Blackmagic Design Responds to Apple Discontinuing Support for Older Media Codecs

In light of Apple’s announced discontinuing of older 32-bit media codecs, I reached out to Blackmagic Design and specifically asked these questions:

• What is the impact of editing legacy media which is no longer supported by the macOS on DaVinci Resolve?
• When does BMD rely on Apple’s codecs and when does BMD create their own?
• For editors that, for whatever reason, don’t want to transcode their media to ProRes, which Apple recommends, which codecs does BMD recommend for those that want to future-proof their media?
• Because technology marches on [and 32-bit codecs will not last forever], should Windows users consider transcoding their media and, if so, what codec(s) does BMD recommend for Windows?
• For those editors that live in a BMD universe, is BMD planning to provide a utility that can search for outdated media and batch convert it into a more future-proof format?
• What are the implications for media file linking when converting media to updated codecs?

Here is Blackmagic’s response:

Unfortunately, we can’t comment on [your] questions as we don’t comment on future product plans or proprietary product information. However, we can share that DaVinci Resolve doesn’t use the 32-bit QuickTime 7 libraries and that it has native support for a number of key codecs on the legacy list, such as DNx, Cineform, JPEG 2000, etc.

SUMMARY

To me, this answer seems to skate past the issue of identifying and converting legacy media in older projects, as well as recommendations for future-proofing our media.

With the coming of the holidays, getting more answers will take time, but if you have additional questions, please add them in the comments below and I’ll reflect them back to Blackmagic Design.