Our entire production pipeline is Resolve. I’ve been pushing Adobe users to move to Resolve for years, because of the pricing and pace of innovation. We’ve been using a device from SNS for remote collaboration and this release just removed the need for that.
Every release is packed with fundamental new value, and doesn’t sacrifice stability or performance - it usually improves both. Great software engineering!
Combined with the hardware innovation - like the first raw format that managed to bypass RED’s patent stranglehold - this company is setting up to dominate the entire film production pipeline.
We use Resolve, Ursa G2, Ursa 12K, pocket cine 4K and 6k. We also use their ATEM switcher and mini color grading console. They’re all great gear. If you’re looking to set up a small production house with end to end workflow in a single application and want to actually own the gear instead of renting, look no further than BMD.
Started with Open.film (visit the site) which is a mini doc and then doubled down on production. Now have a educational media pipeline along with sports sponsorship project and a few others in the works. We have a 6000 sq ft studio in Centennial, CO. Full time producer (via the Fallon show) and full time DP/director. Just getting started.
Some recent stuff from the past couple weeks. This is a set we built from the ground up in a warehouse with bare concrete floor. Fake window and sunlight. Lights are ARRI skypanel s120 and S60. Cameras are a BMD Ursa G2 4.6k and 12k. Pretty basic 2 cam shoot and post workflow. Producer/director works remotely from NYC via video conference. DP is on site with PA and talent.
Thank you for the detailed answers! I take it you guys concluded it would be better and/or more cost efficient to do all this media work in-house instead of outsource it to a variety third parties. Interesting.
Yes we were working with a company that was doing a great job but barely staying afloat, so I hired some of the team, and the rest had a soft landing. Then built from there. Was a conscious decision to vertically integrate this.
Yeah so the Ursa is around $5K. And just FYI the 12K Ursa dropped from about $11K to about $6K a few months after launch, so just be aware that that kind of thing happens. A new ARRI is $20 to $30K although I haven't looked lately. Also RED is very expensive. So with Ursas you get 14.5 stops of dynamic range, raw and the Resolve workflow which braw integrates into beautifully. You essentially have Hollywood quality gear for a fraction of the price, and you're using the same color grading workflow that Hollywood actually uses - since Resolve is the standard for color grading for big films. And the grade is really where you figure out how good your camera actually is - and since the folks who make the grading software make the cameras and developed the partial debayered raw format they use, the product you get is pretty damn good!
Now lenses are a different story. We standardized on Canon cine lenses which work great on the Ursas - and the cameras are adaptable to PL mount if you ever want to rent lenses.
Just a final note. I know a lot of folks reading this are budget concious. Don't make the mistake of getting a nice collection of Sony E mount lenses or another mirrorless standard with a short flange distance. You will not be able to use those lenses on many other cameras that have lens adapters because the flange distance is too small - so you simply can't adapt them. Standardize on a lens with a big flange distance that is adaptable to a lot of cameras if you move from renting to actually buying lenses. Canon Cine lenses are great - but Canon L lenses are also bloody good and excellent value for money. For example the f1.2 50mm prime is a brilliant multi use film lenses that you can use on the Ursa and get amazing results - and it's quite a bit cheaper than a cine lens and uses the same mount as the cine lenses. Because the L lenses have the same mount, you can do some pretty crazy shit like putting a f4.0 600mm prime on an Ursa and shoot film with it. Try finding a cine lens like that!
BMD has really carved out a great market for themselves. Adobe and Avid are still the 300lb gorillas but I love what BMD is doing on the hardware and software side.
Resolve is so impressive to me because it’s a relatively small dev team from what I understand, but they’ve put out a really great product. And the few hardware things of theirs I’ve used have been excellent too.
Nice to hear you run your whole production pipeline using Resolve.
> "like the first raw format that managed to bypass RED's patent stranglehold"
For what it's worth, BRAW is not really "RAW." It is a codec processed in-camera with baked-in profiles for Resolve. ProRes RAW is closer to "real RAW."
That said, it's an awesome codec to use in Resolve (former P4K, P6K, & UMP 4.6K user).
I actually worked on the BRAW SDK a couple of years back. Not going to go into specifics, but there's a far bit more going on than just that! I think a big part of it had to do with Red's patents, actually.
> "Sherif analyzed noise levels by comparing ProRes RAW and BRAW and found that ProRes RAW has significantly higher noise levels than the external BRAW. Furthermore, Sherif has used a blue channel as an X-ray to explore macro-blocking that appears in highly compressed media (H.265 for instance), and that compression is presented by pixels structure that indicates an unbaked image that came straight out of the sensor. Yeah… it’s a bit complicated. To make the story short, ProRes RAW demonstrated much better (and real) raw compared to BRAW. In a sentence, ProRes RAW has defeated BRAW"
> "According to Sherif’s analysis, ProRes RAW is more… real raw than BRAW. And external BRAW is less accurate (in terms of White Balancing) compared to internal BRAW from Blackmagic cameras. But generally speaking, ProRes RAW won. However, it must be taken into consideration that ProRes RAW is not natively available in Resolve."
> "...partial debayering theory regarding BRAW. The reason being is that Black Magic does that to get around RED' RAW patent of pure internal RAW. That's why prores Raw is only acquired through external devices."
Like sibling comment mentioned, Fusion. Was using it to deliver advertising video VFX work on the daily for a couple of years, it's great. We were a mixed group of After Effects and Fusion (and many more apps) users and I would say generally you can accomplish the same things with both and some tasks are easier in one or the other.
I would recommend downloading the standalone Fusion Studio though, it's included with a Resolve Studio license (~$300 one-time). Managing anything but the simplest project within Resolve's Fusion page seems like a nightmare. Being able to use a separate app that saves its own files is a much more straightforward workflow. Then check out VFX Connect if looking for more sync between the apps.
You can do a surprising amount without even going into Fusion inside Resolve. But if we need planar tracking etc it’s there and we’ve done it.
Edit: for CG or routine stuff like screen replacement we use a VFX house in Denver but we have done that ourselves in Fusion. Not hard, except that one time a guy with a beard leaned across and obstructed the screen with his beard. Try to avoid that. ;-)
The Fusion part of Davinci Resolve is a sort of node based after effects.
I might try it someday, apparently it can even import 3D scenes from blender.
As a hobby videographer using Ubuntu I find myself switching between Kdenlive and Davinci Resolve, depending on the size and complexity of the project. For a small 30-second clip I like the more approachable, simple workflow of Kdenlive but holiday videos with a hundred or more cuts work much better with Davinci for me.
Both are free which is really great, but from an ideological standpoint I much prefer Kdenlive (OSS). Also it's a bit annoying that Davinci doesn't support MP4 with the free version on linux. It's always a lot of re-encoding with ffmpeg to "prepare" clips for use in Davinci (as almost-lossless MOV containers).
Resolve is built by a fairly small team in s/Australia/Singapore. If you want the features in the Studio version, you just need to buy once, you get a lifetime of updates, no subscription.
Ideologically I love to use FOSS products too, but I also want to support commercial businesses that make software under customer-friendly and non-subscription licensing terms.
>Resolve is built by a fairly small team in Australia.
I used to work at BMD in the BRAW team. With a few exceptions here and there, Resolve is pretty much exclusively maintained by a team up in Singapore. They are quite a small group, though!
> If we look at Blender's history, one could make the argument that they would get more support if they fully opened their product.
I think it's important to know that Blender probably became big because they went open source with a nice tool, not that they were big before and then released the source as open source. If Blender didn't go open source, I'm unsure if Blender would even be around today, they were in big trouble before buying the source code back and open sourcing it, if I remember the history correct.
DaVinci is not in trouble in any meaning of the word, the opposite. The editor is taking the media sector by storm and gaining popularity like crazy, so they don't have the same need of doing something drastic to save themselves.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love for DaVinci to end up open source, but I don't think Blenders history is relevant in this particular case.
being open source allows your users to participate in the development, fixing things, and adding new features the company wouldn't have done themselves because: lack of budget, or "too risky"
this is why i dropped Sublime Text for a different editor, i was waiting years for them to fix a feature that annoy me so bad (file preview when you search), and it still not fixed, closed source mean i can't do shit
i no longer use proprietary software for that reason, whenever possible i decide to use one that is open source
also the industry adopting Blender is a clear sign that a product being open source plays a big role for adoption
same for game engines, people preferred open source solutions for decades, the closed proprietary ones all died (minus Unity but they provide source in exchange for a license, wich i believe will be made fully open in few years, they will have no choice)
for existing business it is understandable if they started closed, and use themselves licensed code/product
but for new businesses, if you don't consider open source, you start with a massive disadvantage, worse, it makes you impossible to grow
> also the industry adopting Blender is a clear sign that a product being open source plays a big role for adoption
I strongly disagree. Blender is a wonderful story and a wonderful team but it’s truly the unicorn in the FOSS software space.
Industry adopted Blender because it has evolved into being a really good tool for the job, is frequently updated (thanks in part to those corporate sponsorships that most pieces of software don’t get, unfortunately), and because it is good software.
Thinking the license played any role in that, I think is foolish. Industry, particularly the video and vfx industry, is not moved by ideology. It’s about what works, what is fastest and what can do things the best way. The editing world has relied on proprietary software since time immemorial and the two cases where we’ve seen more adoption of FOSS tools (Blender, OBS) are both recent (and again, I would argue are largely exceptions b/c the software is good and usable which is not the case for most video packages that are open source) and in tandem with existing tools, not a replacement for those tools.
As I said in another comment, I think in many cases, the open development model is best. But I also recognize that it isn’t always the right business move. And in this case, when you’re talking about an industry that doesn’t have any ideological ties towards doing things the open way, I don’t think it’s an idea that makes a lot of sense. Even if it would be nice to see.
Exactly. What's more I prefer for the software I use to be proprietary, because then I know that me paying its price is enough to support its ongoing maintenance and development. When it comes to open source projects seeking donations, I'd need to pay incomparably more, knowing that most users don't pay. With the proprietary model everyone pays their fair share to keep the project afloat. With donations an army of freeloaders bears the benefits of the funding provided by few who pull all the weight. So if a project is donation-funded I look instead for a proprietary one, because it will be more likely to stay afloat in the future and return my investment of learning it and organizing my workflow around it instead of becoming abandonware.
May I suggest an alternative strategy/view? Don't think of it as "freeloaders" vs "few who pull all the weight", and don't think you should be paying to "keep things afloat".
Instead, keep whatever tool is best for you at the moment (even if proprietary) but don't stop looking/fomenting the development of a viable free alternative. If you find any project attempting to build an alternative for the commercial ones, follow up with (a) small financial contributions, (b) periodic best-effort attempts/evaluations of the tool as the alternative and (c) feedback on what is missing for it to become your main alternative.
Unlike businesses, free software projects don't need to have a short-term ROI and they don't need to give up if the venture is not profitable. But your small contributions will at least show as a signal that the developers have a potential audience, and your feedback can also provide them with guidance/help them iterate faster on what is relevant.
Aside from marketing materials and mission statements, companies rarely care about their customers and they will not hold you in high regard just because you are giving them money. If they find themselves in a position where they can make more profit by screwing you over, they will.
Conversely, if the free alternative does become a hit, you and everyone else gets to benefit. If it doesn't, it can be picked up later by other people. And even if it fails completely, you didn't lose much.
It's the type of strategy that gives you very little downside, a huge upside and also gives you bragging rights and the feeling of a righteous soul. :)
aseprite isn't under an "Open Source" license, but a EULA that even prohibits redistribution. I'd call it "shared source" or "public source" rather than "open source"
competition is growing, unreal is fully open source, and more and more people have been asking for the source, there was even some drama few years ago when unity DMCA'd (if i remember correctly) a reference source code of unity engine (decompiled) on github, then unity made it officially available on their github: https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/UnityCsReference after users complained about it
For every Blender we have countless other projects getting almost zero donations or support. Why take that risk if the current model works for the Resolve team?
Blender made their opening conditional on getting support. They basically ran a crowdfunding campaign that said they would open source it when they reached X amount of money. (I think it was 500k€ at the time) that was good not just financially but also because it worked as a marketing/awareness tool.
BMD could do is something similar. They could make every (yearly?) release closed but GPL it once their revenue hits a mark.
Yeah, thanks for the correction. I totally misremembered the order of events (I thought they were still open as a business when they created the foundation) and amounts.
From my perspective, if a product is open source, it means I'm not at the whims of a company which might or might not go under or change models. I have huge amounts of content from decades ago locked up under no-longer-existing proprietary formats. The companies long went out of business, activation servers are gone, and in most cases, there's no way to find the .exe files.
My LaTeX files still work.
Open source doesn't mean I won't pay for it. Indeed, I'm more likely to pay for it.
I think in the case of Resolv, if the bulk of the money is on software, open source is a huge risk. If it's on hardware, it's a nominal risk and a huge potential upside. To the extent there are cloud-based collaboration services, the risk also goes down, since that's what most businesses pay for. Even if the server is open-source, it's cheaper and more robust to pay BM than to hire a sys-admin to run it myself.
I have an old Olympus AIR camera which is great hardware, now useless since Olympus discontinued the associated software, then got sold, and it's basically now dead.
If Blackmagic were 100% open source, I'd know their hardware is forever. Perhaps the software won't continue to improve -- there are plenty of dead projects -- but SOME nerd will at least port the existing functionality to Ubuntu 32.04 or whatever comes out. If push comes to shove, I might even be that nerd.
Their hardware isn't "forever" though. The industry they cater to and the consumers that industry serves are constantly demanding higher resolutions, higher frame rates, more quality, and at the industry level, the ability to process the vast amount of data that generates in a workable way. BMD aren't in the business of supporting cameras or video recorders that are 20+ years behind the times, they're in the business of delivering higher-performance equipment that improves on a "Moore's Law" type trajectory. Resolve is a tool they use to help manage this hardware process. Open-Sourcing their Intellectual Property and investment where Resolve is concerned wouldn't confer much benefit, other than catering to a microscopic niche of people such as yourself who have the time and patience to make changes in a highly complex codebase. Businesses don't owe it to you to make their hardware "forever". You could equally be trying to make a case for demanding the VHDL that runs their FPGAs open source, which would no doubt be lovely while being commercially damaging, and harming their ability to pay the high wages of competent and focussed engineers that bring you such complex products at a price you can afford.
P.S. Your text files will work better than your LaTex files in 50 years.
There isn't a "the industry." There are multiple industries.
Places where I've used AV equipment costing >$5k where lifespans were in decades:
- Permanently mounted systems in lecture halls designed to record talks.
- Machine vision systems in manufacturing processes.
- Scientific instrumentation.
My local CCTV station also has ancient, high-end equipment.
What make BM cameras great is that they can embed in a lot of places like these.
If "the industry" is limited to professional TV production, I agree with your point. However, the market for cameras is much greater than that, and those sorts of oddball segments are growing exponentially as costs fall, machine vision improves, etc.
I don't demand anything from BM. I also have no intention of diving into their codebase. I do have a handful of C-mount and MFT cameras in different capacities, permanently mounted, for various needs. If BM is a better solution for me, I'll buy from them. If it's worse, I won't.
