Revamped Text Features in New DaVinci Resolve 15

Exciting News from the 2018 NAB Show: DaVinci Resolve 15 Unveiled!

Blackmagic Design has been on a roll with their updates to Resolve. It seems like we can’t even catch our breath before the next version is released. Just recently, we shared an article on how to work with subtitles in Resolve 14 without the need for an external program. We expressed our frustration with having to rely on additional tools for something that should be built into the software. Well, it seems like Blackmagic was listening because Resolve 15 now includes a dedicated subtitle tool!

When you’re on the edit page, simply open the Effects Library and scroll through the new additions until you find the subtitles option. Drag and drop the subtitles onto the timeline, and you’ll notice that they appear above the top video track. To remove the subtitles, you can either delete them manually or hide the subtitle track in the track view options (note that hiding the track won’t remove the subtitles from the preview monitor).

If you open the inspector, you’ll find two panels for controlling the subtitle properties: Captions and Track Style.

Captions

This is where you can input your subtitles or captions. The user interface is incredibly user-friendly. Simply type your dialogue directly into the caption box and adjust the in and out points on the subtitle clip in the timeline.

I must admit, it would be even better if we could adjust the in and out points directly in the inspector. The timecode boxes seem like they should be adjustable, especially since they are on the ADR panel in the Fairlight page. However, since this is still the beta version, we might see this feature in the final release.

While you can still use the blade tool (B) to splice the subtitle clip and create a new subtitle, it’s now easier to hit the Add New button. This will automatically add a three-second subtitle (which you can adjust in the settings) from the play head position. All subtitles for the selected track will appear in the subtitle list beneath the text editor, and you can jump to the beginning of any subtitle on the timeline by clicking on it.

Track Style

The second menu in the inspector is the track style. This is where you can customize the style of your text, from font kerning to adding a drop shadow.

What’s particularly interesting is the Use Track Style checkbox in the captions menu. If you deselect it, the Caption Style drop-down menu will appear, allowing you to override the track layer style and apply a different design to a specific subtitle. This is a handy tool if you need to use a different color scheme or font for a particular character. It’s important to note that you can only have one subtitle track active at a time, and separate tracks are only for different languages.

In Resolve 14, we discussed the frustration of importing and exporting subtitles, especially since it didn’t support the widely used SRT format. Well, in Resolve 15, you can now import an SRT file in the media pool just like any other media clip, and you can export an SRT file on the delivery page by checking the export subtitles box and selecting “As A Separate File” in the first drop-down menu.

Introducing Fusion Titles

One of the biggest complaints about Resolve 12 and 14 was the handling of titles. Unless you were using a simple lower third, working with text was cumbersome and impractical. But in Resolve 15, we have a solution: Fusion Titles. These are not your typical generators; they are fusion compositions that have become macros.

According to Blackmagic,

You can create all sorts of Fusion title compositions in the Fusion page and save them for use in the Edit page by creating a macro and placing it within the /Library/Application Support/Blackmagic Design/DaVinci Resolve/Fusion/Templates/Edit/Titles directory. But that’s a topic for another day.

We’ll cover creating templates from the Fusion page in a separate post, but for now, let’s focus on how Fusion titles work on the edit page. They function similarly to the 3D and 2D animated text presets in Adobe After Effects.

To access the Fusion titles, open the effects library and scroll through the regular titles until you find the new Fusion presets (there are 27 in total).

The Fusion titles work just like any other effect in the library. You can add them to your favorites folder for easy access, and to apply them to a track, simply drag and drop the title onto an empty area in the timeline. You can easily distinguish Fusion titles from conventional Resolve generators by the three stars on the media clip in the timeline.

If you open the inspector, you’ll find a range of creative color controls and the option to create different versions of the title. Being able to switch between titles with different fonts and color schemes is much more efficient than toggling the visibility of different text layers.

While the presets are great as they are, you can also modify the movement and animation specifics in the all-new Fusion page. We’ll cover this in dedicated Fusion Page tutorials.

Text+

Fusion titles are fantastic for quick-and-easy presets that look professional. But what if you want the styling options of Fusion titles while starting from scratch? Enter the Text+ generator. It’s a 2D title generator that harnesses the power of Fusion. Although it’s a Fusion tool, you’ll find it in