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 DaVinci Resolve plugins to take your video editing to the next level.

How can you use DaVinci Resolve plugins?

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. 

Below are the top 10 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.

With Simon Says, you can add captions and subtitles to footage natively within DaVinci Resolve in 100 languages - all with the click of a button. To say this can significantly improve your video editing workflow is an understatement. Teams can go from spending hours adding subtitles to just minutes.

Simon Says can also translate the transcripts you generate in Resolve to any of the supported languages. Plus, the app is lightweight so you don’t have to worry about it hindering the performance of Resolve.

• 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

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:

• A wide range of incredible Camera profiles
• 6K Grain Scans
• 19 Film Stocks
• Options to export 3D Luts
• 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-noise 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  detail in the process, but De:Noise keeps things looking sharp through the 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 for 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 real-time 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 NLEs. Slowing down or speeding up footage in post-production often looks very fake and choppy. Twixtor has much fewer artifacts when objects cross in the scene and it operates in real-time 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. Solutions like Simon Says FilmConvert, and False Color are super powerful, helping you to save time while adding production value to your content.

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