Well, since H.264 rendering is not the greatest and fastest in DR anyway, you can always output a master/archival version and compress to a distribution codec with another tool. There is a lengthy discussion of the subject here:
https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=56789

I'll have a closer look at the multi-track performance soon.

BTW, now that Fusion 9 has Apple-certified ProRes output on Windows, there's hope for DR too.

Repair Department

Finally we get a Dead Pixel Fixer without buying from third-party, which not only does a pretty good job for that purpose but can sometimes also fix dust on the sensor or water droplets on the lens, depending on the scene. Time-lapse Deflicker and Color Stabilizer fix fluctuations caused by changing light, but they need good comprehension and careful adjustment of the parameters to avoid artifacts. Deband can reduce banding problems caused by limited bit depth (like Slog shot in 8 bit only) or introduced by too much compression (to some degree).

Dehaze is a kind of automatic grading for landscape shots (urban or nature) with excessive dust or haze in the distance. It tries to analyze the color and intensity of the haze to generate a kind of distance map from the foreground all the way to the sky. On this base it intensifies contrast and colors without loosing the character of the scene. Of course you could do all this by hand with a few nodes, but it saves time and does a decent job. Seems to work quite well with landscapes for intensifying log pictures too – after all, some people call the smog in Beijing „B-log“…

Lens Distortion is not only helpful when simulating these, but can also fix them as long as they are not the wavy „moustache“ distortion of some wide angle lenses (don't have a good test shot around, but it might be doing even that with two nodes). Since you can split the effect into color channels it will also fix CA, even for de-centered lenses if needed.

Mentioning distortions (even if it's not really repair): there’s now a Warp filter too. Like many filters in DR 14 it can be attached to the tracker's FX function, so it’ll follow the feature to be deformed. It is point-based (no tedious mesh adjustment) and you can specify any number of distortion points plus stop points where you want to limit their influence. This will not fully replace specialized plug-ins like RE:Flex, but that one alone costs more than the studio version of DR and is limited to Adobe After Effects.

Refining Filters

If the make-up department doesn’t get things right, every TV camera has some kind of skin smoothing these days. Sometimes it seems even our TVs add some more of it, looking at all those plastic ‚beauties‘ in soaps or news. While I’d normally switch that crap off, DR now has a Face Refinement feature that can do quite a bit better. It saves you from boring rotoscoping (if there are similar colors in the frame) by face recognition with automatic masking and identification of main features. Please note, though, that the points displayed for the features in the overlay are not editable, even if they look like it. So, you need to get the face tracking right by adjusting the parameters or enhance the features with a grading node in front of it.

Consequently, you may then fine-tune the smoothing or protect areas like forehead, cheeks or chin. The eyes get a lot of attention with local sharpening, re-lighting, highlights or virtual reduction of eye-bags. Maybe you want to blush the cheeks a bit or even change the color of a lipstick? The main challenge is getting the right balance between smoothing and detail. If you want the face of a villain to be a bit rougher, it can be done too.

My advice: if you get some time for applying and tuning this filter in post, it does substantially better than the features in cameras mentioned above, so tell the DoP not to use those. BTW, the mask it generates can be used as an input for another node if you simply need to make a face unrecognizable, like in docs.

While it was difficult in early betas, the function can track a face at an angle much better now (yes, I know, a lot of reflections on that chart, and too much compression):

I was referring to the general skin smoothing functions in many TV cameras, called "skin-tone detail function" by Panasonic, for example. Or here is advice among Sony users for "skin detail" under professional conditions:
http://cinematography.net/edited-pages/F-900%20skin%20detail%20adjustment%20advice.htm

You are right, there are no face smoothing filters in those yet, but that may come, given the increasing number of AFs with face recognition. It seems to exist already in the A6000, given this discussion (and a few others):
https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3933509
(I don't own one, so can't check that)

The confusion comes from the term "TV cameras", when he means consumer cameras.

@nomad So you meant "TV cameras" not "TV cameras"? really? No wonder I'm confused!

General Improvements

I don’t want to list all the smaller changes in the ergonomics and GUI of the program – you can read by yourself, right? Even if the excellent manual by Alexis van Hurkman has grown to nearly 1,300 pages, I wish every manual for software would be written by an experienced user (and not an engineer proud of all the parameters they squeezed in). BTW, if you need training beyond what’s free on YT or Vimeo, he’s also the author of the paid videos at Rippletraining, which I can recommend. A few things I’d like to mention nevertheless.
Markers can now have a duration and are interchangeable for Subclips. Scrubbing and setting in or out by thumbnails works now similar to Premiere. Eyedroppers for black- and whitepoint or color balance help you to get a quick basic approach (even if not instant beauty for sure). Easier and more flexible assignment of keyboard shortcuts and working with keyframes are worth mentioning, though the latter are still lacking position curves in the timeline.

Media management has been improved, you can now drag-n-drop whole folders and can have more than one bin window open when cleaning up. The Clone tool got a list of pro-grade checksum choices and is finally fully functional after gaining the possibility to unmount media from within DR. Fast construction of alternative display names for hundreds of clips is supported by extracting information from metadata with placeholders. Search function and Smart Bins can finally look for marker names or notes. Audio and video can be separated as subclips by key modifiers when dragging and you may create duplicates of clips in separate bins. The whole Media Pool acts like a watch folder now: DR will check if an imported clip fits any missing media in the timelines. Re-conform has been improved substantially, you can now look for footage in bins or locations in storage with detailed specifications and even set priorities what it should try link to, like a list of codecs for example (don’t forget to activate Search Subfolders).

This can save you a lot of work:

Just upgraded to Beta 6 studio , MP3 audio tracks are stuttering and causing Davinci to crach, previous beta didn't have this issue ..WAV audio tracks are fine

This can happen in small overstressed development teams without extensive written tests.

@tonalt

I think it can happen due to big changes they made in audio part. Previously it can be old code.

Beta 5 was better and more stable.. one thing thats an issue also, for example if you bring in mono audio track into timeline, davinci is not smart enough to understand its mono, and i have to make a new mono track for it to not be panned left or right where mono should be centered, if i plug it into a stereo track it will pan it one way..I never had this issue with any other software from video to audio

@sammy

Actually this small things is what takes thousands of man hours while developing NLE.

Some seem to begin to like it: https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=62659