Before you export

Noise is the enemy. On top of being a source of left/right discrepancy interfering with depth perception, noise hurts compression efficiency by adding unnecessary texture to the image.

• Aggressively de-noise your video on a shot-by-shot basis.
  • Well exposed, low ISO shots: 3-frame temporal noise reduction (NR) should be sufficient. There is no such thing as an immersive shot that doesn’t need any noise reduction.
  • Darker, high ISO shots: add spatial noise reduction, or the built-in ML denoiser in Resolve. Neat Video 6 is also known to perform extremely well.
  • For AIV, make sure your timeline’s output scaling is set to 4320 x 4320; denoising at the native 8160 x 7200 will not significantly improve quality but will significantly increase processing time.
• Add AI-based edge sharpening and detailing to reduce softness caused by noise reduction.
  • Topaz AI is a popular choice.

Apple Immersive Video & Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive

DaVinci Resolve Studio 20.2 and newer officially support Apple Immersive Video workflows.

There are three main export presets:

• Vision Pro Bundle = ProRes AIVU.
  This is the format for mastering and archiving, but not suitable for uploading to Acute.
• Vision Pro Review = MV-HEVC AIVU.
  This is the recommended format for uploads to Acute, with a high bitrate.
• VR180 = MV-HEVC .mov (half-equirectangular side-by-side).
  This is a compatibility format for exporting to other platforms, but it is a lower fidelity than AIV.

Recommended Render Settings:

• Timeline Resolution (output scaling): 4320 x 4320.
  Acute will down sample anything bigger.
• Quality: Restrict to 300,000 Kbps.
  300 Mbps bitrate ensures AIV quality is not degraded when Acute re-encodes for streaming.
  The default 100 Mbps will compress the video too much.
• visionOS Bypass (in Advanced Settings): Off.
  Acute does support metadata transitions, but until we accumulate more mileage we recommend burning them in.

Recommended Audio Settings:

• Codec: Apple Spatial Audio Format MP4. This is what Resolve calls “APAC” (Apple Positional Audio Codec)
• Sample Rate: 48000. 48 kHz is a good value assuming your ASAF Master bus only has a few objects or mostly surround audio such as 7.1 or 5.1.

Recommended Hardware:

• The M3 Ultra Mac Studio with 80-core GPU, starting at $5,500, is the recommended hardware, as it’s meaningfully more capable than the M4 Max. You should expect 1-5 frames per second when exporting AIV with the above settings and denoising.
• The M5 Ultra Mac Studio is rumored but unannounced as of March 2026.

There is a thorough workflow guide PDF on the Blackmagic Design support website. Always set up your first timeline by scrupulously following the recommended settings from this document. Apple’s “Create immersive media experiences for visionOS” event (recording, notes) is also a great source of information on workflows for production and post-production.

When uploading an AIVU file to the Acute Immersive Platform, make sure to select 180° Apple Immersive Video (AIVU) as the format.

VR180 & Canon R5C/Dual Fisheye Lens

• Projection: half-equirectangular (latitude/longitude squares), which is the one produced by the Canon EOS VR Utility.
• Format: side-by-side. DaVinci Resolve also supports MV-HEVC but creators have encountered issues, it’s safer to work in side-by-side.
• Resolution: up to 4320×4320 per eye. Acute supports uploads at up to 8192×8192 per eye; but the Vision Pro hardware may stutter in higher resolutions when paired with higher framerates and/or HDR. Acute streams at up to 6480×6480 per eye.
• Quality: Restrict to 200,000 Kbps. 200 Mbps bitrate ensures VR180 quality is not degraded by re-encoding.
• Audio: Acute only supports formats that can be segmented: this means Dolby Atmos workflows should export their audio separately to E-AC-3 JOC (Dolby Digital Plus with Atmos) and re-mux it with the video; an easier path is to render as 7.1.2 or 7.1.4 surround and export as AAC.

When uploading an side-by-side VR180 video file to the Acute Immersive Platform, make sure to select 180° Stereo (Side-by-side) as the format.

APMP tags are not necessary for uploads to the Acute Immersive Platform. Files with incorrect tags are fully supported, as they will be rectified as part of the encoding process according to their specified format.