Davinci Resolve - A Great Experience When Using It With an M1 Mac

I mentioned maybe a month ago that I'm now using Davinci Resolve to manipulate videos to post to YouTube.  I'm still using it.  I don't think I'm going to be able to go back to using iMovie.

Prior to iMovie, I was using Cyberlink PowerDirector, which was OK, but felt a bit bloated and cumbersome to use.  That software as full-featured, though, and much more robust than iMovie.  I used Cyberlink PD on my Del G7 17", and while PD didn't crash, it always caused the cooling fans to kick in.  As well, it would take a while to create videos.  I had bought a one year subscription and let it lapse.  While the software was OK, it wanted something better.

I tried Davinci Resolve because I heard someone mention it on one of the Mac-centric subreddits.  Not only that, I wanted to try to use my M1-powered Mac to crunch video, as I'd only used iMovie.  I knew that Resolve would leverage GPUs (it's probably a requirement) and had heard that M1 Macs were very efficient when compiling video footage.  Yeah, I'd used iMovie, but no real professional is using that to create movies.

When I crunched my first video on my M1 Mac, using Resolve, I was shocked.  Two things were immediately apparent.  One, the M1 Mac didn't studder when editing footage like my Dell G7 does.  Granted, my G7 is only powered by a 5 yr old i5 CPU and is running a mobile version of the RTX 2060.  The system is probably throttling, too (most non-Mac laptops do).  Secondly, the compilation portion is FAST, no matter what configuration you are using.  I crunched some ProRES footage and the M1 positively flew through the process.

Yeah, I'm not going back and will probably purchase a license for Resolve so that I can use some of the features that are locked in the free version.  I may as well pay for a license if I'm going to use it as my primary editor.

Used DaVinci Resolve to Create My First Video from Hero 10 Black Footage

I was able to successfully record some good footage using my new Hero 10 Black.  

As well, instead of taking the footage to one of my Macs so that I could edit it using iMovie, I tried DaVinci Resolve (free version), on my Dell G7.

UPDATE (5/24/2024):
I've since been using DaVinci Resolve on my Macbook Air M1.  My Dell G7 is equipped with an older i5 variant and that laptop was bought just as the COVID-19 pandemic hit, so it's not a recent laptop.  That system also has an Nvidia GeForce RX2060 (mobile) graphics card, which Resolve leverages when crunching videos.  The G7 gets noisy/loud and sometimes hiccups during the video crunching process, which sometimes shows in the resulting footage.  With the Air, I've none of those issues.  In fact, the Air processes videos far quicker than the Dell G7.  I'm probably going to end up purchasing a license at some point...the software is that good.

I thought that I'd have problems using DaVinci since I've heard that it was somewhat more technical than iMovie, but it was easier than I thought, because it was very similar in usage to iMovie and Cyberlink PowerDirector.

It is posted here: