DaVinci Resolve

Davinci Resolve is a proprietary video editor, color correction and compositing application.

Installation

There is a free version and a paid version (a.k.a. Studio).
For the free version, install davinci-resolve^AUR or davinci-resolve-beta^AUR.
For the Studio version, install davinci-resolve-studio^AUR or davinci-resolve-studio-beta^AUR.

To run DaVinci Resolve, it is required to use suitable OpenGL and OpenCL drivers. Open-source OpenCL drivers are currently unsupported. Please notice that incompatible OpenCL drivers should be uninstalled as they may cause Resolve to crash (e.g. uninstall opencl-mesa if you're using a proprietary equivalent).

Standalone Intel GPUs are currently unsupported. If using hybrid AMD + Intel setups, you can use the Intel GPU as the primary graphics card and use an proprietary OpenCL driver for the AMD GPU.

Table of OpenGL drivers

GPU vendor	Type	Driver	OpenGL	Documentation	Tested version	Works with DaVinci Resolve	Tested D.R. version
AMD / ATI	Open source	xf86-video-amdgpu	mesa	AMDGPU		No
		xf86-video-ati		ATI		Not tested
	Proprietary	xf86-video-amdgpu	amdgpu-pro-libglAUR	AMDGPU PRO	20.20_1098277-1	Yes Workaround is required, see below.	16.2.3-1
Intel	Open source	xf86-video-intel	mesa	Intel graphics		Yes
NVIDIA	Open source	xf86-video-nouveau	mesa	Nouveau		No
	Proprietary	nvidia	nvidia-utils	NVIDIA		Yes

Table of tested OpenCL drivers

GPU Vendor	OpenCL driver	Tested version	Works with DaVinci Resolve
Neutral	opencl-mesa		No
AMD	opencl-amdgpu-pro-orcaAUR	19.30_838629-1	Yes
	opencl-amdgpu-pro-palAUR	19.30_838629-1	Yes
Intel	intel-compute-runtime	19.27.13361-1	Core dumped
	beignet	1.3.2+12+gfc5f430c-2	Core dumped
	intel-openclAUR	5.0.r63503-2	Core dumped
	intel-opencl-runtimeAUR	1:18.1.0.013-2	Core dumped
Nvidia	opencl-nvidia		Suitable, but working on cuda instead?

DaVinci Resolve Checker

You can run davinci-resolve-checker script, which will tell you if your configuration is suitable for running DR. In good configuration it should output:

All seems good. You should be able to run DaVinci Resolve successfully.

BlackMagic Design Cards

If using DeckLink, UltraStudio or Intensity cards for video capture and playback, install Desktop Video Software with decklink^AUR package.

Tips and tricks

Decrease installation time

Compression of a Davinci Resolve package takes significant time, because the binary is quite large. You can avoid compression and decompression by installing Davinci Resolve like this (assuming you use yay):

   $ PKGEXT='.pkg.tar' yay -S davinci-resolve

See Makepkg#Use other compression algorithms page for more information.

AMDGPU PRO workaround

See AMDGPU PRO#Workaround for using proprietary OpenGL.

Troubleshooting

Application window misses title bar

It is a problem of a Linux version of D.R. There is a workaround for KDE - a window rule to force enable title bar. See [1]

You can manually create a file describing needed window rule:

DaVinci_Resolve_main_window_always_with_titlebar_and_frame.kwinrule

[DaVinci Resolve main window always with titlebar and frame]
Description=DaVinci Resolve main window always with titlebar and frame
clientmachinematch=0
noborder=false
noborderrule=2
titlematch=0
types=1
wmclass=davinci-resolve
wmclasscomplete=false
wmclassmatch=1

Then go to System Settings -> Window Management -> Window Rules and import this file.

My .mp4 clips are shown as audio clips and even its sound is not working

This problem only affects a free version of D.R. for Linux. MP4 containers are not supported, also AAC audio is not supported. To workaround, you may convert your video file to another format or purchase a studio version. Transcoding command may look like this:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:v dnxhd -profile:v dnxhr_hq -pix_fmt yuv422p -c:a pcm_s16le -f mov output.mov

Note, that as of April 2020, even studio version does not support AAC decoding in MP4 files. See supported codecs pdf in #See also.

HiDPI

To enable compatibility with high-resolution displays, set the following environment variables accordingly:

export QT_DEVICE_PIXEL_RATIO=2
export QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR=true

Source: https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=84614&p=469009&hilit=hidpi#wrapper

Wine version

Some plugins are available for Windows, but not available for Linux, so you may want to use Davinci Resolve via wine. Unfortunately, as of wine 4.13-1, it is not working. Splash screen stucks at "Looking for control surface" and in terminal there is such error message:

 wine: Call from 0x7bc6c52c to unimplemented function OpenCL.dll.clReleaseDevice, aborting

Wrong OpenCL Version

If the Application simply is not starting, even after showing installer and "tour" successfully your OpenCl Version may not match your NVIDIA driver. If you have installed nvidia-440xx make sure to install opencl-nvidia-440xx as well. A possible error message:

~/.local/share/DaVinciResolve/logs/LogArchive/ResolveDebug_C1.txt

...
OpenCL error -1001: 'Unspecified Error', GPUPropertiesUtilUnix.cpp:338
...

Get back to Onboarding screen

If you are experimenting with driver installation, you may want to start from the welcome tour and onboarding screen, which checks your system and graphics card. You can achieve that by removing configs directory:

rm -r $HOME/.local/share/DaVinciResolve/configs

Full screen preview function missing

This function is only available in studio version. It is in menu Workspace -> Video Clean Feed.

Audio recording in Fairlight not working

Recording audio tracks with microphone (USB or jack) is currently not working in both Studio and free version. See [2].

See also

• Post on Davinci Resolve forum with tested configurations.
• PDF with list of Supported Formats and Codecs