OK, but that doesn’t answer the question. That shows why you personally would feel better about it, but it says nothing about why a company should change a model that is working for them to a model that would require more work (it’s likely that Resolve contains components and libraries that would be very difficult to open source and would require rewrites — to say nothing of the general work required to make a project open source and accessible) for frankly very little gain.
Again, given the various codec, driver, encoding, and other patent and license encumbered issues related to video stuff, I would seriously be surprised if this was something BMD could open source even if they wanted to. And for what? The 0.0001% of video professionals who insist on using an open source piece of software to use for their work?
It works on Linux not for the free software crowd but because video professionals who are using specialized Linux servers for high-end editing workflows (using almost entirely proprietary software, I might add) requested it. As a side effect, desktop Linux users also have access to a pretty great editing suite.
I like open source too. I think that it is generally a better development model.
I also understand why specialty tools often aren’t open source and think that history has proven to us time and time again that the financial upside to OSS is not what people wish it would be.
I’m not saying it wouldn’t be nice. But for Black Magic, I honestly see absolutely no compelling reason why it would be better for them to invest a bunch of money and resources into changing a model away from something that works to pacify an extremely small number of users who aren’t even their target audience.
That does very directly answer the question of "why."
You answered the opposite question: "why not."
Neither of us know enough about BM's business model, plans, codebase, etc. to know whether open sourcing makes sense, and if so, how. I trust BM is doing something reasonable here. The only point is that the decision isn't obvious.
In terms of 0.00001%, my experience is that bigger businesses care a lot about business continuity. I'm at a large organization, and it's cheaper to buy than build. At the same time, it's lower-risk to buy open-source. That's where things are trending.
> As a hobby videographer using Ubuntu I find myself switching between Kdenlive and Davinci Resolve, depending on the size and complexity of the project. For a small 30-second clip I like the more approachable, simple workflow of Kdenlive but holiday videos with a hundred or more cuts work much better with Davinci for me.
What about FLOSS Olive video editor?[0,1]
As for me, for a small 30-second clip Olive is much better choice than Kdenlive.
It doesn't even support mp4 on Linux if you pay. If you pay you just get the ability to decode H.264. You can't encode H.264, and AAC is completely unsupported.
Knowing both software packages this comment feels a little bit like it can not be serious.
If it is: there is no way you can compare Kdenlive with Resolve - I guess as a hobby videographer you just can not see the huge differences. Kdenlive might be OK for some occasional hobby editing, but Resolve is a professional tool for people that depend on delivering perfect results quickly.
BTW I was not able to use Kdenlive one single time without crashing in the middle of the project and leaving me with only lots of time wasted. Do not use it for serious (money) work!
As somebody who likes to use Linux privately I can tell you that Resolve works best (and most cost effective) on M1 Macs. I tried to use it on Linux but I was wasting so much time fixing this and that (gfx card drivers horror stories) and still not getting the real thing, it was much cheaper to buy a M1 Mac and enjoy pro software on a system that is mobile, quiet and more powerful than my old-school video editing workstation.
I've been using Davinci Resolve for almost three years and I can't emphasize enough how great this product is.
IMO, it's miles away from Adobe Premiere. Not only because of its color grading capabilities, but I just find it way more intuitive than Premiere.
And let's not forget that you also get Fusion, which is incredibly more powerful than Adobe After Effects.
You can basically do all the post-production work in one single tool. Even though Fairlight (the built-in DAW) isn't as powerful as Pro Tools, you can get most of the audio work done within Davinci Resolve.
It's just crazy to think that you can get this much for $300. Or in my case, for free when buying a Blackmagic camera.
I'm pretty sure Davinci Resolve has a free edition as well, which is rather complete in itself for nearly 99% of the people wanting to edit their videos (unless you are an aspiring film maker)
I got my Resolve Studio for free from my BMPCC 4K (for those who don't know, it's an incredibly affordable cinema camera designed for hobbyists/amateurs/semi-pros)that easily competes with cameras 3-4 times the price range).
Over the past couple years, Resovle has continuously been updated with incredible features.
NO subscription.
NO upgrade fees (buy once, lifetime updates).
BMD, thank you for making professional video editing available to the masses.
In that vein, I think one major bit of news is that you can finally buy a license online! For the longest time you could only buy it printed on a physical card that had to be shipped to you.
Yeah that was weird, I actually shipped it to my friend I trust and he sent me the photo of the license code as it was much more practical for many purposes.
I edited over 100 podcast episodes with DaVinci Resolve 17. It's a really great tool not just for video editing but audio editing too.
Unfortunately Resolve 17 was never able to export mp4s for me without introducing both video and audio artifacts into the final video that didn't exist in the timeline when editing so I can't use it for editing video even though I want to. The issue might be hardware related but I'm not interesting in buying an entirely new computer for a chance that 1 application might work. I will give 18 a shot tho, I have a reproduceable video (a few minute 1080p screencast clip) that always produces the artifacts but it happens in every video I export with varying degrees of severeness (in all cases it makes the final video unusable). Their support didn't acknowledge the bug report I submit since I was using the free version of Resolve.
