During the presentation of the iPad Pro with M2 chip, we saw the first clues of the imminent arrival of DaVinci Resolve to the Apple tablet, and now it’s official. Blackmagic Design’s powerful video editor will be available before the end of the year and will be available for free on the App Store, with a paid variant also available.
In the last few hours, the Australian company has provided more details what features DaVinci Resolve will introduce on the iPad. The first thing to note is that It will arrive with a graphical interface very similar to those of the desktop versions, optimized for iPad Pro with a 12.9-inch screen. Although it will have its logical limitations.
This video editor will include only two of its traditional sections: Cut (Montage, in Spanish) and Color. So those who are used to editing their material from the tab Edit (Edition), they will have to settle for working with the simpler tools that the software offers.
However, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Keep in mind that the Edit section has been developed mainly for keyboard and mouse tasks, so it is impossible to adapt it to the tablet without drastically changing its operation. On the other hand, the DaVinci Resolve app for the iPad does not incorporate Fairlight eitherits audio editing tools, nor Fusionits section dedicated to graphic effects.
Clearly, Blackmagic Design isn’t bringing DaVinci Resolve to iPad Pro to replace the desktop versions, but rather to complement it. This is clearly seen on support for opening projects created in DaVinci Resolve 18the latest edition of the software for PC or Mac.
DaVinci Resolve is finally coming to iPad Pros with M1 and M2 chips
Regarding the use of multimedia material, DaVinci Resolve will allow importing it from the internal storage and the iPad Pro photo library, as well as from external media such as iCloud or storage units with a USB-C connector. In addition, it is compatible with ProRes, H.264, H.265 and Blackmagic RAW.
Another interesting point of the video editor is that it supports the use of external screens such as the Apple Studio Display and Pro Display XDR. This allows you to better monitor the tasks that are carried out from the iPad Pro, such as color correction. In terms of accessories, meanwhile, DaVinci Resolve will not only be compatible with the Apple Pencil. It will also work with the Magic Trackpad, Magic Keyboard, and Smart Keyboard Folio.
And if you are wondering how the app will perform, the details revealed by its developers are still pretty scant. They only mentioned that it will offer up to 4x faster rendering speed on iPad Pro M2, when working in Ultra HD ProRes. Although it is not explained what they compare it against, it could be against the versions of the tablet with the M1 processor.
It’s also not entirely clear whether iPad Pros with M1 will run into more restrictions when running DaVinci Resolve. In principle, Blackmagic Design has mentioned that HDR support on tablets with the previous generation of Apple Silicon will be limited to the 12.9-inch version, but not much else.
DaVinci Resolve is coming to iPad Pro in the last quarter of 2022 and will be free to download from the App Store. As with the desktop versions, the paid variant will be called DaVinci Resolve Studio and will be purchased from the same application. As for the price of the latter, there is still no news.