recording.
Clip context menu action to regenerate waveform profiles.
Faster Audio Assistant analysis with short clips improvements.
Audio Assistant option to view the full UI of underlying effects.
Dialogue matcher ambience controls and improved wet dry matches.
Support for deleting busses from track headers and index.
Shift option command for fine mouse based scrubbing zoomed out.
Shift and command click to add to selection in mixer.

Codec and IO

Support for Blackmagic RAW 5.0 SDK.
Faster decodes for URSA Cine 12K LF and URSA Cine 17K 65 clips.
Support for decoding and encoding webp images.
12-bit support and custom quality controls for DNx.
Support for encoding H.264 and H.265 in MXF Op1A clips.
Support for decoding Samsung APV clips.
Improved native Windows H.264 and H.265 bit rate controls.
New deliver preset for Tencent video uploads.

General

Improved layouts for small, dual screen and vertical video views.
Improved per-system bin layout retention for multi-user projects.
Use shift space to display the effects search dialog in all pages.
Ability to search for effects in both English and application language.
Clone tool support for xxhash64 checksums.
DRT timeline exports now include Fusion media references.
Viewers now reflect updates to still images by other applications.
Concurrent viewer overlays for DeckLink and remote monitoring.
Scripting API support for voice isolation for audio clips and tracks.
Support for Electron 36.3.2 for workflow integrations.
New Javascript promises API for asynchronous workflow operations.
Support for audio only TS growing files.
General performance and stability improvements.

Minimum System Requirements for macOS

macOS 14 Sonoma or later.
8 GB of system memory or 16 GB when using Fusion.
For monitoring, Blackmagic Design Desktop Video 12.9 or later.
Apple Silicon based computer or GPU which supports Metal.

Minimum System Requirements for Windows

Windows 10 Creators Update.
16 GB of system memory or 32 GB when using Fusion.
For monitoring, Blackmagic Design Desktop Video 12.9 or later.
Integrated GPU or discrete GPU with at least 4 GB of VRAM.
GPU which supports OpenCL 1.2 or CUDA 12.8.
AMD/Intel official drivers from your GPU manufacturer.
NVIDIA Studio driver 570.65 or newer.

Minimum System Requirements for Windows for Arm

Windows 11 for ARM.
Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite series processor.
16 GB of system memory or 32 GB for 4K or when using Fusion.

Minimum System Requirements for Linux

Rocky Linux 8.6.
32 GB of system memory.
For monitoring, Blackmagic Design Desktop Video 12.9 or later.
Discrete GPU with at least 4 GB of VRAM.
GPU which supports OpenCL 1.2 or CUDA 12.8.
AMD official drivers from your GPU manufacturer.
NVIDIA Studio driver 570.26 or newer.

Feature Descriptions

Apple Vision Pro Immersive workflows

DaVinci Resolve Studio on macOS now supports Apple Vision Pro compatible spatial and immersive workflows. This includes the ability to organize, edit and render content and effects for playback on the Apple Vision Pro, in-device monitoring of DaVinci Resolve viewers, and using Apple Spatial Audio workflows in Fairlight.

In DaVinci Resolve Studio, start by creating an Apple Immersive workflow enabled project in the project settings.
Creating and previewing timelines is largely a familiar process. The default display in the viewer show the image in Lens Space. The edit page screenshot below shows some prominent viewing options – the immersive viewer mode, the toolbar with LatLong and Viewport preview types, pan, tilt and field of view controls. There is also an optional timeline backdrops track. You can add custom USDZ backdrops to display outside the bounds of the immersive video.
To monitor immersive content in Apple Vision Pro, connect your device to your Mac using a 5G wifi network. Under Workspace → Stream to visionOS, select your device. In the Vision Pro, the Apple Immersive Video Utility should show a streaming icon with an option to activate client viewer.
To use Apple Spatial Audio, in Preferences, under Video and Audio I/O, enable Apple Spatial Audio. You will now be able to add Apple Immersive busses and content.

Keyframe Improvements

The keyframe panel features several powerful updates to improve animation control and workflow efficiency. Easing behavior has been refined for multiple keyframes, ensuring smoother transitions and more consistent ease results across both the timeline and inspector.

The curve editor also includes enhancements for active curve visibility, improved display of ease states and locked parameters. You can now adjust curves directly from the keyframes and curves tray on the timeline, making it easier to fine-tune motion without switching views. Additionally, keyframes are also now visible beyond clip edit points, allowing for greater flexibility in building extended animations.

For added convenience, you can assign a shortcut to toggle between keyframe and curve views, and use the new vertical zoom slider to gain finer control when working within the curve editor. Altogether, these updates create a more streamlined and powerful keyframe editing experience.

MultiText Improvements

MultiText now includes new enhancements that make text formatting more intuitive and flexible. With your Fusion overlay enabled, you can now style text to the character level by simply highlighting a single letter or word and changing its font, color, or other formatting without affecting the rest of the text box.

Paragraph-level styling is also supported, allowing you to easily align text left, center, or right, and apply indents for cleaner formatting.

Additionally, you can import CSV files directly, and they will be automatically arranged into column-aligned MultiText text boxes for easy formatting and layout. For example, if your CSV has a list of names, emails, and phone numbers, they will automatically map into neatly aligned columns within your layout, saving you time and effort.

