Resolve 18 Beta changes the game forever!

Thomas Smet

Thomas Smet

Veteran
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/

Their collaboration features are absolutely insane! As a software developer that pushes/pulls code to GitHub with a team its amazing nobody else has really tried this yet. They even have a Dif tool to see timeline edit changes for version history.

Most of what we do in a NLE are text changes or instructions much like writing code. Move this clip here, adjust this color wheel by this number of points, This Fusion comp is made up of this and this node and so forth. Makes sense to work this way and have any change instantly updated from the US to Japan in seconds. Its only a small text instruction change to upload/download between systems so its very fast. Like sending a chat message.

This is amazing that an editor can be cutting in the US, Audio worked on in Germany, VXF comps in England and grading in Japan. all at the same time and all updates instantly shared between all working o the projects. They even added a Frame.io like Presentation feature and a live chat system. They thought of everything.
 
I was still on Final Cut 7 at the start of this year. LOL. I had no reason to upgrade really but I got tired of being stuck on Sierra, so I've done some projects on Resolve and started migrating to Adobe Premiere because that's what most jobs seem to be asking for these days. Some of the AI features in this update are really cool, look forward to playing with them.
 
It'll be really interesting to see the AI masking advancements.

To-date the intital implementation of the "magic mask" has been one of the most impressively pointless things I've ever seen. Impressive because it's often SO CLOSE to being useful. But pointless, because there's no decent capacity to correct the mask edges that it gets wrong.

The cloud-based system looks really nifty too.

Was also great to hear Grant's effective mission-statement about subscription-based software, and hear that Blackmagic won't be headed in that direction.

This is one of the really nice things about a private company, not being beholden to the complications of public shareholders.
 
Grug said:
It'll be really interesting to see the AI masking advancements.

To-date the intital implementation of the "magic mask" has been one of the most impressively pointless things I've ever seen. Impressive because it's often SO CLOSE to being useful. But pointless, because there's no decent capacity to correct the mask edges that it gets wrong.
Click to expand...
You can fix the mask edges, but I agree with you, close but no cigar.

It's faster and better to draw your own mask and keyframe the movements. You just click on the "frames" button.
 
Its also pretty cool how much Resolve is utilizing the neural engine on Apple silicon. The CPU and GPU are only 2/3 of the processing power capable on Apple silicon. The Neural engine is a mostly untapped resource to help offload certain forms of processing to really speed up applications. Its exciting to see a NLE utilize this hardware capability and I'm sure it will only get better in the future.

The Apple developer helping out with the Blender Metal implementation is also exploring using the Neural engine as a way to help boost the render speed and other calculations like physics in Blender. We could really see Resolve, Blender and games really pick up a significant boost when developers really start to tap into that neural engine.
 
I am so tired of Premiere Pro crashing. The latest version of Premiere simply crashing every 2 to 15 minutes, not kidding. Are you guys experience crashing problems often in Premiere? I might have to just get rid of the cloud service and buy photoshop/Lightroom which I need and move on to another NLE.
 
I ditched Adobe a long time ago and use Affinity Photo, Affinity Design and Affinity Publisher now. Not as featured but fully capable tools in the right hands. Combined with FCP, Motion, Compressor, Blender and Resolve I have pretty much everything I need for content creation tools and no longer pay a single penny monthly. Only application I pay for annually is Sketch for UX design. Don't have to but I like getting updates.

I do miss a few features of Photoshop and Illustrator but not enough to ever go back.
 
Thomas Smet said:
I ditched Adobe a long time ago and use Affinity Photo, Affinity Design and Affinity Publisher now. Not as featured but fully capable tools in the right hands. Combined with FCP, Motion, Compressor, Blender and Resolve I have pretty much everything I need for content creation tools and no longer pay a single penny monthly. Only application I pay for annually is Sketch for UX design. Don't have to but I like getting updates.

I do miss a few features of Photoshop and Illustrator but not enough to ever go back.
Click to expand...

I hope you're able to stay strong and don't have to go back. I just caved a week ago (after just shy of two years being adobe-free) and took out a new Photoshop subscription.

When I was finally forced off my beloved CS6 (by Apple killing 32-bit apps) I bought an outright copy of Capture One, and I also bought a copy of Affinity Photo (which is a terrific photoshop alternative, as far as actual photoshopping is concerned).

The thing that's been killing me for these past two years though (with both Capture One and Affinity), is that they both miss the elegance of Adobe Camera Raw for processing multiple photos at once.

