Resolve 11 First Thoughts

[Bret Williams]

It sports the biggest audio mixer of all time. And it doesn’t appear to be resizeable.

I’m going to get really pissed off if I try to scroll the timeline up and down and it goes side to side again. WTF? Can I please scroll up and down without grabbing the little bars over on the right? Premiere has this issue too, but there’s a check box in preferences.

Bringing in multi cam clips leave me with video but no audio.

Dual screen mode is awesome.

Clips still playback jittery and with crackling audio just like resolve 9 and 10. I can’t seem to get this to work very often. This should be pretty easy. I’ve got 32gigs and a 680mx in the late 2012 iMac. Only thing better is a MacPro or the minor haswell bump iMac.

Doesn’t appear to support .caf files.

[Craig Shields]

I’m getting all kinds of weird stuff on my Retina MBP. While I did expect a 1.0 editor, this more weirdness than I thought.

[Bret Williams]

I wouldn’t call it a 1.0 editor. 1.0 editors are missing things like dynamic trimming, audio cross fades, and transitions that can start or end on the cut point.

[Tapio Haaja]

It seems to have lot of great features but the thing that I can’t do basic video playback without random jittery and audio crackling with my top end 2013 Retina Macbook Pro is show stopper. So for me it’ll remain just color corrector until these things get solved.

[Bret Williams]

It’s been that way since they introduced audio. I’m actually having a discussion with them about it right now. Try this, set everything to 23.976. I get no audio crackle with 23.976 footage in a 23.976 project.

Or try your project without playback through a BMD device. I get no audio crackle that way either.

But 29.97 through my UltraStudio Express is junk audio. Is that what you’re hearing?

[Bret Williams]

Also, you can’t move the mouse during playback. I guess it just isn’t allowed. But it’ll drop frames if you move the mouse around. Which is what gives the jittery playback. And I’m always moving the mouse around during playback in FCP X. Bad habit I guess.

[Scott Witthaus]

[Bret Williams] “And I’m always moving the mouse around during playback in FCP X. Bad habit I guess.”

I think it’s a great habit. And it’s another thing that can make X so much faster and efficient.

R11 is a 1.0 beta software from a company with a shallow pedigree in editing software, so we should not expect too much right now. I will have it as a finishing system for those few jobs that simply can’t finish in X and just to learn it for freelance opportunities.

Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter

[Ronny Courtens]

Agreed with every point made here. But I like what I see. Resolve has been a perfect companion to our FCP X setup from the start and now this combination looks even better. IMO not a game changer for editing yet, but it does have potential as a serious contender for other track-based NLEs.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Ronny Courtens] “Agreed with every point made here. But I like what I see. Resolve has been a perfect companion to our FCP X setup from the start and now this combination looks even better. “

This is all I was really hoping for.

It’s much better than a workflow with a lot of back and forth during changes.

At least this way, I’ll be able to make minor changes in Resolve while starting color correction.

[David Mathis]

I agree. As for color grading and finishing it is a nice system. For now FCP X will be used for editing, mainly a rough cut. Prefer trimming in keyframing in Resolve, two weak points with X for now.

For finishing, is it best to build the tile sequence in Motion with the same resolution as RAW files, import that in Resolve at the end? Is a better alternative to render the movie out of Resolve, XML, and finish up with a Motion, FCP X workflow?