Comment by xinayder
1 hour ago
How come most mainstream distros have support for said codec but Blackmagic cannot/won't add support for it on Linux?
Why can Openshot, Kdenlive, any other Linux-native video editor edit MP4 files but DaVinci cannot, unless you pay for it?
Genuine question.
There are a couple of things going on here.
Primarily because Resolve is meant as a tool for professionals - and as a result it can’t get away with using things like Ffmpeg under the hood.
Ffmpeg (for example) doesn’t use officially licensed codec SDK’s to handle certain codecs - it uses reverse engineered tooling.
If you’re working on a personal project or something that is just getting pushed to YouTube that won’t matter 99% of the time.
However if you are working on a professional color grading pipeline for a project that might go to broadcast or into theaters, there are very specific QA tests that the final rendered product must pass - and these unofficial reverse engineered rendering tools often result in rendering errors that can fail these QA tests (and in a way that is basically impossible to troubleshoot).
It’s already enough of a challenge to manage a color pipeline using the officially licensed tools - they can’t really risk that kind of issue with their pro and semi-pro customers.
That said, it’s important to note that MP4 is a just a container/wrapper, not a codec.
So an mp4 file might contain video (or just audio) that is rendered using one of many possible codecs depending on what was chosen by the person doing the render. That will determine whether Resolve whether the free edition of Resolve will support it or not.