I have ZERO interest in having software manage my raw media (it's why I won't touch lightroom with a 10-foot pole, and it's what drove me mental with Capture One). All I want to do is bring my files into the image editing software, do what I want to them, and then export them wherever I want. I don't need software middle-managing that process, creating caches and indexing everything I do. I don't want to create separate catalogs, project files, or folder structures, just to process a handful of photos. I want to get in and out without fuss.

I don't think that's really so much to ask for.

Affinity Photo would actually be fine in this regard, if they just had SOME/ANY kind of innuitive navigation built-in, for processing multiple files at the same time. Unfortuntely, it just opens every file in a new tab, with no kind of preview thumbnails - which makes it very ungainly to process anything (unless you're literally just working with one or two files).

Adobe Camera Raw has always been the gold standard for me, because of that non-intrusive ease-of-use. So now (after two years of doing everything I can to avoid it) I'm on a $14.29/month AUD subscription. :cry:

I've made my peace with it, as I simply want the ease-of-use more than I don't want the subscription model.

Ultimately, the more painful thing is that I saved myself NOTHING by buying Affinity and Capture One (the costs basically amount to the same as renting Photoshop for the past two years would have). So all of the operational headaches I've had for the past two years, have been for nothing.
 
Thomas Smet said:
I ditched Adobe a long time ago and use Affinity Photo, Affinity Design and Affinity Publisher now. Not as featured but fully capable tools in the right hands. Combined with FCP, Motion, Compressor, Blender and Resolve I have pretty much everything I need for content creation tools and no longer pay a single penny monthly. Only application I pay for annually is Sketch for UX design. Don't have to but I like getting updates.

I do miss a few features of Photoshop and Illustrator but not enough to ever go back.
Click to expand...

I did the same thing. One program I recently added to those
you listed was Pixelmator Pro. It has some pretty cool
integration with Motion now.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7AthuaAQqzk
 
Grug said:
I hope you're able to stay strong and don't have to go back. I just caved a week ago (after just shy of two years being adobe-free) and took out a new Photoshop subscription.

When I was finally forced off my beloved CS6 (by Apple killing 32-bit apps) I bought an outright copy of Capture One, and I also bought a copy of Affinity Photo (which is a terrific photoshop alternative, as far as actual photoshopping is concerned).

The thing that's been killing me for these past two years though (with both Capture One and Affinity), is that they both miss the elegance of Adobe Camera Raw for processing multiple photos at once.

I have ZERO interest in having software manage my raw media (it's why I won't touch lightroom with a 10-foot pole, and it's what drove me mental with Capture One). All I want to do is bring my files into the image editing software, do what I want to them, and then export them wherever I want. I don't need software middle-managing that process, creating caches and indexing everything I do. I don't want to create separate catalogs, project files, or folder structures, just to process a handful of photos. I want to get in and out without fuss.

I don't think that's really so much to ask for.

Affinity Photo would actually be fine in this regard, if they just had SOME/ANY kind of innuitive navigation built-in, for processing multiple files at the same time. Unfortuntely, it just opens every file in a new tab, with no kind of preview thumbnails - which makes it very ungainly to process anything (unless you're literally just working with one or two files).

Adobe Camera Raw has always been the gold standard for me, because of that non-intrusive ease-of-use. So now (after two years of doing everything I can to avoid it) I'm on a $14.29/month AUD subscription. :cry:

I've made my peace with it, as I simply want the ease-of-use more than I don't want the subscription model.

Ultimately, the more painful thing is that I saved myself NOTHING by buying Affinity and Capture One (the costs basically amount to the same as renting Photoshop for the past two years would have). So all of the operational headaches I've had for the past two years, have been for nothing.
Click to expand...

I totally agree with you. It does suck processing one raw photo at a time with Affinity. I would have thought they would have addressed that by now.

I have however given in to a certain degree and use the Apple Photos app to keep and organize my photos. Kind of freaks me out at times but I do find it easier to share with others now and nice to keep my photos in iCloud. I can select to edit a photo in Affinity which helps a bit but yeah its still clunky and I still have to depend on Apple handling my photos. I recently traded in my M1 MBA for a M1 Pro 14" MBP and it was nice just syncing the photo library from iCloud.

One other thing I miss thats not a huge deal but Adobe supports new camera raw formats much faster than MacOS does. Many other photo apps depend on the raw support built into MacOS to handle raw photo formats. If one plans on buying a brand spanking new model of a camera the day it comes out it can sometimes takes weeks or months for Affinity to support raw files from that camera. I'm not doing that often but it can be a problem.
 
I have the affinity photo as well and used to work on it. Then few months ago I bought the Pixelmator Pro. Its really cool.

I am editing a big project in FCP, so haven't spent much time in resolve. With you guys praising, I guess I need to check resolve.