Everything else about the product was great tho, I would buy the pro version in a second if I knew it would export mp4s without artifacts on my machine but there's no way to trial the "pro" version as far as I know.
I don't work in the professional media field, but isn't this ridiculously inexpensive for something that seems to be aimed at content studios, TV stations, etc (judging by the hardware compatibility focus and dedicated keyboards)? I was expecting these pro products to be on the order of the tens of thousands USD.
Yes, DaVinci is ridiculously cheap, because the software is not how they earn their money, it's via their hardware.
If you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the submission page, you'll notice a bunch of hardware for controlling DaVinci and its modules. It ranges from $400 to $50,00 and they have even more expensive hardware as well. This is where they get most of their profits from, and where the larger companies really spend the money on when it comes to buying from BMD.
> Yes, DaVinci is ridiculously cheap, because the software is not how they earn their money, it's via their hardware.
DaVinci is ridiculously cheap because the entire company is owned by three guys, at least one of whom has a personal, burning disgust for the way that the television industry (in particular, the Australian television industry) used to be run back in the day.
I distinctly remember getting a bizarre company-wide memo at one point, directly from the CEO, where a particular product launch (I think it might have been the Pocket 4K) would assist in democratizing TV production to the point where no company could force the nation to watch Hee-Haw again.
He's genuinely on a mission from God to break up the monopoly in TV production, and profit comes second to that goal.
Also a great place to work too. Former member of the Decklink team here. Grant seems to genuinely care about the well-being of his staff, as much as a busy man in his position can. Great benefits like mixers with food and drink on a Friday to get to know other people in the company, and free food and coffee daily. Also enjoyed the rather "flat" organisational structures of managers and engineers. I'm sure in my team, if I recall correctly, the "team-leader" was regularly rotated amongst the engineers as just another role to be done, not some excuse for egoistic power-tripping. Almost like a chore that someone had to do. I think their organisation reflects in the quality/affordability of their products, as being engineer led.
100% man. I left two years ago due to some major life changes I didn't know how to handle, but still get nostalgic about the place to this day. It's not just the perks, but the culture too - both in terms of striving to improve as professionals and the laid-back, larrikin attitude towards just about everything else.
I run my own business now, but my long-term goal is to be able to create the same environment and provide the same opportunities that Blackmagic gave me.
Wait DaVinci is developped in Australia? Bummer. At least it does not require an internet connection to use, but even then...
(I usually don't really care about potential backdoors from a foreign nation state, but the Australian police has shown itself to be really really helpful with foreign law enforcement agencies. The FBI recently used them to set up a massive sting operation that would've been illegal for the FBI to do on their own.)
> DaVinci is ridiculously cheap because the entire company is owned by three guys, at least one of whom has a personal, burning disgust for the way that the television industry (in particular, the Australian television industry) used to be run back in the day.
Yeah, I mean that probably affects how they setup their pricing, but as you quoted me, it seems you're arguing against my point, rather than adding to it.
Without the hardware side of BMD, I'm not sure how they would be able to sustain the company as it is with just sales of the (very cheap) software. My point was not to say anything about the motivations of the founders, but more about how that price point can remain cheap, even though it costs way more to develop than what they can ever make back from selling just the software.
>Without the hardware side of BMD, I'm not sure how they would be able to sustain the company as it is with just sales of the (very cheap) software.
I don't understand the specifics, but I know Resolve is profitable in its own right (used to have lunch multiple times per week with one of the co-founders).
I think a lot of the IP was picked up during an acquisition, and most of the work on it is done by a fairly lean team up in Singapore.
Of course, that's not to say it's as profitable as it could be, but neither optimising for profit nor making a loss is not the goal of the founders.
Which feels like such a rare business model in this year 2022. Everybody wants to lock you into lucrative recurring software subscription, even for software that should be one and done.
Well, they took somehwat adobe route minus piracy. Pre davinci situation means: FCPX or Adobe Premiere.
How do you get your product in? Easy, release product for free so small time creators, experimenters get familiar. Those people go to work for professional studio, they request davinci since they know it better. Then company further optimizes by buying expensive intergrated hardware to better streamline production...
Its brilliant to see this nonobvious market oppportunity. Further you get extra street creds, as yt people will love your product just for the fact its so accessible (free).
>Everybody wants to lock you into lucrative recurring software subscription
Everybody except Grant Petty. I've definitely heard stories about an expletive-filled rant when Adobe discontinued their "buy once, own forever" products.
Both him and Doug (the other main co-founder) genuinely care more about making good-quality, affordable products than being worth an extra few hundred million.
• Selling to the pro field (50+ person studios) is a meager few billion dollar market, but highly demanding in terms of features. In Israel (where I worked in TV a decade ago), there are likely under 1000 'pro' edit stations, for almost 9M population [1].
• Selling to the general public is a much larger chunk, but you're competing against iPhone apps (previously against multimedia software, which is geriatric by now).
That's why the prosumer market is that lucrative: Same software as pro, with some flags to limit features. For every professional who can shell $5k (/year, which is new), there are 50 hobbyists willing to pay $250. Triple the income stream with marketing as the sole expense.
