OT Resolve 14

[David Lawrence]

[Michael Gissing] “What editors will find is that the Fairlight toolset spilling into the normal edit timeline will change the way you approach audio. Stacked clips on a track, once you’ve used them, is so powerful.”

Michael- having never tried the Fairlight toolset, I’m excited to learn more. Other then simply digging in and working with it, are there any learning resources you can recommend to help get up to speed?

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David Lawrence
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[Michael Gissing]

[David Lawrence] “Michael- having never tried the Fairlight toolset, I’m excited to learn more. Other then simply digging in and working with it, are there any learning resources you can recommend to help get up to speed?”

Hmm. I will have a look online. Having used it for so long and being involved in the development of the software and its predecessor dSP, I guess I should be making tutorials. But I haven’t so I will ask my friends at Fairlight if there are any good resources out there. The new Resolve manual doesn’t have much about Fairlight editing techniques but it does mention layering. If you can get hold of an old Fairlight manual you can at least read about how the software works. There are many questions I am going to direct to the Fairlight team about SFX libraries, opening old Fairlight projects etc so I can help passing on some of that info. I’ll ask if I can put up the old Fairlight manual. All links to the old Fairlight site are now redirected to Blackmagic and I can’t find anything with a general Goggle search.

This is clearly an issue for many so keep an eye on this thread in the Blackmagic forum https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&start=0&t=58772

I did find some old stuff on youtube. They do show some edit functionality but using the dedicated hardware. There’s a range of vids in this series which at least show something.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD-CL0qqbTA

And here’s a fun one showing how Fairlight directly imported FCP Legend XMLs eight years ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onxjJbiQiW4

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[Michael Gissing]

Looks like the Redshark team thought Resolve 14 was the standout from NAB

https://www.redsharknews.com/production/item/4572-redshark-awards-nab-2017

Two awards – Innovation and best Editing

[Tim Wilson]

[Michael Gissing] “Looks like the Redshark team thought Resolve 14 was the standout from NAB”

Me too!

Quite a few other folks as well, including the venerable, pioneering, and all-around awesome Marco Solorio at One River Media, who was raving about it on his Instagram account. They were such passionate and eloquent posts that I wound up screencapping them and retweeting from the COW’s official account.

You can click to open them in a larger window to read them, but I also pasted the text below. Keep in mind that this is social media stuff typed into his phone from the show floor, and not his typical level of finesse, but you’ll definitely get a feel for how excited he is. I’ll have my own lengthy write-up later, but for now, I’ll also add a comment or two.

Say hello to our future audio post-production solution! ???? For YEARS I’ve been begging the audio gods for a solution that would finally do away with our ProTools limitations and problems (which includes our large 40-channel ProControl mixing console) and FINALLY the answer has been RESOLVED.

YES, PUN INTENDED.

Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve now fully incorporates the EXTENSIVE Fairlight DAW solution right within Resolve. Everything from mono to 22.2 surround and a slew of countless other powerful features (1000 real-time tracks with EXTREMELY low latency, anyone?). My excitement for this is unparalleled (including the fact that it’s COMPLETELY MODULAR both vertically and horizontally). [ed note: emphasis added]

As some of you know, my audio background stretches back to the 80’s and 90’s, where I got my professional start in the industry, as a chief engineer in a couple of Bay Area recording studios and to this day maintain a solid audio foundation in our workflows. I absolutely CANNOT WAIT to start using this once it’s finally available for release (they’re still adding features and making it ready for prime time).

I still have a lot more to see at NAB in the next few days, but this, THIS is currently my top pick of the show. I spent 90% of day 1 at the Blackmagic booth and Fairlight is partially to blame, LOL! So excited! Expect an extensive article write-up in the coming weeks!

Take note of things like up to 22.2 surround and 1000 real-time tracks. This is serious, serious stuff.

Also note that the 1000 rt tracks are with the support of a $6000 accelerator card (may sound like a lot to a video person, but trust me, in audio world, this is fantastic news, at a classically BMD-disruptive price), but Grant Petty says that a “typical” computer should be able to hand 60 tracks in real time with no problem.

Of course, not everyone needs that much audio power, but it’s “free” with Resolve, which now costs $295, and does vastly more for free now than it did before, so even the FREE version is a major “price reduction”! ????

Honestly, if the story was just “Blackmagic Design releases a software-only Fairlight for free, or $295 for the full version, supporting 60 tracks in real time, with an optional acceleration card and a completely modular, expandable control surface” — THAT would be the biggest story at NAB in any year since….well, since Blackmagic did something like this with DaVinci.

Note again that Marco mentions the “COMPLETELY MODULAR” (his all caps) board. To me, the second biggest story at NAB happened before NAB, also with Blackmagic and the introduction of the Resolve Mini Panel. The flypack and rackmount crowd is going nuts for Mini, but for me, this hits the sweet spot between exposing the full range of Resolve’s power for editing, with a control surface at a size and cost that an editor can relate to.

