DaVinci Resolve FAQ

Download Delivery from Toolfarm

Toolfarm is THE ONLY PLACE you can get download delivery. You can’t even get it straight from Blackmagic Design. To explain, a customer sent us this video about why this is a big deal.

We’ll email you the serial number so you can download it and start using Resolve Studio today.

Yes, DaVinci Resolve Studio comes with a Lifetime License. This means that you will never pay for any upgrades in the future. In other words, there is no monthly cloud licensing to worry about. There are no yearly fees to keep using the DaVinci Resolve Studio. Just ensure you’ve held on to your serial number to run it. Update any older Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve Studio installation to the current version for free. If you bought a license 5 years ago, you can upgrade it without paying a penny! My original Resolve Studio license was version 11 with a dongle, and because I still have the serial number, I could go to the Blackmagic website and download the current version.

There are several reasons why your activation key may not work, and they are all fairly simple.

1. Occasionally a character in the activation key scans wrong, like a 1 for an l, or a 0 for an O. Please contact us and we can double-check this.
2. In certain cases, Blackmagic’s server could be down. Wait for a bit and try again.
3. There also could be a firewall issue on your end that is preventing your computer from talking to Blackmagic’s servers. Some people use a VPN to connect to get around this.

1. You can run Resolve Studio on two computers with your license key.
2. You will need the internet to get this to work.
3. Not as easy to lose as a dongle.
4. If you order from Blackmagic Design or any reseller besides Toolfarm, you will wait for the activation key to be shipped to you.

If you’re moving your license to a new computer, there is no need to reset the activation because they roll from one to the next. For clarification, each code can be activated on two machines simultaneously. If someone attempts to activate it on a third machine, the code will activate the third machine, but the next time the two “other” machines go online they will be deactivated. If a third activation is attempted, it automatically wipes the first two and starts over.

Blackmagic Design promotes the beta versions on their site with all of the details, however, the release version is also available and you can download and work with that. Your serial number is good for any available version of Resolve Studio and is a lifetime license, so you will never have to pay for an upgrade.

New licenses no longer receive dongles. I’ve always thought that people hated dongles, but a few users I talked to love the ease of moving the dongle from machine to machine as they need to, without fussing with deactivating and reactivating the software. You can run DaVinci Resolve Studio on a single computer with a dongle. What’s cool is that you can use an old Mac USB dongle to run the current version of Resolve Studio on Windows. The dongle doesn’t require an internet connection to work, either.

Lost your Dongle?

Blackmagic Design has phased out dongles have been phased out but apparently, you can get them on eBay and Amazon. Buyer beware, though. I’ve heard about fake dongles being sold online that don’t work, so I wouldn’t recommend getting one from someone you don’t know. The reason that BMD stopped creating dongles is because of the rash of fake dongles available.

According to Blackmagic Design, “The Resolve dongle is your license, and when that is lost, so is the access to the Studio version. You can contact your region’s support office and see what can be done for you as far as a possible replacement.”

The version on Apple’s App Store is the same price as the one available at Toolfarm, but it’s NOT the same. The App Store version has some limitations. Yes, it only runs on Mac, but there are App Store restrictions too.

1. No support for external cards running over Thunderbolt.
2. No H.264 accelerated encoding with hi-spec NVIDIA GPUs
3. Some OFX plugins won’t work with this version, but work in the regular version of Studio.
4. Other plug-ins won’t run it. For example, Boris FX Continuum will all run in the Resolve Studio 15 and later, but it will not work with any version of DaVinci Resolve from the Mac App Store.
5. No VR Toolset.