Improved Safe Area Controls & Addition of Custom Guides, Rulers & Snapping

The Edit page now offers a built-in ruler to give you greater precision and control when aligning your layout.

Located alongside the viewer guides, rulers and guides can be accessed from the dropdown menu. You can drag out guidelines directly from the ruler or right-click on the ruler and enter specific offsets to place a guide. The snapping feature is also intuitively enabled when guidelines are present, allowing you to have your elements snap neatly to margins, rulers, center lines, and other custom guides, speeding up your workflow while keeping everything pixel perfect.

This works across Text, Text+, MultiText, and clips, so whether you are laying out lower thirds, aligning subtitles across multiple clips, or organizing multiple graphic layers, you can maintain alignment and visual balance with ease.

Option to downscale clip compositions to timeline resolution

In project settings, under Fusion, you can opt to downscale timeline based compositions to timeline resolution. This allows more efficient processing of high resolution footage in lower resolution timelines. Media pool based compositions and non-timeline MediaIn inputs will still be retained in their original resolution.

32-bit floating point Recording Options

In Project Settings, under Fairlight and Recording, enable “Use 32 bit float recording”. This allows DaVinci Resolve to record at 32bit float/96KHz for voiceovers and ADR. Recording in 32-bit float audio can utilize its vastly increased dynamic range, allowing you to capture both very quiet and very loud sounds without clipping or distortion. This results in greater post-production flexibility and improved range for applied effects without introducing artifacts.

New Effects Search Dialog Invoked with Shift Space

From the cut, edit and Fairlight timelines, you can now invoke the effects search dialog using shift-space. From the dialog, you can select a previously used effect from history, or type to filter effects from the library. Use the cursor keys to navigate suggestions and enter key to apply. Effects and transitions are applied on the timeline selection. Titles and generators are added to the timeline.

In the color page, with focus on the node graph, you can invoke the effects search dialog using shift-space to apply to the current node.

Multiple Workflow Integration Improvements

Workflow Integrations now support a new asynchronous promises API. With DaVinci Resolve Studio 20.1, to start a promises based workflow integration, you can call (for example):

WorkflowIntegration.InitializePromise('com.blackmagicdesign.resolve.sampleplugin');
resolve = WorkflowIntegration.GetResolvePromise(); //promise object
projectManager = resolve.GetProjectManager();      //promise object
promiseValue = projectManager.ImportProject(...);  // runs asynchronously and returns status when done.

Compare this with the non-promise invocation which runs synchronously:

WorkflowIntegration.Initialize('com.blackmagicdesign.resolve.sampleplugin');
resolve = WorkflowIntegration.GetResolve();
projectManager = resolve.GetProjectManager();
value = projectManager.ImportProject(...);

The promise objects implement the same API as the non-promised objects – these are documented in the DaVinci Resolve scripting API. When invoked, these actions run asynchronously, and return the values when done.

The Electron base for Javascript based workflow integrations has been upgraded to Electron 36.3.2. In DaVinci Resolve Studio 20.1, Javascript based workflow integrations handle large object collections better (e.g. when querying a large list of clips or markers in a complex timeline) and continue to work when application modal dialogues are active.

Resolve FX ColorTone Diffuser and Split Tone

The ColorTone Diffuser effect simulates a real-world optical filter used in cinematography. It mimics the effect of RGB LEDs firing into a diffusion filter, softening shadows and creating a filmic, low-contrast look – similar to flashing film or using haze.

The effect offers granular control over key visual parameters, including diffusion, resolution, shadow soft clipping, and the RGB influence of the virtual ‘Tone Lights’. These simulate side-mounted LEDs interacting with a diffusion surface, resulting in a center-weighted effect that naturally falls off toward the edges. The falloff behavior is fully adjustable, with the option to disable it entirely.

Additional image correction controls—Exposure, Contrast, and Saturation—are provided to compensate for the inherent low-contrast output of the effect. In practical use of the physical filter, significant contrast and saturation adjustments are typically required to normalize the image. Integrating these adjustments directly within the plugin streamlines workflow and enables more accurate before/after comparisons when toggling the effect.

ResolveFX Split Tone offers options for emulating film stock that picks up a color cast along with exposure, resulting in a different color tone in shadows vs highlights. It has options for a natural effect, a strong effect for creative use, and a fully customizable effect in which shadows and highlights can be tinted to any pair of arbitrary colors. Use it when you need more nuance from the Film Look Creator split tone controls, without other aspects of the effect.

Enabling and Disabling Clips in the Timeline

DaVinci Resolve 20.1 introduces three distinct actions for enabling and disabling timeline clips.
From the keyboard configuration dialog, the actions Enable Clip and Disable Clip can be assigned shortcuts. These explicitly set the timeline selection to enabled or disabled. The action Toggle Enable/Disable Clip replaces the previous Enable Clip toggle action. This action now individually toggles the state of each clip in the selection.

Additional Information

You will also need to download and install the latest Blackmagic Design Desktop Video software for monitoring with your Blackmagic Design video hardware. Desktop Video is available from www.blackmagicdesign.com/support.

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