DaVinci Resolve (Studio) continues to innovate its visual and audio capabilities. Although it is mainly considered a tool for editing visuals with audio, DaVinci Resolve (Studio) can indeed be used for audio-only editing and sweetening. However, despite the quite welcome inclusion of AAC audio export, DaVinci Resolve (Studio)’s audio-only export capability is still lacking in 3 key details which I’ll detail ahead. However, you can still use DaVinci Resolve (Studio) to edit your audio podcast by following the additional external steps (with an online tool) I’ll explain. I thank creator Ana Cristina Pérez de La Mora (who has been an editor, grader and happy DaVinci Resolve Studio user for quite a while) for asking me about this for her upcoming audio podcast, which inspired me to make the specific inquiries I sent to Blackmagic (creator of DaVinci Resolve) and to write this article.

The ideal códec and file format for audio podcasting

The audio códec and file format for audio podcasting is the AAC códec with the .m4a system-level file extension.

For the many people who missed the memo 28 years ago, AAC came out in 1997 as a superior replacement to the older MP3 format. AAC is superior both in efficiency and quality, meaning that we can have higher quality and/or a smaller file size compared with MP3. Despite a widespread myth, none of the letters A in the AAC name stands for Apple. AAC stands for Advanced Audio Coding, and AAC has never been exclusive to Apple. The AAC códec has extremely wide platform compatibility, and even works with some Blackberry models, as well as Android, ChromeOS, macOS, iOS, Linux and Windows. The only exception is if you are using an older type of advertising injection system which only supports the older MP3, which is not the case with any of my shows or any of my clients so far. Another industry myth states that Spotify won’t accept podcasts in AAC. This is factually incorrect. Several of my own podcasts (and my clients’) are distributed in AAC and continue to work perfectly with Spotify from each show’s Branded RSS feed. Whether or not Spotify is re-encoding the episodes, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that our AAC-distributed shows work with Spotify, sound great and our episodes appear very quickly on Spotify, sometimes sooner than in Apple Podcasts, where they are sometimes delayed by a few minutes before appearing there compared with Spotify, even though Apple doesn’t re-encode or even host the audio files for independent podcasts, the way Spotify does. This includes several podcasts hosted on my TecnoTur.LLC service which are produced by myself or my clients. One of my own audio podcasts which is distributed exclusively as AAC with .m4a is CapicúaFM, which just turned 11 years old, has won 2 awards so far and recently reached 505,515 unique listens worldwide according to Podtrac.

For those people who mistakenly think that the AAC códec is «too new to consider» (even though it has been in use since 1997), I remind them that AAC is the only audio códec which has ever been used inside of H.264 video files. Some people who are already using H.265 video (aka HEVC) consider H.264 to be old.

Since 1997, the AAC códec has continued to evolve and now there are refinements including AAC-LC and AAC-HE. The latter is ideal for extremely low bit rates when it is speech only, without music (or very little music).

DaVinci Resolve (Studio)’s 3 weaknesses when exporting audio-only for audio podcasts

Despite all of its great improvements and refinements as an editor (even for audio only), the recently released version 20.0 of DaVinci Resolve (Studio) has 3 major weaknesses (and 1 minor one) when exporting audio only for audio podcasts. However, until Blackmagic Design improves that situation, I have viable solutions ahead. Here are the three major weaknesses:

1. It is easy to find the AAC audio only option on the Deliver page by first selecting Format: MP4 and then below it, Codec: AAC and that part behaves as expected, at least with AAC-LC. Considering that there are different possible file extensions for AAC depending upon the target destination, it is great that under the File tab within the Deliver page, DaVinci Resolve (Studio) 20 offers the option to enter the File suffix, where I can enter the absolutely required for audio podcasting m4a extension in that field. However, no matter whether I enter m4a there or .m4a (with the period in front), the exported file comes out wrong. For example, if the desired example is CFM-98.m4a it comes out as CFM-98m4a.mp4. If instead, I enter .m4a as the desired File suffix, it comes out as CFM-98.m4a.mp4. To clarify, these results are on macOS Sequoia 15.5 and the Finder settings are set to show file extensions. The resulting file is indeed playable with good quality, it is just not the correct File suffix as requested and as required for audio-only podcasting distribution. This actually changes the wrapper, so even though it is possible to rename the file manually, the result (although it will play locally) is not reliable for audio-only podcasting distribution. Two other editors I have used do offer exporting AAC directly with the .m4a suffix. Even though it seems as if DaVinci Resolve (Studio) 20 is designed to offer that option since there is a field to enter the File suffix, Blackmagic responded that this is the current expected behavior and that it is not currently intended to change the system extension, but only a type of metadata before the system extension, which is currently stuck as .mp4. That is the first weakness that I hope Blackmagic will fix for audio podcasters. Blackmagic has confirmed this to be this way with the current version and thanked me for the suggestion.
2. There is currently no way to add a thumbnail or other metadata to the exported AAC file. Blackmagic has confirmed this to be this way with the current version and thanked me for the suggestion.
3. Even when requesting very low bit rate (for speech only), DaVinci Resolve Studio 20 always uses AAC-LC instead of AAC-HE. AAC-HE is the ideal version of AAC for extremely low bit rates for speech only, without music (or very little music). Blackmagic has confirmed this to be this way with the current version and thanked me for the suggestion.

