What does Black Magic Presentation Do?

Manually exporting videos, uploading them to a platform, sending review links, waiting for feedback, making revisions, and repeating the cycle is a time-consuming hassle.

With Blackmagic Presentations, you can simplify and speed up your review workflow.

What we’re going to cover:

• The best features of Blackmagic Presentations and why they matter.
• The deal-breakers that could stop you from using it.
• Whether it’s worth using for your workflow.

If you’re tired of clunky review processes, unnecessary exports, and unorganized feedback this review is for you. Hopefully, we cover enough so you can decide if BlackMagic Presentations is what you need!

Overview Video

The Deal Makers: Why Blackmagic Presentations Stands Out

1. Time-Specific Comments That Actually Work

Time-specific comments are essential for an efficient review workflow. The ability to leave a comment at an exact timestamp and have it appear directly on the editing timeline is a huge time-saver.

However, many review tools have frustrating limitations. For example, in Frame.io with Adobe Premiere, ripple deleting a section of the timeline causes all subsequent comments to desync, forcing editors to manually adjust feedback.

So, how does Blackmagic Presentations handle these challenges?

Blackmagic has the most user-friendly and comprehensive comment system I’ve ever used. Since it’s built directly into DaVinci Resolve rather than relying on third-party integration, everything functions smoothly and intuitively, making the review process seamless for both editors and clients.

2. No More Manual Uploads – Integrated Exporting

One of my biggest workflow frustrations used to be managing exports and uploads. With Presentations, that headache is gone. You simply:

• Go to the Deliver page.

• Choose Presentations in the Render Settings.

• Choose a name and hit Render—the video will automatically be uploaded to the Presentations folder you picked.

Quick tip: You can automatically name the render the same as the timeline name by typing %timeline name in the file name

For your Presentations folder to show up in the Resolve’s Deliver page, follow these steps:

• Go to Presentations on your browser

• Click on Add Presentation

• Name your Presentations folder
• Click Add

• Your folder should show up on the left side

• Your folder should show up in your Deliver page in Resolve

• To share the Presentation folder with your client, go back to Presentations on your browser

• Click on the button next to your folder

• Click share and enter your client’s email

Now, your clients won’t even need a review link each time there’s a video to review. Whenever you upload a new video, everyone in the folder can see it instantly. You only need to set it up one time and your clients can go to Presentations, watch the video and leave timed comments.

For me, this is a game-changer. I simply send my client a WhatsApp message saying, “The latest video is ready for review,” and they know exactly where to go.

Important update to sharing presentations

After our video, BlackMagic released a new feature, which allows you to invite guests with a single link.

So now there’s multiple ways you can share presentations, depending on the kind of conveniences you prefer.

4. Synced Playback and Video Conferencing

This is where Presentations pulls ahead of competitors. It combines review software with live collaboration tools:

• You can video call clients directly within the software.
• The host can enable synced playback, meaning everyone is watching the same moment at the same time.

This is incredibly useful when working closely with clients who need real-time feedback.

5. A Fair Subscription Model

Resolve users (myself included) usually hate companies that abuse the subscription model. But Blackmagic does subscriptions in a refreshingly fair manner:

• Only the project owner pays the subscription fee.
• Assistant editors and guests don’t pay anything—they just need an account.
• No AI data scraping. Your work stays private.
• If you stop paying for a subscription, you still have access to your work with a Resolve licence.

The Deal Breakers: What Might Stop You From Using It

While I love Presentations, no software is perfect. Here are some issues that might make it a no-go for you.

1. Hard Limit of 10 Reviewers Per Folder

• You’re limited to 10 members per presentation folder. For most projects, this isn’t an issue— the max I reached is 7 people to a project.
• There’s also a limit of how many overall guests you can have based on your subscription plan. If you need a larger team involved, this could be a problem.
• It’s good to note, with Resolve’s new guest presentation features, you only need the members feature for the people you work with. If your business has over 30 team members, than pricing isn’t your concern 😉

2. Limited Admin Controls

Right now, only the project owner can delete videos from a folder. If my assistant editor accidentally uploads a video to the wrong client folder, they can’t fix it—I have to do it.

This has caused issues for me, a good example is that my production company niched into the property industry. Every clients business name 🤬 started with ‘property’.

It’s an understandably easy mistake, to render a video to the wrong folder, and it would be nice if it didn’t require admin intervention.

3. Video Upload Limit – 100 Videos Per Presentation

A single presentation folder has a hard limit of 100 videos—you can’t upload more beyond that. Somehow, I managed to bypass this limit (to the dismay of the Blackmagic developers) and uploaded 108 videos. The result? The folder crashed, and all comments disappeared.

To Blackmagic’s credit, their support team was incredibly responsive. They understood how critical this was for me and had everything fixed in less than a day.

4. No Playback Speed Control

Clients reviewing multiple 20-minute videos could really benefit from a speed-up option. Right now, you can’t change playback speed, which means they have to watch everything at normal speed.

5. No Checkable Notes in the Timeline

A traffic light system for marking comment status (e.g., yellow = pending, red = there’s an issue, green = done) would be incredibly useful. Right now, you can only reply to comments with “done,” but this doesn’t change how they appear in the timeline.

This also causes the markers to look messy in Presentations, as the replies show up as separate comments and not as nested replies under other markers.

Note from Orson’s assistant editor…

Yes, he often says stupid stuff like ‘DELETED!! MWAHAHAHA’…

6. No Version Stacking

Every upload creates a new video, rather than stacking revisions under the same file. This can lead to a cluttered folder, especially with multiple projects running at once.

As an example, I had once client of mine reviewed the wrong video because of this.

Get Blackmagic Presentations

Blackmagic Design Cloud

apps.cloud.blackmagicdesign.com

I’m not sponsored by Blackmagic, this link is not affiliated.