But not all companies have access to broadcast markets. For example, Adobe never got Premiere into newsrooms, but did make money off After Effects and Photoshop in design departments there. So Adobe changed their licensing structure to account for a different consumer:prosumer ratio by creating a "bundle" license paid monthly. Studios paid less (licenses for AE used to be single payment, and a lot) and consumers paid more.
Avid made money primarily from broadcast & film, so their flagship products factor that in their licensing, so their prosumer ratios are tilted towards their primary market (more expensive prosumer products).
I wonder how many studios switched to Blackmagic software. Davinci and Fusion (their compositing software) don't have a lot of success stories nowadays, but the feature list (multicam! high end grading! scripting! compositing!) is objectively more focused towards serving studios than Adobe's. I hope the adoption story looks a lot different this decade.
[1] I don't have official numbers, but a post house owns 5-50 Avid licenses, there's about 15 of them, plus universities, schools, military + corporate offices. That's still about 1 broadcast license per 10K population.
>I don't work in the professional media field, but isn't this ridiculously inexpensive for something that seems to be aimed at content studios, TV stations, etc
If you think Resolve is ridiculously inexpensive, Adobe Creative Cloud is actually rip-your-arm-off-where-do-I-sign inexpensive.
Just think about it.
For a business expense that is essentially pittance a month, you get:
- Adobe Premiere (arguably one of the best, if not *THE* best video editor)
- Adobe After Effects (as above, but motion graphics and visual effects)
- Adobe Audition (as above, but audio)
- Adobe Media Encoder
- Plus old friends Photoshop, Illustrator etc.
There are pro products out there for "tens of thousands of USD", but the cheaper end of the market is really giving them a run for their money (at least for your average use-case).
With the greatest of respect, have you ever run a business?
I could list many reasons why 600USD is cheap, but I'll leave it with the easiest one to understand, the old adage "time is money".
1. How much are you paying those video editors using the Adobe suite that you're paying 600 USD each a year for ?
2. How many projects are those video editors working on ?
3. What is the profit margin on those projects ?
I would suggest the typical answer to the above is "a lot", "a lot", "thin enough so that they need to complete a reasonable amount of projects to remain profitable".
As for $other_reasons, let's see .... IT equipment, Video/Lighting Equipment, office space, cost of customer acquisition (vs keeping them happy via prompt completion on time) .... the list goes on. The 600USD will be at the lower-end of all the other expenses.
600USD a year is cheap compared to what it is saving your business in time and money, and the efficiencies it brings.
Premiere has quite a bad reputation at crashes. After a bad reputation as being slow. Audition, Photoshop, Illustrator etc. not so much crashes or slowness
> Adobe Premiere (arguably one of the best, if not THE best video editor)
Daily reminder Premier, in 2022 can’t even update its preview window as you drag video clips around. No idea how it can be considered even a good video editor with that incompetence.
Can you elaborate on the workflow you use where this is a incompetence-defining issue? I'm trying to understand but it just doesn't seem like a reasonable workflow - the only thing I can come up with is that you use the current timeline preview point as your desired edit location and then move a clip back and forth until you find the frame you want to cut? Wouldn't it be easier to scrub through the clip to the point in the video you want to edit and then use the mark in/out points or just cut the video?
I know everyone has their own editing style, but calling the editor incompetent because of this weird workflow issue seems a bit much to me.
You hit the problem when it comes to lining up two clips and instead of being able to position one and scrub the other back in the timeline you have to fumble each individually and set down markers. It’s like editing one handed.
Also just because you’ve conditioned yourself to work around this limitation doesn’t excuse the developers from not implementing a feature even iMovie has.
Like why can the preview not just represent what’s under the play head all the time, why does it have to wait for me to stop dragging…
It originally cost $800,000. You're getting that for $300, plus a lifetime of free upgrades.
> Before this change, the pre-built versions of Resolve had been the only available options, selling for between $200,000 and $800,000, which was common industry practice at the time.
During my high school, I had a bunch of (amateur) projects involving video editing. As a broke student in a poor country who didn't want to just torrent Premiere and call it a day, I started exploring several FOSS video editors:
- OpenShot: simple interface, but crashes quite a lot
- Kdenlive: clunky and crashes way too much
- Shotcut: good for quick edit and the most stable out of the three
The biggest problem I had as a novice is the lack of tutorials/documentation. I then tried some freeware options (including HitFilm Express which I also found to be good) before finally settled with Resolve. When it comes to features and stability, especially in SFX and color grading, Resolve is far more superior and also has more resources to learn from. Of course, that means it is heavier and more complex, but it satisfies my needs so well that I don't mind roasting my CPU. It remains one my favorite piece of software and has only improved since then.
On Windows, OpenShot kept crashing for me whenever i dragged video clips around, snapping also didn't really work and it was pretty much unusable.
Shotcut's UI was a little bit confusing and the performance wasn't great.
Personally, i largely stuck with Kdenlive for basic video editing, it's a capable alternative to something like Sony Vegas (considering the fact that it's free).
I don't have anything against Resolve either, it's definitely an interesting project and definitely more polished than Kdenlive!
