Blackmagic Design recently announced the release of DaVinci Resolve 17.3 and shared all the details on the latest update that’s optimized for M1 Mac. According to Apple, DaVinci Resolve 17.3 supports a completely new processing engine that transforms the speed of DaVinci Resolve to work up to 3 times faster on Macs with the M1 chip. With this massive speed increase, customers can now playback, edit and grade 4K projects faster and can even work on 8K projects on an Apple M1 notebook.
According to a report from Blackmagic, DaVinci Resolve 17.3 also supports a new option on Mac computers with M1 for H.265 hardware encoding. Users can now prioritize speed vs. quality while rendering the project, improving render times up to 65%. The new processing engine uses tile-based rendering, giving customers up to 30% longer battery life on laptops when working in DaVinci Resolve.
In addition, DaVinci Resolve will now decode AVC Intra files using the media engine built into the Apple M1 chip, making decoding and playback faster when working with these file formats.
Along with that, new FX controls have been added, including new grid shapes and greater precision when using mosaic blur, allowing users to adjust the amount and appearance of pixels finely. Let’s look at a list of the improved features in the DaVinci Resolve 17.3 update.
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DaVinci Resolve 17.3: Changelog
Apple Silicon Performance:
- Up to 3x faster new processing engine enabling 8K edit and grading.
Fairlight:
- Improved thru-latency and adjustable processing and input buffers.
- Improved export dialog with naming, metadata, and format control.
- Timeline clips can be selected from the Fairlight edit index.
- Improved Fairlight timeline ruler resolution.
- Buses can be reordered by dragging in the track index.
- New audio I/O preference options with support for separate I/O selections.
- Improved mix-down support for LRC, 5.0, and 7.0 track formats.
- Improved edit, nudge and fade behavior for linked clips.
Color:
- Color Warper supports persistent default grid resolutions.
- HDR color controls support persistent default zone presets.
- Active playheads can be switched by clicking on the split-screen viewer.
- New anamorphic aperture controls for Resolve FX Aperture Diffraction.
- New shapes and finer mosaic control for Resolve FX Mosaic Blur.
- New rotation controls for Resolve FX Keyer garbage mattes.
- New sat and gamma controls and faster performance for Resolve FX Glow.
Cut:
- List views in the media pool can be sorted from column selection.
- New badge to quickly identify still clips on the timeline.
Edit:
- Edits from sub-clips can now be match-framed to original media.
- Shape and iris transitions can be rotated by the inspector.
- Play-around selection now works with transition selections.
- Newly added subtitles retain playhead position to allow text preview.
- Compound clip instances in the timeline can be renamed.
- Fusion compositions can be renamed from the inspector panel.
- Options to name and use full clip extents when creating a sub clip.
Fusion:
- DRFX bundles can be double-clicked to install on Windows and Linux.
- Support for viewing the node type by holding Ctrl/Cmd-Shift-E.
Codecs and Deliver:
- DaVinci Resolve Studio support for audio encoding in the encoder plugin SDK.
- Hardware-accelerated AVC Intra decodes for Apple Silicon.
- Support for decoding and encoding JPEG-HT.JPH image sequences.
- Improved H.264 and H.265 decode performance in Windows Intel systems.
- Optimized H.265 encodes for speed on Apple Silicon systems.
- Support for decoding MKV clips with VP9 video codecs.
- Improved decode performance for MKV clips with AAC and AC3 audio.
- Support for embedding MPEG2 bitstream captions in XDCAM clips.
General:
- Improved startup speeds for disk databases with many projects.
- Support for simplified database creation and connection process.
- AAF imports now support the translation of simple nested clips.
According to Blackmagic Design CEO Grant Petty, “This is truly an amazing update that gives customers huge performance and power efficiency gains on Mac models with M1, and it transforms your computer, simply by downloading this free of charge.”