Blackmagic Design is bringing it’s popular DaVinci Resolve video editing app to the iPad, promising support for RAW, cloud collaboration and more, the company announced on Twitter. It won’t be a full version of the PC/Mac app, as it will initially feature just the Cut and Color pages. Otherwise, though, “it will be similar to the desktop version,” Blackmagic said.
The iPad app will support file formats including H.264, H.265, Apple ProRes and Blackmagic RAW, with clips available from the “iPad Pro internal storage and Photos library, externally connected iCloud or USB-C media disks,” the company wrote on Facebook.
In addition, you’ll be able to open desktop projects on the iPad version, including shared collaborative projects via Blackmagic Cloud. “This means DaVinci Resolve for iPad is the same professional tool, and the same codebase as used on major Hollywood feature films,” Blackmagic pointed out.
There are some changes to the UI because of the screen size, as the menu bar will be removed, for instance. In addition, there’s no plan to bring the Edit page to the iPad version, as it’s essentially designed for a keyboard and mouse. “This makes it very difficult to move to the iPad without changing it in a way that would cause problems for professional editors who rely on the edit page for their work,” the company said. Because of that, the Cut page will gain new features, including “enhanced audio support, key framing , split edits and more.”
The Fusion effects and Fairlight audio tools aren’t available yet either, “because their software code has not yet been redesigned for the iPad.” However, the company plans to work on those pages and include them in a future release.
DaVinci Resolve is a popular app with professional editors, in part because of its powerful color correction tools — making Engadget’s list of the best editing apps. In addition, there’s a powerful free version of the app and the paid version costs just $300, with all future updates free. That has proven tempting for editors who don’t want to pay a monthly fee to use Adobe’s Premiere, After Effects and Audition tools.