Our way or the Highway

[Bruno Mansi]

I recently had the chance to talk to a representative from Blackmagic about all things Resolve, and came away with the feeling that you had to do things 'their way or the highway'.

I first asked if they were going to make the layout more customisable, maybe with dockable/undockable tabs similar to Premiere Pro. He said that they were keen not to let users 'muck-about' (his words) with the layout too much. Pointing to the timeline on the Color page, he said 'that's where we think the timeline should be' and didn't feel users should be given the option of putting it any old place.

I then asked him if they had any plans to produce plugin versions of Resolve for other editing/compositing programs, which might provide for more seamless round-tripping between applications (similar to what Baselight are doing). His response was very much that they wanted the convince users to do it all in Resolve, hence their addition of full editing capabilities to the Resolve toolset. I did point out that this was exactly what they were doing with Fusion and the Avid Connect plugin, and that I thought it was unrealistic to expect users to abandon programs like Media Composer, Premiere Pro or FCP, no matter how good the current toolset was. He agreed that Media Composer would be around for a long time yet, but it didn't change his standpoint of wanting users to edit on Resolve. I also came away with the impression that this also applied to the hardware side as well, and that they were not going to open up Resolve to use AJA output cards.

Slightly disappointing attitude, and I'd be interested to know if any other user's experience with Blackmagic personnel was similar, or whether I just caught him on a bad day!

 

[Margus Voll]

Not opening up to Aja makes a lot of sense specially with free Resolve.

I feel now that i tend to edit less and less in Premiere and more in resolve as i can work colors the moment i edit
and raw editing is better supported. Super super flexible in workflow and edit for me.
Personally to me Avid seems evil as i do not have to use it i keep away from it usually.

So one's perspective can be totally different was my point.

[Nicolas Hanson]

Specialized tools and staff are important in professional work environments. The same guy can't to everything on the same machine.

Note that BMD talks about their product as 'the world's fastest? EDITOR'. What happens when their editor features become more important than their color features? Is the professional colorists not the main target group anymore? What happened when Apple decided to make FCP available and customized for the masses? 

Edited September 11, 2016 by Nicolas Hanson

[Bruno Mansi]

Televisual magazine recently did a UK survey on production technology which makes interesting reading.

It shows Resolve being the most used standalone grading system (at 36%), but also noted that Baselight was catching up fast with 25%, that's up on last year's 18%.

On other fronts, Blackmagic's products fare pretty badly, with their cameras accounting for only 1% and Resolve's editing toolset not mentioned at all in the list of systems used. Avid came out the clear winner at 50%, with Premiere at 27% and FCP at 13%.

I think it's fair to say Blackmagic cannot realistically think that somehow everyone is going to abandon Avid or Adobe editing products in the near future, so it would make sense to find better workflows to exchange projects between systems. Maybe Baselight's improved share of the grading pie is due to their superior workflow when it comes to sending grades back-and forth between colorist and editor. I've heard good reports about the Baselight-to-Avid metadata workflow, with one major UK ITV company using it exclusively for their flagship soap opera, which airs five nights a week. Avid are undisputed kings of the features industry, partly because the editors are familiar with the product, but also because they have worked out the issues of collaborative workflows and centralised storage. If I was head of Resolve development, I would certainly want to explore ways of better integrating with Avid products. After all, it's great that they offer the software for free, but ultimately, I'd be wanting large facilities to buy many seats of Resolve to integrate into their workflow. That's good for business and for the future development of the product.

[Nicolas Hanson]

On 11.9.2016 at 6:35 PM, Bruno Mansi said:

It shows Resolve being the most used standalone grading system (at 36%), but also noted that Baselight was catching up fast with 25%, that's up on last year's 18%.

On other fronts, Blackmagic's products fare pretty badly, with their cameras accounting for only 1% and Resolve's editing toolset not mentioned at all in the list of systems used. Avid came out the clear winner at 50%, with Premiere at 27% and FCP at 13%.

Interesting statistics!