That is, even if they couldn’t afford the $29,995 Resolve Advanced Panel, most of the colorists I know feel its priced about right for what it does and how it feels. This has always been the cruiser class….but there’s no way in hell that I’d consider it. But the much smaller Mini Panel for $995? The absolutely most no-brainer product I’ve seen in ages.

So if Grant comes up with a compelling price on a board that I can right-size according to my own needs, I think that that lights the fuse on something big.

This is starting to get into my stuff rather than Marco’s, but I do want to note that there’s no precedent for this story, the (apparently so far) elegant integration of a massive new toolset, while dramatically boosting performance (no bloat here fellas, not at these speeds), and demolishing the price…. although the DaVinci acquisition and dropping the price of Teranex from $70,000 to $1395 while adding features and formats and reducing the size were quite the prequels! Still, this is way, way past those imo.

Back to Marco a couple of days later:

With NAB 2017 officially complete, I can officially and undeniably confirm that Blackmagic Design’s integration of Fairlight into DaVinci Resolve is, by far, my top pick of the show. Nothing else even came close in terms of wow factor for me.

As a longtime sound/mix engineer (with our own mixing/recording studio services), this is a MAJOR deal for us. We’ve been extremely upset with Avid’s legacy user support for 2-3 years now and ultimately cut our ties with ProTools about a half year ago (after being a professional ProTools users for about 20 years). With Fairlight being a solid DAW solution for decades now and Blackmagic embracing their “magic” into the synergy, nothing but positive results are abound (think DaVinci Resolve acquisition part 2).

I was able to really dig into the hardware and talk to the Fairlight engineers about everything and the excitement from both sides was huge. Expect an upcoming article from me highlighting some of the advancements involved, which should be released next week. Let the good times roll and a HUGE congratulations to Blackmagic and Fairlight for their accomplishment… in less than 6 months time no less!!!!

That Grant pulled this off basically in the span from the week before IBC in September to now is INSANITY. It HAS to be black magic. ???? Again, there’s no precedent for the scale of this work, OR the pace of it.

Now, I’m personally not going to turn off the timeclock until we actually cross the finish line, but 2017 is a major turnaround for Blackmagic at NAB: damn near everything but this is shipping now. They certainly get full marks for having the beta ready to download before the show opened. So when Grant says “coming soon” THIS year, it’s easy to believe that it’s true. Heck, look at all the great stuff shipping BEFORE the show, like the URSA Mini Pro (another of my NAB picks, btw).

I think Marco represents one of BMD’s big opportunities, which is to get the attention of unhappy Pro Tools customers. I hope we’re past the time of talking about Pro Tools killers — they don’t exist, and it’s not going to happen, for the same reason Media Composer is rock solid in its core markets: the people who love it LOVE IT — but Pro Tools is VERY ripe for a disruption that Avid was, which is to see a huge growth in the size of the pie, with an ever-decreasing slice for PT. There are in fact people who are ready to jump on a sweet deal. A compelling mixing board option could make this a slam dunk for a lot of those folks.

I do suspect that creating new Fairlight fans will be a vastly more fruitful market than PT defectors. Although who knows? Blackmagic may snake over a few PT guys who’ve been exasperated by trying to work with Media Composer, and will put down the $295 for Fairlight with a nifty modules for video editing and finishing!

I’ve got some more video-centric thoughts about this later, but there were a lot of folks picking this as their big story of the show, but they were all trying to sound objective. ???? Fooey on that. Marco was the one guy on social media I saw jumping up and down about this as much as I was, so I was very happy to see it.

[Andrew Kimery]

[Michael Gissing] “One of the reasons I originally chose FCP4.5 was that was what most of my client editors were cutting on and I could take over the project and handle grade and finishing using the same software. Audio went out to Fairlight. So now I have a tool that for the first time bundles all the tools to cut and finish into one.”

Now you just need most of your client editors to decide Resolve is the best NLE for them and you’ll have it made in the shade. 😉

[Michael Gissing]

[Andrew Kimery]”Now you just need most of your client editors to decide Resolve is the best NLE for them and you’ll have it made in the shade. ;)”

Less important these days with fairly reliable xml translation but yeah I can dream. Mostly I am excited at having a real finishing tool that handles audio properly.

[Scott Witthaus]

[Andrew Kimery] ” I think the “Resolve is poised to take over” talk is premature until Resolve proves that it can be top notch NLE because, to your point, people who edit for a living are looking for an NLE first and everything else second.”

Exactly.

Scott Witthaus
Owner, 1708 Inc./Editorial
Managing Partner, Low Country Creative LLC
Professor, VCU Brandcenter