DaVinci Resolve

DaVinci Resolve color grading, color correction, visual effects, and audio post-production video editing application. It is unfree and multi-plattform.

Installation

Install the davinci-resolve package.

Drivers

AMD

Contrary to the Arch Wiki, DaVinci Resolve seems to work (on an RX 570) without switching to proprietary GPU drivers.

hardware.amdgpu.opencl.enable = true;

Intel

DaVinci Resolve has partial support for Intel GPUs on Linux. Audio playback works on the Fairlight page, but the video timeline does not work. To add Intel support, add the following setting to your configuration.nix:

 hardware.graphics = { # hardware.opengl in 24.05
    enable = true;
    enable32Bit = true; # driSupport32Bit in 24.05
    extraPackages = with pkgs; [
      intel-compute-runtime
    ];
  };

Troubleshooting

Resolve crashes/fails to start

If it doesn't launch, and crashes when running davinci-resolve, then try running it as root.

If it didn't help, you can view the error log at ~/.local/share/DaVinciResolve/logs/ResolveDebug.txt to pinpoint the issue.

If you can spot a line similar to Cannot mix incompatible Qt library (5.15.12) with this library (5.15.2), and have configured QT options in your NixOS configuration (qt.enable = true;), try disabling them.

Cannot import video file

DaVinci Resolve's free edition does not come with H264/H265 support. You need to convert your video to a supported video format, like DNxHD/DNxHR and Cineform. you can do this with ffmpeg. With FFmpeg installed, assuming your video is called video.mp4, you can use the following command to convert:

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

This command will convert your video to a DNxHR video and your audio to uncompressed 16bit PCM. For 24bit PCM, use -c:a pcm_s24le instead.

You can know more about DNxHD/HR profiles with the command ffmpeg -h encoder=dnxhd

Resolve also supports Cineform and a few other formats. For Cineform encoding, use the cfhd encoder.