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DaVinci 10 adds many prosumer oriented ‘all in one” features, while not fixing basic issues.
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Even if i vote for being focused on color tools for V11 , it is fare to say that since BMD bought davinci , quite many color tools has been updated
Hue curves
RGB Mixer
Log controls
Split combiner
Blending Modes
RGB , YUV , HSLAgain i hope for World Class New Keyer and Roto tools on V11 , i would have preferred if resolve would cost 50K , but is not fare to say that BMD have not improved the product immensely .
g
Davinci Resolve Control Surface
MacPro
Cubix desktop 4
2 Red Rockets
GTX580+GTX5800+GTX580
24GB RAM
Panasonic 58PF Plasma
Panasonic BT300 Plasma
Ultrascope -
Anyone who knows me will attest to my frequent criticism of BMD and their Resolve implementation. I even think, I had finally succeeded in annoying BMD enough to not include me in Resolve beta program:-)
Well, I guess, this comes with the territory. Said that, no one will deny great strides BMD had done in bringing new tools under the Resolve roof. As a colorist I’m less excited about live grading or dailies origination, than the inclusion of proper noise reduction or improvements in windows and tracking operation. To be able to finish in Resolve is a godsend.
I have a remote grading partner in Prague, where they specializing in VFX work and they are exclusively an Autodesk house. I was doing some training, where I demonstrated to them the conform using XML. They were left speechless after seeing the simplicity of the process. They kept saying just how much better Resolve was at at conforming and multi-resolution work. One can really forget good things, that are just work, no fuss.
So, my issue with BMD is not the lack of new features. My main beef is with the implementation of those features. I am really fed up with the incessant click-athon, that needed to use Resolve with the third party panel, the weird and difficult to understand design choices, that are sometimes based on legacy decisions, great number of unfinished and not ready for the primetime features, that, seems, are included just for sake of having more feature, even if that feature can’t actually be used.
A couple of examples of weird design decisions. In V9 there are dots for mode selections- for example 3way vs Log. Now those dots had been made much darker and it takes much more effort to select 3 Way vs LOG, because you can’t really see them any longer. Another, in V9 Log mode has 4 wheels and three way has 3. So, you could just glance at it and immediately know which mode you’re in. Well, now both the the 3 way has 4 trackballs(!) and Log also has 4 balls, so now it is very difficult to tell which mode you’re in. I like the idea of offsets controls in 3 way, but now I hate it, because I’m always lost in different modes! The new Contrast and pivot are great, BUT, pivot sensitivity is way too low and there is an empty space on my panel right next to them. Doesn’t it makes sense to position the master offsets in that empty space? It’s just common sense thingy… Yes, that all may sound petty and insignificant, but things like that what separated decent software from truly great. The attention to detail is what I think separates Resolve from other truly innovative products on the market.
Honestly, it’s the grading part of Resolve that’s the weakest link in this otherwise very impressive grading application. Once the ease and convenience of grading issues are addressed, Resolve will be a much better application. -
Like I said – at Company 3 and so on there is another guy/girl to make the mattes, if need be, on another system entirely. Those situations are ultra-high-end. In narrow deadline mid-budget commercials the colorist does not have access to external resources like that.
That said, high-end post is slowly moving away, not toward Resolve. It is low end to mid range house who are newly adopting Resolve as a replacement for Apple Color or the tools within Premiere, etc. I have not heard of anyone dumping Mystika or Baselight to switch to Resolve. I don;t think that has happened in many years. This is a sign they are falling behind, that their only continuing advantage is price, and from feedback I hear (which BM does not seem interested in, but whatever) the secondary qualification and alpha tools are the weak point, the tracker the strong point.
I did not say Resolve was prosumer, but simply that their new feature focus had that orientation, and it did not address urgent problems.
I would much rather not have to buy a new system and spend the time learning it. There are also many things I do love about Resolve and the new features in 10. I don’t want to have to say goodbye to them just because they can’t fix something so basic which would not be hard to fix at all. How hard would it be to split out an alpha channel with the combiner node function? Then I could apply an OFX depspekle plugin or heavy denoising and most problems solved right there. It’s almost infuriating that they don’t do this.
