Davinci 18 for iPad - Comprehensive Review

After living with the Beta version for nearly a month I’ve put the new Davinci Resolve 18 for iPad through its paces.

My testing has covered many different scenarios, using it on the go, during shoots, at Home and even in our grade suite at Still Moving.

Overall I’ve found that it has filled a big gap in my iPads capabilities and for me it is a perfect fit.

I’m really interested to see how the app develops and also how it functions on different models of iPad, I have tried it on a 4th Generation iPad Air with Bionic chip and it was able to cut and export 12k braw clips shockingly well!

Can’t wait to get my hands on a M2 iPad!

00:00 - Start
00:15 - Intro
00:48 - Is it a Gimmick
01:38 - Does it work well?
03:04 - Is it watered down?
04:48 - How’s the performance?
06:27 - Do I like it?
07:48 - What is the Stand-out Feature?
09:09 - Why use an iPad?
10:18 - Who’s it for?
11:47 - What does it cost?
13:00 - Is it worth the cost?
13:50 - Any Drawbacks?
14:30 - Storage Thoughts
15:03 - Will I Keep using it?
16:13 - What does this mean for Blackmagic Design?
16:52 - Final Thoughts.

[patrickwilliam]

The fusion, edit, Fairlight and delivery page are in the iPad version and can be unbidden with the shortcut menu. If you go to the shortcut screen, go to the far right and scroll to the bottom where you will see show pages. There you can set shortcuts for those hidden pages. Not my find, another user found it and someone posted it on YouTube

[Jake-zcfk]

Great video. BMD has been clever from the beginning with a free version of Resolve, and this is just a continuation of that. Bring the young indi filmmaker into the ecosystem and those who succeed will be with you, makes sense.

[Deckardrick]

This video is EXACTLY what I needed to hear. Thank you 🙏

[eddie_g]

This was great and really in depth. Got my speed editor coming in the mail tomorrow!

Would definitely love to see what apps you use for filmmaking on the iPad!

[BradHeavey]

Thanks, as someone new to video production and editing this was very helpful.

[MrPaultheguitar]

As an amateur I don’t have an M1 chip on my iPad and DaVinci runs fine for my needs I have LumaFusion that one is rock solid so I use both for my animations. I use a very impure process to get around my limitations I render the files out as I go all you need is your own ingenuity

[MadRC]

This is a fantastic video. Seen that BM dropped the release and I’m seriously tempted to get an M2 IPad now.

[waveland]

I’ve not had a lot of time to work with Resolve on the iPad today (and I lost more time troubleshooting the Speed Editor which did not want to connect, and yes I had done the FW update). Nevertheless, I pulled out a Thunderbolt 10G Ethernet adapter, and sure enough you can connect to the Cloud Pod and edit from an attached SSD. With that in mind, you could do some fairly sophisticated on location ingest, proxy generation with a laptop or Mac Mini, and selects editing on the fly with the iPad Pro. Fold in the Blackmagic Cloud, and your project is instantly available to anyone else on the edit team. Then if you go one step further and add an internet connection, the Cloud Pod can automatically upload proxies to Dropbox and a remote editor can start turning the selects into a rough cut. Lots of possibilities with this compact form factor.

[Ryan_Flies]

Dude I'm subscribing just based off of the legendary facial hair you have going on

Do you know how much ram your iPad has? I'm buying an M2 chip just for this.

[syafiqzulkepli]

Very informative! Do you edit directly onto the external drive?

[ninay]

Hello from France ! Do you know if we can use a second monitor ?
Tanks for all your work

[TheFilmmakersWorkshop]

Brilliant vid. I’m really enjoying Resolve on my M1 Air too. Great back up device to my MBP.

[miroslavbazitov]

Thanks for the unique perspective on the iPad version of resolve. I couldn’t get the external monitor menu to Pop-up - I have the suspicion that you managed to do that on iPadOS 15/16 but not on 16.2 with the updated external screen support. Any hint on how to get it running? Could it be also a paid feature?

[TwangThang]

Thanks for this very insightful video! Curious as to how you are enabling the clean feed to monitor. I have not been able to do this and wonder if it is a feature in the paid version. Unless lees I turn on stage manager, I do not get the 3 dot menu allowing me to move to monitor. With stage manager on, I get the 3 dot menu, but the DaVinci window on the monitor auto scales and bounces back to original if I try to expand it. When I press on the preview window in Resolve, whether with pencil, finger, mouse, …..I do not get any clean feed menu options as you do in the video. Thoughts?

[Juscz]

I'm an amateur wildlife videographer and am interested in obtaining an iPad for the while-on-safari convenience of downloading rather large amounts of 4K video on such a small, easy-to-travel-with computer device. Therefore, I ask the following: Does DaVinci Resolve for iPad Pro have a good video stabilization function? Thanks in advance for whatever advice you can offer. And thank you as well for the very informative video you made here.

[rubiotv]

Truly appreciate your insight. Would love to know your thoughts on the cut page

[ethanbraekevelt]

Do you need the 16 RAM option to do all of this or does the 8 RAM option work as well???😵‍💫 someone please help me.

[juliusgregorio]

How are you liking the “experience” on the 11”? Would you go to a 12.9” just for davinci because it would make the experience better or does the 11” have enough real estate to do all the work while it keeping it more portable and easier to hand hold?

[Bannisterpost]

Seems really strange that they didn’t include a way to export an EDL/XML/AAF from it. Thought it would be a good idea to do a rough cut in the app on the road and finish it back at the studio in Resolve Studio. Nope, no option so I will hold off using it till thats included.

[ErisedMediaCo]

Why is the timeline resolution limited to less than 4K in the free version and is the paid version limited in its timeline resolution or can you choose other timeline resolutions above 4K?