I'ved used Resolve, Premier and Final Cut, but I haven't found anything as intuitive as Sony Vegas. I'm just faster with Vegas, it could be because it's the first video editor that I got serious about.
Maybe try the latest Kdenlive a shot, it appears very stable. I'm dozens hours in already, no issues so far (Mint, latest Kdenlive with snap), and others also report it improved drastically.
Many people don’t know that most of Resolve is included in the free version. While Adobe continues to provide student “discounts” so that they can recruit new users to the salt mine.
I don't do any video editing but I appreciate a top shelf commercial editor that's officially available for Linux. We need more commercial closed source software on Linux, I don't understand the "free software only" orthodoxy that many users push.
Always appreciate their free version. It is like the best oasis in desert. With efforts put in this sophisticated software that benefits students, new creators, and others, I love this company. Also Blackmagic pocket's color space doesn't really have direct competitor, there should have more company like this.
I really want to like DaVinci Resolve. However, as a beginner level video editor, the amount of issues I keep encountering on what I consider to be the tiniest of projects (>10-30 second videos, using 2-4 PNG images), I can't fathom anyone using it professionally.
From things rendering completely different from the preview, to straight up not rendering parts at all, random crashing during encoding, and so on, I am honestly surprised to see any positive feedback on this product at all.
Regularly use it (Resolve 17) on both Windows and Linux with larger projects than that (100s of 4K clips, multiple audio tracks, added effects, color grading and more) and haven't encountered the issues you've mentioned at all. When I try the beta versions (including the beta of 18), I've run into many problems, including seemingly random crashes, but never for the stable versions. Using AMD CPU and Nvidia GPU, multiple 4K monitors with a desktop PC.
> I am honestly surprised to see any positive feedback on this product at all
If I see software that many people are raving about but I can't even run properly, my first guess is always that it's my fault, or my hardware, or my Linux setup somehow. I think the same applies here. If most people can run it without hiccups, then probably something is a bit weird with your setup. If everyone had the same issues that you have, then they surely wouldn't have gotten the attention they are getting from everyone.
Have you tried reaching out to their support team or sharing your issues on the public forum?
I'd like to believe it is my hardware, but other video editing software, as well as software in general, runs perfectly fine on my GTX1080/i7-4790/32GB Ram system.
I've tried it after every single clean re-install of windows 10 over the past few years, with every major stable and beta version they offered at the time, while never managing to not run into issues.
In the end I've come to accept that there simply must be some combination of effects and other things that I will habitually end up with that are not working properly together.
Yeah, that sucks... If you ever end up coming across it again, try to send over the project file over to support to see if they can figure something out. The times I've written them, they've been very responsive and helpful (but I am a Studio license holder), not sure how support works for the free version.
We use Resolve on a wide range of laptop configs with no issues including M1. Try another computer. I’m guessing the problem is on your end. Or you haven’t tried it since v14. You may also have something installed that is causing the issue.
I don't know about the preview issues, but I have also had some bizarre issues during encoding. Specifically h264 using the mp4 container will crash encoding almost 100% of the time. This started a couple of major versions ago, and continues to today. When encoding h264 in a mov container, no crashes, any other codec, no crashes. I would say simply try a different container and then use ffmpeg to copy / transcode into a format you want to deliver.
Oh, hey, I have this gem open right now on my taskbar. I do a lot of creative work in video, 2D and 3D animation, illustration, photo editing, music composition, and sound editing. I've almost never encountered a UI for a creative tool that was so intuitive to me and such a joy right out of the box. Bravo. Seems like 90%+ of software designers can't figure out how to achieve this. The last time I had such a great time out-of-the gate, which didn't make me want to take revenge on anybody, was probably Maya circa 2002.
My favourite piece of software these days. Have been using it on NixOS. Seems rock solid even with all the GPU features (but switched from Radeon to Nvidia to make that easy.)
You switched from Radeon to the hell that is Nvidia to make something easier? This is very interesting to me, since all my experiences have been exactly the opposite (i.e. moving from Nvidia to Radeon solved all my problems).
Yeah, BMD together with the teams of Blender and Unreal Engine manage to get out really big changes in a fast fashion. It's really impressive to see, time and time again.
I have to edit smaller videos, e.g. tech tutorials etc. I tried davinci, it seems highly professional, but requires a long learning path, the features more or less overwhelmed me and I didn't know how to start. Video editing is just a small side project for me though.
I am using OpenShot now, it has all the basic functionality one needs and with a 20 minute yt tutorial one knows enough to do most of the things...
The only problem with DaVinci on Linux was no builin mp4 codec. So you had the convert mp4 videos to some format and only then you could use it in DaVinci. Windows nor macOS version doesn't had this limitation. It was DaVinci 15 or 16. Not sure if this changed already.
I tried it once and remember that the community was unfriendly. New users are ridiculed. "This is an app for Pros. Never in my 17 years of experience have I"...is the general tone. Just off-putting.
We use their free version and are totally happy (well except the part that does final encoding to consumer format but we use different software for that).
At work I regularly transcode a Resolve editor's video to AVC-Intra 100 50i using Avid Media Composer or Adobe Media Encoder because Resolve can't export interlaced video properly.