Edited September 13, 2016 by Nicolas Hanson

[Margus Voll]

Then again we can not also assume that Avid user base is going to explode any time soon.

Mostly old studios or edit bays have it and new comers use the tools that fit their need more?

[Bruno Mansi]

5 hours ago, Margus Voll said:

Mostly old studios or edit bays have it and new comers use the tools that fit their need more?

I know you personally don't like Avid (having called it 'evil') but to suggest that the software is being consigned to the backrooms of old studios, while new companies/facilities are likely to choose Adobe or Blackmagic products is simply not true, at least not here in the UK.

In London, Many of the top broadcast facilities have around 10 times more Avid cutting rooms than Premiere or FCP seats. One top facility recently opened it's fifth site, and added 18 new Avid suites and two FCP to meet demand. I am of course talking about the broadcast and features market - I appreciate that corporate and independent film makers are tending to go with all-in-one solutions such as that offered by Adobe Creative Cloud, but as Nicolas pointed out..

On 11/09/2016 at 4:40 PM, Nicolas Hanson said:

Specialized tools and staff are important in professional work environments. The same guy can't to everything on the same machine.

I think this is the point of what I was saying. If Blackmagic want to carry on offering it's software for free, whilst trying to offer both a grading and editing platform that's fine for certain sectors of the industry. My impression is that they seriously want to duplicate the success of their grading software with their editing functions, but they're up against the likes of Adobe Premiere in the corporate/independent market and Avid just about everywhere else. 

My feeling is that they should develop their editing features for finishing work, and provide better integration with the likes of Media Composer and Premiere Pro.

[Margus Voll]

I think BM plans to cover the whole workflow. See Fusion for example, cams and all of that.
Integration to workflow is important bit now and in the future. This is why Nuke studio seems strong platform to me.

I think we have one editor around here that has Avid but i'm not sure which version.
National TV has Avid for editing but everything that comes out of there seems bad in quality sense.
Not sure why. This is what makes it not so popular in my book for now. Maybe by time i know better.

[Nicolas Hanson]

4 minutes ago, Margus Voll said:

National TV has Avid for editing but everything that comes out of there seems bad in quality sense.
Not sure why. 

Definitely not because of Avid. 95% of the major feature films done the last years are edited on an Avid platform. That's about the only professional editing solution in a top professional environment both in US, UK and most of Europe. The BMD editing solution is fine for one-man-studios, indie productions and small corporate studios but I can't imagine that the broadcast centers or post production houses that do high-end short forms or features will ever integrate a one-in-all solution like that. Maybe one or two stations to supplement the rest. 

[Margus Voll]

Ok but by this any platform with good group tools should be fine?

[Bruno Mansi]

I don't think anyone is saying that Resolve isn't a capable editing platform, but the reason I started this thread was not to compare one piece of editing software over another. My original comments were more to do with my reaction to what the Blackmagic rep was saying about the future development of their product.

Now, I don't know if his views are representative of Blackmagic's direction for the software, and I was really looking to see if anyone else had any other insights or ideas about how they think the product should develop.

 

[Nicolas Hanson]

39 minutes ago, Margus Voll said:

Ok but by this any platform with good group tools should be fine?

That's a good start! The problem begins when they try to pack to much features into one single software package, because they have to make choices and set priorities. If that would not be a problem. Why do you think Adobe offer a production package and not a single software solution with all the tools? Because it's not smart. The same applies for marketing. It's not smart to market a product like DaVinci as an editor, like they have been forced to do now.

[Margus Voll]

Lets assume they make all the functions work properly and just different departments use different option from there

would that be ok then ?

[Tom Evans]

I think that they have a really great development team and could take some shares from the other editing systems in the long run. I support the thought of including some editing features and compositing tools inside the color app but Avid is really solid and know their market really well. 

[Margus Voll]

Editing abilities geting better help colorist also if you need to alter "final final really locked" edit.

I get it every feature i work on. Now it is easier than ever to make changes last minute without long round tripping. 

