BEFORE YOU EXPORT
Noise is the enemy.
On top of being a source of left/right discrepancy that interferes 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. There is no such thing as an immersive shot that doesn’t need any noise reduction.
WELL EXPOSED · LOW ISO
Start with temporal NR.
Three-frame temporal noise reduction should be sufficient.
DARKER · HIGH ISO
Add spatial or ML reduction.
Use 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 × 4320. Denoising at the native 8160 × 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
Choose the right AIV export preset.
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 it is 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 in half-equirectangular side-by-side. This is a compatibility format for exporting to other platforms, but it is lower fidelity than AIV.
RECOMMENDED RENDER SETTINGS
(OUTPUT SCALING)4320 × 4320
Acute will downsample anything bigger.
A 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.
(ADVANCED SETTINGS)Off
Acute supports metadata transitions, but until we accumulate more mileage, we recommend burning them in.
RECOMMENDED AUDIO SETTINGS
Use Apple’s spatial audio format.
Apple Spatial Audio Format MP4
This is what Resolve calls “APAC”: Apple Positional Audio Codec.
48000 · 48 kHz
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
Plan for a slow, demanding render.
The M3 Ultra Mac Studio with an 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 settings above and denoising.
The M5 Ultra Mac Studio was 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.
VR180 & CANON R5C / DUAL FISHEYE LENS
Use a side-by-side compatibility master.
Use latitude/longitude squares, as produced by the Canon EOS VR Utility.
DaVinci Resolve also supports MV-HEVC, but creators have encountered issues. It is safer to work in side-by-side.
Acute supports uploads up to 8192 × 8192 per eye, but Vision Pro hardware may stutter at higher resolutions when paired with higher frame rates and/or HDR. Acute streams at up to 6480 × 6480 per eye.
A 200 Mbps bitrate ensures VR180 quality is not degraded by re-encoding.
For Dolby Atmos, export 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.
UPLOAD TO ACUTE
Identify the source format accurately.
When uploading an AIVU file to the Acute Immersive Platform, select this as the format.
When uploading a side-by-side VR180 video file, select this as the format.
APMP tags are not necessary for uploads to the Acute Immersive Platform. Files with incorrect tags are fully supported: they will be rectified during encoding according to their specified format.