10 DaVinci Resolve Plugins to Improve Your Video Editing
In a world of high-cost subscription services, Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve is a breath of fresh air. Immediately, DaVinci Resolve offered incredible value, releasing both a paid and free version of DaVinci Resolve. It quickly became known as one of the best NLEs on the market, up there with the likes of Adobe Premiere Pro and Apple’s Final Cut Pro.
With this immense popularity came a slew of incredible plugins that helped speed up the workflow in DaVinci. In the post-production industry, it’s so important to use every tool at your disposal to get the most out of your program. This tutorial will go over the top 10 DaVinci Resolve plugins to take your video editing to the next level.
How can you use DaVinci Resolve?
A video editing plugin adds new features and additional functionality to the NLE of your choosing that wouldn’t have otherwise been possible. Some offer additional transitions and presets, while others provide complex visual effect tools.
As a video editor, knowing which plugins are best for your workflow can save you so much time during the editing phase. With so many plugins out there though, it can sometimes be hard to decide which ones to pick. Plugins also carry from editing software to editing software. A plugin that runs great in After Effects might not work in Final Cut or even Premiere. Here are the top ten plugins for DaVinci Resolve, perfect for both beginners and professionals and available for macos and Windows devices:
1. Simon Says
There are billions of hours of video content more readily available to the public than ever. While this is amazing for consumers, it can be a double-edged sword for video creators. More videos floating around means that each video a creator produces really has to stand out. Everything from the shooting to the editing to the presentation has to be perfect and meticulously crafted. This includes subtitles and closed captioning as well. In the age of social media, closed captioning and subtitles have become more critical than ever for video content creators. This is where Simon Says comes in.
What Simon Says does is transcribe footage natively within DaVinci Resolve in 100 languages. Captioning videos is now more important than ever in the age of social media, and Simon Says makes this process simple and easy.
FREE TRIAL: Yes
PRICE: $20 / month
2. False Color
DaVinci Resolve has the best color correction and color grading tools on the market, making it the perfect NLE for colorists. While DaVinci Resolve 17 introduced a native false color node, Pixel’s False Color plugin is still the best for false color monitoring. Like a lot of the plugins on the list, there’s also a great demo version.
What the False Color plugin does is show the exposure of a clip through the use of color. The False color plugin allows you to:
Customize your False Color ranges and export as 3D LUT
Utilize 13 high-quality and accurate presets and templates
Position the scale reference anywhere in your workspace area
Work in real-time in DaVinci Resolve
FREE TRIAL: Yes
PRICE: $48 dollars
3. Sapphire
Boris FX makes some of the best plugins on the market, and the Saphire plugin is wonderful for those looking to add a little bit of extra flare to their content. The Saphire plugin works hand in hand with Mocha to deliver 260 effects and transitions. Things such as lens flares, glow effects, and motion graphics are all readily available through Sapphire.
FREE TRIAL: Yes
PRICE: $175 / month
4. FilmConvert
This one is for all of the filmmakers out there. FilmConvert (OFX DaVinci Resolve) is a great plugin that emulates classic film stock with only a few clicks of a button. There are options for every major camera brand out there as well (Panasonic, DJI, ARRI, Canon, GoPro, Nikon, Sony, and Blackmagic). What the OFX plugin has to offer is:
FREE TRIAL: Yes
PRICE: $139
5. De:Noise
The De:Noise effect by RE:Vison effect is one of the most powerful de-noisers out there. While the de-nosie node in Resolve is great, nothing beats a dedicated plugin for the effect. De:Noise handles everything from digital/electronic noise to blotchy spots like first on film. It’s also incredibly versatile, addressing numerous problems related to low-light shoots. The best part about it too is how much detail is preserved. A lot of de-noise effects lose a lot of detail in the process, but De:Noise keeps things looking sharp through use of temporal filtering.
FREE TRIAL: YES
PRICE: $170
6. BorisFX Mocha Pro
Mocha Pro is THE planar tracking, rotoscoping, object removal, and stabilization software. Mocha is perfect for anyone getting serious about visual effects.
The unfortunate thing about Mocha Pro is that it doesn’t work natively within DaVinci Resolve. Using Open FX though will allow for support with Resolve. The tools in Mocha have also played a huge role in a lot of recent Oscar-nominated films for Best Visual Effects, including Dune.
FREE TRIAL: YES
PRICE: $37 / month
7. MotionVFX Channel Clean
If you want incredible graphic design work for your videos, the Mchannel Clean Booster plugin is a must. This incredible plugin has 59 presets for DaVinci Resolve, including titles, transitions, social media graphics, lower3rds, intro titles, overlays, backgrounds, and add-ons.
FREE TRIAL: NO
PRICE: $89
8. Beauty Box
Beauty Box is a very simple but effective plugin that automatically identifies skin tones and creates a smoothing effect to just the skin areas. What the beauty box does is act as digital makeup of sorts. Beauty Box looks incredibly natural as well, working for both HD and 4k videos. It gives great realtime rendering and uses CUDA and OpenGL software to play things back quickly.
FREE TRIAL: YES
PRICE: $199
9. Red Giant Universe
The Red Giant Universe suite has so many amazing plugins for creators. With VHS effects, box bokeh, sound effects, glitch effects, glows, retrograde, and many more neat video effects, there’s so much to love about the Red Giant Universe. The Universe has a collection of 89 GPU-accelerated plugins that work great in DaVinci Resolve 16, DaVinci Resolve 17, and DaVinci Resolve 18.
FREE TRIAL: YES
PRICE: $17 / month
10. Twixtor
It’s incredibly hard to mimic proper slow motion in traditional NLE’s. Slowing down or speeding up footage in post often looks very fake and choppy. Twixtor has much fewer artifacts when objects cross in the scene and operates in realtime using a single speed setting. What Twixtor does is synthesize unique new frames by warping and interpolating frames of the original sequence.
FREE TRIAL: NO
PRICE: $330
Conclusion
DaVinci Resolve is one of the best NLEs on the market that gets even better through the use of plugins. Plugins are such an amazing way to quickly add production value to your content. It’s also a great way to save time when creating content. In post-production, every second saved is a blessing. Plugins like FilmConvert, False Color, and Simon Says are super powerful and save so much time while you’re editing.
Third-party extensions such as Simon Says make production work in DaVinci Resolve a breeze. When it comes to post-production work, utilizing tricks such as these is the key to success.