Looks like they still haven't improved interlaced video support which is a shame because the rest of the software is great but it just isn't fit for purpose for me
Is it common to use the editing tool to output a delivery format? I find that their encoders are universally pretty terrible so I always output an intermediate format then transcode it with something more capable.
I'm just a hobbyist when it comes to editing though.
I work in news and that's common. I don't mind what anyone uses to edit or transcode but for our equipment to broadcast it, at some stage it has to become 1080i50 and its quicker for someone to submit that directly. It's a small feature that Resolve would benefit by having imo.
If they send in xdcamHD 50 or avc intra 100 it'll be ready for us to check and send to playback as soon as the file transfer is done. If they are transcoding it themselves, or expecting us to do it that can cost another 2-3 minutes minimum. Thsg time makes a big difference sometimes.
We accept basically anything though, the current thorn in my side is HDR video from phones. I have an ffmpeg command to make them rec709 but they still look awful and we are really only using phone footage when time is an issue.
If i hadn't bought Final Cut Pro and Motion back in 2011 - with a nice discount thanks to iTunes prepaid cards - DaVinci Resolve would be my first choice. I particular i've heard great things about their colour grading tools.
I used DaVinci Resolve 17 (the free version) to put together my video for FOSDEM. I had no previous video editing experience, but I tried a few programs and this one was by far the easiest for me to use.
Most of the heavy tools in the suite depend on GPU functionality, this release seems to introduce even more tools that are GPU-based. It's not that weird that it would require a discrete GPU, your entire computer would probably grind to a halt if both the compositor of your OS + Resolve has to share a non-discrete GPU.
Yes, and none of them perform as well as Resolve just because they are much worse at offload heavy work to the GPU. Resolve is really revolutionizing the amount of video editing work at the GPU level.
Premiere can barely handle 4K footage (without having to resolve to using proxies) without stutter, even on powerful hardware.
By the way, DaVinci has always been focused on integrating well with powerful hardware, and they have been relatively unique with this position. Going all the way back to when it used to use InfiniBand for doing parallel processing.
The tools you’ve mentioned are sufficient to only basic video editing tasks (which for some might be enough). If you want to do anything slightly more advanced (nice looking titles, transitions, video effects, tracking, etc) you basically have to use either Resolve, Premiere, Final Cut Pro or similar software packages.
Think 18 is M1 optimised, there were a few claims and videos saying it way 30x faster or something, but that turns out to be over the top. Does seem to be an appreciable performance improvement in many places though.
After reading the list of features, this sounded like an application that would be fun for a hobbyist like me to tinker with. Then, I saw the prices and realized it’s untenable.
I did miss that initially. Being new to DaVinci, it’s still a little unclear to me what all the packages listed at the bottom of the page offer vs the free offering.
Packages at the bottom is hardware for professionals (or at least semi-pros/serious hobbyists) who want a really streamlined hardware interface to the Resolve software. It's in no way needed to use or get good with the software, just helps when you want to move faster.
The free offering is really generous compared to other video editing software, and you only need to upgrade if you want the software to really be able to take advantage of your hardware, or you have more specific needs.
DaVinci doesn't care about the source of the footage. If you meant things like treating digital footage extracted from analog sources, then yes, probably a few additions/modifications would be interesting for you. I'd urge you to look through the changes yourself on the linked page, but here are some highlights that might be relevant for you:
- Resolve FX Beauty
- Edge Detection
- SuperScale
- Face Refinement
- Dead Pixel Fixer
- Advanced Noise Reduction
Hard to know exactly what kind of filters/plugins you're using that could also be replicated in DaVinci as you didn't detail your workflow.
> DaVinci doesn't care about the source of the footage.
Why not? VHS has properties such as interlacing that means that it doesn’t have complete individual frames like modern digital or analog film sources. Don't you need a completely different workflow for that?
Because DaVinci Resolve is a color grading and video editing tool, not a "media importer" / "conversion" tool. That's the job for some other software and hardware combo.
I think you are missing the reason people on HN find DaVinci Resolve interesting. It’s not anything particular about the features or capabilities. It’s the business model and what that’s doing to the industry. Resolve is free but has become the market leader for the majority of the video industry. It’s completely shaking the industry up and pushing competitors to compete.
(And as an aside if your not interested in something on HN, and don’t have anything to add then just don’t comment. But by all means do ask why people find it interesting and engage in that conversation)
While introducing the The Cloud part at https://youtu.be/BVjP6RVFjPg?t=2196 he talks about what other tech companies do and how that violates BlackMagic Designs culture is pretty important. Software subscriptions and tracking users are big no-nos for their culture.
Every release is packed with fundamental new value, and doesn’t sacrifice stability or performance - it usually improves both. Great software engineering!
Combined with the hardware innovation - like the first raw format that managed to bypass RED’s patent stranglehold - this company is setting up to dominate the entire film production pipeline.
We use Resolve, Ursa G2, Ursa 12K, pocket cine 4K and 6k. We also use their ATEM switcher and mini color grading console. They’re all great gear. If you’re looking to set up a small production house with end to end workflow in a single application and want to actually own the gear instead of renting, look no further than BMD.