As a matter of principle, I don't want any monthly subscription based service, so I refuse to work with premier pro.
 
I wonder if this is why a bunch of editors penned an open letter to Tim Cook asking for more support of FCP as an industry standard application, including providing more collaboration tools. I mean, I can't even bounce my sound to a mixer without going through a 3rd party program

https://www.macobserver.com/news/en...tter-to-tim-cook-over-final-cut-pro-concerns/

I could see some headaches arising from having multiple people working on the same timeline simultaneously. Or having my employers watching my edit remotely and examining my changelog. The control freak in me doesn't like that. Nevertheless, it's an impressive advance
 
Ken1212 said:
I am so tired of Premiere Pro crashing. The latest version of Premiere simply crashing every 2 to 15 minutes, not kidding. Are you guys experience crashing problems often in Premiere? I might have to just get rid of the cloud service and buy photoshop/Lightroom which I need and move on to another NLE.
Click to expand...

I don't remember the last time Premiere Pro crashed on me, but I'm using version CS6 on a 2012 Macbook Pro Core i7 running Mac OSX 10.13.6 High Sierra.
 
ahalpert said:
I wonder if this is why a bunch of editors penned an open letter to Tim Cook asking for more support of FCP as an industry standard application, including providing more collaboration tools. I mean, I can't even bounce my sound to a mixer without going through a 3rd party program

https://www.macobserver.com/news/en...tter-to-tim-cook-over-final-cut-pro-concerns/

I could see some headaches arising from having multiple people working on the same timeline simultaneously. Or having my employers watching my edit remotely and examining my changelog. The control freak in me doesn't like that. Nevertheless, it's an impressive advance
Click to expand...

FCP is a really powerful program that just has a few limitations. Some of those limitations are real and some not so much. Those of us that use it find it hard to move back to a track based system. Once you get used to the magnetic timeline it becomes the fastest possible way to edit. A lot of what FCP does it does exceptionally well. Its what's missing that is really its only problem.

I find a lot of the stigma it faces is also from its 1.0 version 11 years ago. Its amazing to think people don't realize it has been updated since then. Thats why I say some criticisms are valid and some not so much. Its a vastly better system today than it was at 1.0.

The frustration is how slowly it is updated and how little Apple seems to pay attention or listen. They pay attention but only to one group of users it seems and there is a group they do not seem to listen to. Thats why that letter was written to Tim Cook. The pros that need more want to see Apple do something about that and devout more resources to FCP development. Its not just FCP either. Motion and Compressor barely get any attention at all anymore. I'm really surprised more people don't use Motion. Its very powerful for a $50 program and does things no other $50 program out there can do.
 
I guess I could be wrong but having not used FCP I looked at some online pages on the subject of the FCP magnetic timeline, spent some time watchintg and listening the tutorials. My takeaway is that either you are living in a bubble or I am, but I honestly didn't see a single editing feature in FCP that didn't have a direct counterpart in Resolve. I could only conclude that anyone saying the FCP magnetic timeline is an exclusive with FCP never used the Resolve CUT page with the Speed Editor. All the grouping, moving, rippling, slipping, splitting, ripple overwriting, appending, smart insterting, snapping, trim in/outs, place on top, marking, synching, linking, it's all there, and other features I didn't see in the videos as well. I assume FCP has counterparts for those but I didn't see anything as cool as the Resolve Cut Page, and the integration of the software interface to the Speed Editor. I would suggest you visit the product pages at BMD and see if you still come away thinking FCP's magnetic timeline tops this. From what I understand of it, the track based editing in Resolve is working with the Edit Page, but the Cut Page is a different way of working and the integration with the Speed Editor rips.
 
Second that about the Cut Page. Now that I am familiar with it I find it faster than FCPX and with more features, eg Resource tape review. As for the rest of Resolve, once you know how to use it, and with the right computer, it's simply no contest. I bought FCPX within an hour of its release at the wrong. lower price, before they corrected the mistake and put the correct price on the website - still smiling about that to this day! FCPX is good,I still have to use for a couple of clients, better IMHO than Premier, but gets smoked by Resolve.
 
how does the stability/reliability of Resolve compare to FCP and Premiere? and do you think the optimization for Apple is on par with FCP?
 
Can only talk about my use but FCPX seems very solid. NEVER had a crash with Resolve, although people with under-powered computers often do, and when I last used Premiere up to about 18 months ago, I lost so much time with crashes I vowed never to use it again. Should add I am totally agnostic about any gear or software I use. If Premiere suddenly becomes the best NLE I'll be on it like a shot.
 
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