DaVinci Resolve 18.1 Adds Support for Social Media-Friendly Vertical Video

Video editing software DaVinci Resolve 18.1 is a major update for creators who upload their work directly to social media. Editors can now work in vertical resolutions, making it easier to create content for TikTok, Instagram, or Snapchat.

“This is a major update with new added support for social media vertical resolutions. Now, customers can work quickly and easily to create video posts for sites such as TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook shorts, Instagram TV and more,” Blackmagic Design CEO Grant Petty said in a release. “We’re always excited to see what our customers can do with these amazing updates to DaVinci Resolve.”

The update also improves upon how multiple users to edit at the same time by locking individual timelines. This allows two people to work on separate timelines without locking the entire project.

Additionally, DaVinci 18.1 offers an artificial intelligence (AI) dialogue leveler and AI voice isolation, making it easier to edit the sound on videos. This can help users isolate dialogue and make it smoother while detecting and reducing unwanted ambient noises like a plane flying overhead or random background noises.

The update actually includes a number of changes, all of which make editing easier, faster, and of higher quality.

“Updates to the internal processing result in up to 10 [times] faster Text+, [five times] faster stabilization, face refinement tracking and analysis, [four times] faster spatial noise reduction, better playback performance with large node graphs and improved Blackmagic RAW decoding on Apple Silicon,” the release reads.

New support for Dolby Vision 5.1.0 cinema trims means users can fine-tune exactly how their work looks in HDR.

For those looking to give their social media videos a professional polish, a tool like this could be a massive time saver. It also allows more creators to have control over their work with a less difficult barrier of entry. DaVinci Resolve 18.1 is also free to download, making it much more accessible than a product like Adobe.

A proliferation of free or partially free apps have been coming for Adobe in video and photo editing. Picsart and Canva serve as two prominent examples that are building a solid competitive field for Adobe and its suite of products to go up against.