I heard about and saw DaVinci Resolve in action on Den Lennie’s music video course/experience. As a result I looked it up on the web and discovered there was a free version. At that time the free version was limited to only a couple of nodes depth (I think) but was still useful. Since then DaVinci have released a new version (8.1.1) without that restriction. Confusingly, back in October I downloaded “version 8.1.1” with patches and also “version 8.1.2”. Something got out of step somewhere! But for ease-of-life, I will stick with their latest download, described as “version 8.1.1”.
I downloaded a copy of DaVinci Resol;ve Lite 8.1.1 to my MacBook Pro (MBP) I went to http://www.blackmagic-design.com/support/ then selected (in this order): [Host=MacOS], [Product Series=DaVinci Resolve], [Product=DaVinci Resolve Lite]. That gave a page prompting for user info (e.g. contact details)which I duly filled. After that I was taken to the download page.
Resolve Lite runs on Mac OS but not (yet?) Windows (though that might follow eventually, according to http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/what-happens-vegas/500520-davinci-resolve-windows.html). My MBP has 8GB RAM and a both an Nvidia “9600M” (on motherboard) and a “9600M GT” (faster separate GPU).
My initial attempt to run Resolve Lite on my MBP resulted in a “whinge-window” about my machine’s GPU not being up tp Resolve’s requirements. That turned out to be because in the Mac OS Preferences, Energy-Saving mode, I had selected “extend battery life” (or whatever) instead of “max performance” (or whatever). This selection disabled the “GT” GPU leaving the machine to drop back to the lower-powered motherboard GPU. Selecting “Performance” mode (and rebooting) fixed the problem – no more “whinge-window”.
The Resolve Lite application filled the whole screen, with none of the usual “three colour buttons” at top-left corner, merely the ability to respond (appropriately) to Command-H (Hide). The initial screen was some kind of “User Logon” screen with default users Admin and Guest. I double-clicked on Guest and was greeted by an instruction that I should first set Resolve’s Preferences. Not unreasonably, it wanted to know which volume to use as Media Volume (for renders etc.). I chose the HFS+ partition of my GRaid Mini drive, connected via FireWire (FW800). In fact I created and selected a folder: [/Volumes/GRm HFS+/_App_Specific/DaVinci_Resolve].
Next I looked for some Tutorial videos:
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8OaHAQT1fA
- Official DaVinci company demo of Resolve, based on a”car driving on mountain road” example.
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srESTbBbCpw
- This YouTube page also links to a multitude of other Resolve demos/tutorials.