Creatives and filmmakers rejoice: the iPad will soon support DaVinci Resolve following an official announcement from Blackmagic Design, the company behind the popular video editing software. Both the free version of DaVinci Resolve and the premium DaVinci Resolve Studio ($295 on desktop) will be available for iPad users by the end of 2022.
Thankfully, the official announcement has given us more information. Blackmagic Design says that DaVinci Resolve for iPad is optimized for Apple Pencil and MultiTouch and will be capable of opening and creating the same standard DaVinci Resolve project files as the desktop version of DaVinci Resolve 18. Users can directly import clips from the iPad Pro’s internal storage and Photos library, or externally connected iCloud and USB-C drives, with supported file formats including H.264, H.265, Apple ProRes and Blackmagic RAW. Creators will also be able to collaborate remotely on projects thanks to support for Blackmagic Cloud.
Blackmagic Design also says that DaVinci Resolve can provide 4x faster Ultra HD ProRes render performance on the new iPad Pro with M2 (though it doesn’t mention what that performance is being compared against) and that creatives with an older-gen M1 iPad Pro will also have support for HDR. Users will also be able to deploy their iPad as a grading or reference monitor by sending a clean feed grading monitor output to an Apple Studio Display, Pro Display XDR, or an AirPlay-compatible display.
DaVinci Resolve for iPad will be available as a free download from the Apple App Store in Q4 2022, with an upgrade to DaVinci Resolve Studio for iPad available as an in-app purchase. There is currently no word on how much the upgrade will cost, or if DaVinci Resolve for iPad will be supported on older iPad models that don’t run M-series chips.
Update, Thursday 6:50AM ET: Wording updated in last line for clarity. The sentence previously referred to “Apple silicon” rather than “M-series chips.”