That’s why I hope that my nagging will pay off. Without customer feedback software companies are just throwing darts in the dark, although BM does not seem to appreciate them (at their eventual peril – not my problem after we switch).
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i have to say i totally agree….one of the things that still bugs me about resolve for mac if you’re a mouse user is the fact that the damn wheels are just too small to make fine adjustments….please no comments about get some panels then…they addressed this in the curves section with a really great idea…click on the window and they get bigger so you can actually see what you’re doing! in fact i still think it would be great if you could rearrange the whole user interface as you could with all the older dAvinci products (888 for instance). resizable windows that you can move around would take this app from really good to truly great! there’s way too much jumping around on the screen, especially with the higher resolution displays. you can be working on a node in the upper right hand side of the screen then have to scroll all the way down to the lower left to deselect a wheel for grading…then all the way to the right to move the keyframes around….and forget using scopes if you’re on a laptop because there just isnt any space for them…it’s the little things that still drive me crazy….someone should give these guys a book on ergonomics! one final gripe from me is that i don’t really see the need for resolve to get more edit savvy…its a grading system! leave the editting to the editors….whats next? a 24 channel surround sound mixing plugin? stick to what you do best and make the best damn grading system ever invented! okay im done my rant for now….
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The reason they did this in the curves is because it’s an issue for panel users as well.
https://JuanSalvo.com
https://theColourSpace.com -
I vote/ask for a new bigger/more advanced panel rather than keep improving the GUI for everybody’s free use , on every screen , any resolution /laptop etc…
Davinci Resolve Control Surface
MacPro
Cubix desktop 4
2 Red Rockets
GTX580+GTX5800+GTX580
24GB RAM
Panasonic 58PF Plasma
Panasonic BT300 Plasma
Ultrascope -
With all due respect, Robert, your thread title implies that you have many basic issues you want to talk about, and then it turns out it’s just the same issue that you have talked about before. I get that it’s important to you, but other people (including us) seem to be able to work with the keyer in Resolve without much trouble, even in high-end feature film grading.
Some software packages will always be better at some things while others are better at other things, and I would not be unhappy if Resolve’s keyer was improved, but it’s perfectly usable.
There’s also the old saw about “prosumer features” in your thread title, which you say absolutely nothing about in the body of your post. What features are you unhappy about BMD adding? I see lots and lots of useful stuff, and not much that’d I’d call “prosumer”. I’ve also been very happy about BMD’s responsiveness to fixing some basic outstanding issues, including some that I know have been fixed because of my own bug reports/feature requests, like 12-bit TIFF support (read only for now, but I hope for write soon), grayscale DPX, etc.
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Joakim Ziegler – Postproduction Supervisor -
Hey Robert,
Not sure if you are aware but SGO has recently released Mamba FX, which is basically the effects engine of Mistika with an added nodal interface as a software only package. It’s priced under 300 dollars. If you enjoy pulling keys in Misitka vs Resolve you could use this software to build a custom matte to import in to resolve. Not ideal, but may be useful in tricky situations. You could also use this to get up to speed on the software (if you aren’t already), so when you do end up going with Mistika you’d have a big part of the software already learned. I think the color corrector is identical to what you’d get in Misitka too. You can even download a free evaluation version to give it a try for free!
https://www.sgo.es/shop/index.php?route=common/home&tracking=523b7cd8461b2
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Unfortunately, it’s Windows only.
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Yep. Not too hard to run Windows software on a Mac these days thankfully. Mistika is Linux based, but Insight (like Mamba) is Windows, and fully functional for the most part which leads me to believe that the code base is now multi-platform for the most part. I would love to see a Windows version of Mistika that was fully functional, and much cheaper. A lot of Resolve users who already own Tangent Element Panels could move over quite easily as the hardware (panels/gpus) are quite similar. A problem is that Mistika uses DVS I/O boards. Unfortunately Mamba doesn’t support video I/O currently.
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