Blackmagic Design has announced the release of all new control panels for the DaVinci resolve system. There are two new control systems that are completely portable and will be a serious upgrade and innovative improvement to the DaVinci Resolve professional editing and color correction software. With professional editing becoming extremely popular in DaVinci Resolve, these new control panels are designed to allow color correction workflows to be mixed in with editing workflows, while introducing new levels of quality in affordable hardware control panels.
Blackmagic Design, basedd in California with eight offices around the world, creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and real time film scanners for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability in post production, while the company’s Emmy award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984.
The new DaVinci Resolve Micro Panel and the DaVinci Resolve Mini Panel are true professional grade hardware control panels that feature three exceptional quality high resolutions trackballs, precision machined control knobs, illuminated buttons and much more. Hardware control panels are critically important for professional color correction because the colorist needs to “hold the image in their hands” as they manipulate multiple parameters at once to create new and highly stylized looks, or even make very subtle natural changes.
When it came to developing these new control panels, the two overriding problems the design team had to solve were workflow and quality. First , there are three workflows that require support. The first workflow is for professional colorists in dedicated color correction suites, the second is for editing systems that change between editing and color, and the third is for editors that need to edit and color at the same time. The first workflow for dedicated color correction suites is already handled by the large DaVinci Resolve Advanced Panel, so the two editing based workflows are the problems the development team needed to solve.
The second issue the design team needed to solve was quality. No customer wants a “cheap” low quality panel because they’re going to spend hours working on it every day. While there are cheap panels on the market, what customers need is an extremely high quality panel that’s smaller in size that they can use on these workflows. Also, smaller panels are easy to move between locations and allow freelance colorists to take their own panel as they move between systems and jobs at different companies. This means that quality and durability are one of the most important aspects for these new DaVinci Resolve control panels.
The smaller DaVinci Resolve Micro Panel is not much larger than a computer keyboard and is powered from the USB connection. It’s perfect for placement next to a computer keyboard so the editor or colorist can easily move between the keyboard and control panel as they edit, allowing simultaneous grading and color correction. The larger DaVinci Resolve Mini Panel includes the same powerful features but also adds LCD screens with dozens of menus allowing fast access to most of the advanced color grading features of DaVinci Resolve. This makes the panel more suitable for workstations that switch between editing and color correction, but it is still portable enough to be easily moved between workstations around a facility. The mini panel has enough features that a colorist will be able to do professional work on any DaVinci workstation that it’s plugged into.
CEO of Blackmagic Design, Grant Petty said that, “There is a massive, growing number of DaVinci Resolve users working on all different kinds of productions. These new DaVinci Resolve control panels give editors and colorists a completely new way to add emotion and impact to their images. We designed these exciting new hardware control panels to inspire colorists at every level with stylish design, extremely high quality and features that boost creativity. We believe these new panels will let customers do things creatively that are simply impossible with a mouse and keyboard!”
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