How to solve these issues after editing your audio podcast episode in DaVinci Resolve (Studio)

After you finish editing your audio podcast episode within either version of DaVinci Resolve (including any noise reduction, equalization, dynamic compression including your pre-recorded opening, bumpers, stingers and closings), here are the steps:

1. Export an uncompressed WAV file of the audio episode from the DaVinci Resolve (Studio) Deliver page. Given the upcoming steps, there is no need to use Audio Normalization in DaVinci Resolve (Studio) since that can be better handled in the upcoming tool and with more precision. For the podcast episode filenames, I recommend using a short abbreviation like CFM for the CapicúaFM episodes, followed by the episode number, followed by a period and the file extension, so it can be (for example): CFM99.wav without any spaces. Since all of my shows and all of my clients’ are 48 kHz, for all of those cases I recommend exporting the WAV at 48 kHz and 24-bit, just to get best quality AAC as indicated ahead.
2. If you don’t already have an account, create one at Auphonic.com. Auphonic is free for up to 2 hours of processed audio per month, so if you are going to release under 2 hours of audio podcast content per month, you won’t have to pay. If you need more, the pricing is very reasonable, although many audio podcasters release under 2 hours per month.
3. With Auphonic.com, you’ll be able to upload the WAV file and enter in all of the metadata you would like to include in the final AAC file with .m4a including the Title of the episode, Description (i.e. episode notes although in simple text only, since the AAC format doesn’t accept rich text or HTML) and optionally a square thumbnail for the episode’s specific image. Although most podcast listeners nowadays tend to listen to the episodes using an podcatcher app or on a web page, where the episode’s specific image is part of the RSS feed, it is still great to include this image as part of the AAC file with .m4a filename since those who still download the files can see it nicely, even with Quick Look in the Finder, which is standard in macOS and optional (free) in Windows. With Quick Look, the file is played by simply selecting it and pressing the spacebar, without having to open any app. The episode image file you upload to Auphonic should be a square JPEG (JPG) file and does not have to be nearly as large your podcast show art (which should be 3000×3000 pixels). The episode image should be much smaller, like 600×600 or up to 1000×1000 pixels. When requesting AAC from Auphonic with the .m4a suffix, Auphonic will offer you to set the desired bitrate, which you will choose depending upon whether your podcast include a lot of stereo music or voice only. If you choose 80 kbbps or lower, it will automatically make it AAC-HE (where HE stands for high efficiency). Within Auphonic, you’ll want to select the Loudness Normalization, where -16 LUFS is recommended if your podcast show is stereo or -14 LUFS if it is mono.

Conclusions

I am so happy that Ana Cristina Pérez de La Mora asked me about this, since she is already very familiar and happy with DaVinci Resolve Studio and she won’t have to purchase (or learn) another editing tool to do the editing and sweetening of her audio podcast. For now, she will just have to do the above steps to encode the final AAC audio file with .m4a file extension using Auphonic.com, at her desired bitrate and with all of the desired metadata, i.e. episode name and Description (aka episode notes), including the episode image embedded in the audio file. Of course, Ana Cristina Pérez de La Mora will host her audio podcast on TecnoTur.LLC and have a Branded RSS feed with the show’s own domain. If and when Blackmagic incorporates these changes (we hope so), the process will be simpler. However, it is still great with this suggested workflow explained in this article.

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FTC disclosure

Neither Blackmagic nor Auphonic has not paid for this article. Some of the manufacturers listed above have contracted Tépper and/or TecnoTur LLC to carry out consulting and/or translations/localizations/transcreations. So far, none of the manufacturers listed above is/are sponsors of the TecnoTur, BeyondPodcasting, CapicúaFM or TuSaludSecreta programs, although they are welcome to do so, and some are, may be (or may have been) sponsors of ProVideo Coalition magazine. Some links to third parties listed in this article and/or on this web page may indirectly benefit TecnoTur LLC via affiliate programs. Allan Tépper’s opinions are his own. Allan Tépper is not liable for misuse or misunderstanding of information he shares.