[Marc Wielage]

On 9/10/2016 at 4:00 AM, Bruno Mansi said:

I recently had the chance to talk to a representative from Blackmagic about all things Resolve, and came away with the feeling that you had to do things 'their way or the highway'.

The glass is half-empty, but it's also half-full.

If you pick up a copy of the Resolve 8 user manual (which is out there on the web), you'll go into shock at how simplistic and awful the user interface was back then. Be aware that the software was also about $250,000+ and required another $100K in hardware and the control surface. And it was about 1/10th the speed of what we have today. 

I think a lot of user complaints boil down to, "I'm uncomfortable that this thing is over there, and that thing is over here." At some point, you have to get with the program and stop wailing at the four winds and just buckle down and learn to use what you have. A lot hinges on changing your working philosophy to taking advantage of how Resolve works, rather than complaining how it doesn't do something in a certain way done in another program. 

It helps to have a control surface, to memorize (and customize) keyboard shortcuts, to use a 3rd-party macro panel (like the XKeys), and to know the manual pretty well. Do that, and you can be very productive and work very, very fast. 

I've used 12 different color correction programs over the last 30 years (Topsy, Amigo, Dubner, the Image system, Arcas, daVinci Renaissance, daVinci 888, daVinci 2K, Pandora Pogle Platinum, Lustre, Baselight, and Resolve). All of them have pros and cons. All of them had flaws. Each of them could do fast, billable, reliable work. Coming from my perspective, Resolve is far more practical and productive than any of them, save possibly for Baselight (which is also an excellent system with some brilliant features). Given the cost difference between Resolve and Baselight, I'll gladly take Resolve's limitations for 1/10th the cost. 

As for editing, there are highly-personal choices in terms of user interface and features. I can think of a hundred pros and cons with Avid vs. Premiere vs. FCP7 vs. FCPX vs. Resolve (and also dark horses like Lightworks). I think given enough macros and a macro keyboard, you could do damned nearly anything with Resolve, assuming very fast hardware and fast drives. I wouldn't necessarily want to edit a 20-camera concert with Resolve, nor would I want to edit a feature-length documentary with 1000 hours of source material. But for certain things, I think it's fine. It's certainly good for finishing and conforming, and I have done some light duty editing projects that work well. 

Read Paul Saccone's recent book on editing on Resolve:

https://www.amazon.com/Definitive-Editing-DaVinci-Blackmagic-Learning/dp/0996152830/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483522353&sr=1-1

Alexis Van Hurkman also has some good tutorials just on editing on Resolve, and I think he has some good things to say (plus warnings on certain traps and also revealing some tricks along the way):

http://www.rippletraining.com/products/davinci-resolve/editing-effects-in-davinci-resolve-12-5/

[Margus Voll]

On editing:

I have done now many of my editing jobs only in Resolve and left Premiere out of it on purpose.

Specially material shot on Alexa on BM cameras i can edit already in ACES workflow and work quickly also on shots with color.

Makes so much sense these days, if in future it will get more snappy and more shortcuts like Marc pointed out i do not see
myself working with other tools.

 

 

[Thomas Singh]

Did you go to NAB this year @Bruno Mansi?

[Bruno Mansi]

9 minutes ago, Thomas Singh said:

Did you go to NAB this year @Bruno Mansi?

No, never been to NAB. Living in the UK means it's a fairly expensive trip, unless a company is prepared to foot the bill!

IBC in Amsterdam (September) is much easier and cheaper to get to.

[Cary Knoop]

 

 

 

On 9/10/2016 at 4:00 AM, Bruno Mansi said:

Slightly disappointing attitude, and I'd be interested to know if any other user's experience with Blackmagic personnel was similar, or whether I just caught him on a bad day!

Was at NAB this year and spoke quite a bit with Blackmagic representatives.  They were all very professional and helpful, some questions that could not be answered were directed real time to other representatives. Two other companies I that want to highlight in terms of the professionalism of their representatives at NAB were AJA and Tektronix,