How is grading in Resolve better?

[David Roth weiss]

Resolve was a for most of its lifetime a $250,000 dedicated state of the art tool for professional color grading, now it’s much cheaper and has editing capabilities as well. So, while it’s still one of the best color grading apps on the market, it’s only better in the hands of trained users who know how to use the Resolve toolset properly. For most users the color tools in all of the major NLEs are plenty good enough.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los Angeles

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[Michael Gissing]

As the Edit and Fairlight sound pages develop, Resolve will be a viable alternative edit tool to Vegas but a better grade tool. Potentially a better sound tool as well but I am a Fairlight user so I know the depth of that system. The Fairlight page is not as featured as the stand alone Fairlight yet but it is less than a year since Blackmagic started to integrate Fairlight.

Depending on the work you do and your grade requirements it may well be overkill and you are fine staying with Vegas as you are already skilled with it. I think Vegas is an underrated NLE and in many ways it is a better finish tool than most NLEs. But Resolve is a world apart in grading. Maybe look at some online tutorials to see the depth and versatility of the grading and compare to the Vegas tool set.

Part of the key to the power of both the Grade and Fairlight pages is using dedicated hardware controllers. I think the use of mouse to edit and control on screen mixers is a great limitation of all NLEs and DAWs. Having used Tangent Wave and the Fairlight Xynergi controllers for many years I fail to understand how people click and drag away all day with a mouse. So inefficient and frustrating.

[Duke Sweden]

I used to use Premiere Pro but found that I can more finely tune my image in Resolve. Mind you, I’m an amateur and I do this strictly for my own enjoyment, and to keep my 63 year old brain from rotting through misuse.

If you clients are perfectly happy with the work you’re doing for them, stick with Vegas. If you’re looking to challenge yourself and get a more professional looking, cinematic end result, go with Resolve. Like Michael said, it really is up to what your needs/wants are.

Dell XPS 8920
Intel i7 core 7700 build
GeForce GTX 1050ti
32 Gigs of RAM
3 7200 RPM SATA Drives
Windows 10 64-bit
DaVinci Resolve 14.2

[Tero Ahlfors]

[Mike Thomas] “My grading experience is limited to using the basic tools found in most NLE’s. I’m looking for reasons that Resolve is better in this department than say Sony Vegas which has a lot if not all the same tools plus 3rd party tools available.
“

I think a dedicated grading application beats NLE grading in workflow. Instead of adding an effect that probably doesn’t have all the tools you need for that shot (for example Premiere’s Lumetri is downright terrible if you need to do secondaries) whereas in Resolve you have the color page where you have everything you need in the same place helping you work quicker. Then you can easily copy grades to another shots and splitscreen compare the neighboring shots or captured stills so you can see that the scene stays balanced.