DEFINITION November 2019

USER REVI EW | RESOLVE 1 6

“THE KEY CAPS ARE LABELLED WITH THE APPROPRIATE RESOLVE SHORTCUTS, WORKING WELL WITH BOTH CUT AND EDIT PAGES”

default key mapping) it is very fast indeed. The jog wheel is weighty and accurate – you can spin it in Jog mode but there’s a clutch that engages in Shuttle mode to give it end stops and a centre detent. I’d like to have a sprung centre position in Shuttle mode as well. There are a couple of issues with the Editor Keyboard. It’s HUGE – I use a Wacom tablet instead of a mouse and I could barely fit them both on my desk. Secondly, it costs nearly £1000 and I’m not sure that the extra facility it offers is worth it, especially given that the additional features – the jog/shuttle wheel and so on – don’t work with any other NLE. BEST FOR POST- PRODUCTION That said, DaVinci Resolve 16 is now undoubtedly the most capable post- production software out there. No other package can demonstrate the same ability to edit, add top-notch effects, grade, mix and deliver, in a multi-user environment and on pretty much any platform – and the basic version is free. Resolve 16 adds a bunch of new capabilities alongside the Cut page, including facial recognition in the editor, which will automatically create bins for your characters, better GPU support in Fusion, AI-based grade matching in the Color page, foley sounds and new effects in Fairlight – it’s a big update. I also find encouraging the pace at which Blackmagic are developing Resolve – whilst other NLEs trickle out slightly underwhelming bug fixes and irritating UI changes, Resolve gets bigger, better, faster and stronger at an astonishing rate. Personally, I would like to see more of the big post houses offering Resolve as an option, along with standing desks and tea made in a pot not in a mug. But then I’m a dreamer, I guess...

IMAGES Resolve gets bigger, better, faster and stronger at an astonishing rate

Hitting the Timeline button, of course, selects the timeline so that the knob moves the playhead. To the left of the QWERTY keyboard there is a panel of buttons dedicated to the main editing features. Big In and Out keys are self- explanatory. Above them are buttons for the Cut page’s ‘intelligent’ insert/ overwrite functions: Smart Insert, Append to End, Ripple Overwrite, Source Overwrite, Place on Top, and Close Up. Below are the trim buttons. These you press and hold to select the trim function (Trim In point, Trim Out point, Roll, Slip and so on) and then use the knob to perform the trim. The final three buttons in this group set transitions to Cut, Dissolve or Smooth Cut (which adds an optical flow-style morph transition, similar to Avid’s FluidMorph, FCP X’s Flow transition and Premiere’s Morph Cut). It’s quite possible to use the keyboard to edit in the Cut page without touching the mouse – you can even edit with the Viewer full- screen. With a little practise (and re-learning to use Resolve’s

simplifies the transition for me, a sort of weird crossbreed of Avid, Final Cut, Premiere and so on. Nevertheless, if you are going to stick to Resolve (which is certainly no bad thing) then they provide a useful learning aid. FRAME ACCURATE The numeric keypad is dedicated to frame accurate navigation – as well as the numbers, there is a button to change from entering timecode to frames. There’s a 00 key, a key for setting clip duration, as well as plus and minus keys. Above the numeric keypad is a set of keys that controls the sort field of your clips by timecode, camera, duration or clip name. To the right of the keyboard is a jog/shuttle/scroll wheel (which would be familiar to anyone who has used an edit controller or Betacam/ DigiBeta tape machine), and two big Source and Timeline buttons. By default, the Source button sets the Cut page Viewer to the Source Tape setting, so you can zip through reviewing all your source clips using the weighted and rubberised wheel.

68 DEF I N I T ION | NOVEMBER 20 1 9

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