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Resolve 12 Pros and Cons
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[Morten Ranmar] “Then again there is the question that has been brought up about how BM can maintain a useful income from giving away the software. At some point they will be forced to make us pay…”
The answer to that question is that they sell hardware. BM I/O devices are the only ones that work with Resolve, the $30,000 Resolve panel probably has a really nice profit margin, and they give away copies of Resolve as an incentive to buy some of their cameras. The day Resolve supports non-BM I/O devices is the day that the free version goes away.
I do think there are a couple of debatable questions though.
1. What is the long term impact on software development (and monetization) if the current business model trends of free* (low/no cost but requires first party hardware), freemium, ad supported, etc., continue?
2. Where is the right ‘balance’ for all the features people say they want in an NLE? If an NLE had all the features of AE, ProTools and Baselight built-in would it really make people happy? Or would people complain that it was a bloated, overly complicated mess and that the NLE maker should focus less on endlessly expanding functionality and more on refining/improving core functionality?
I think the best situation is to have plugins to get better-than-default functionality and then work on better integration with other apps for when you really need all the power/features of standalone apps. This has obviously been Adobe’s route the past few years with DynmaicLink (AE) and DirectLink (SpeedGrade) though it seems like they’ve backtracked some on the SG integration in CC2015 (which is unfortunately, IMO).
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If you read the resolve12 press release you get a feeling that they are out to grab adobe by the neck. i think its their driving motive.
ricardo marty
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[Andrew Kimery] “the $30,000 Resolve panel probably has a really nice profit margin”
It’s actually incredibly narrow. Da Vinci (using their old spelling) was monetized almost entirely through software.
Grant Petty is alllll about slicing margins, which is why he could drop the price of that massively expensive software to a freemium model and still cover his costs. As a private company, he can spread costs across the entire company.
But this is why the price of the panel hasn’t dropped. Because it can’t.
Contrast this with the Teranex converters. Grant was able to take a $90,000 box, add features, reduce the size, make it quieter, AND drop the price to $1995 (yes, a drop of $82,000) and still make a profit because, after the initial, very expensive development of a Teranex converter had paid for itself, the thing was damn near nothing BUT margin.
What exasperates Blackmagic’s competitors in both hardware and software is that they can’t charge that little and cover their costs. Their businesses are built around maintaining margin, and Grant’s is somehow based on obliterating them.
So the idea that Blackmagic is driving down prices is overstated. The other guys have limits that they simply won’t go below, and limits to the pace of what they’ve always known, that the price that anyone charges for anything has to come down eventually.
Unless it’s something that already has margins so tiny that Grant Petty doesn’t feel able to nuke them.
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[Tim Wilson] “Da Vinci (using their old spelling) was monetized almost entirely through software.”
I’m not exactly sure what that means. In the pre-BMD days, Davinci was very hardware intensive, featuring cutting-edge digital processing. Their bread-and-butter just prior to the acquisition was the Davinci 2K system and not Resolve. That was all about the hardware.
What BMD did was pick up the name and IP of a dying company in order to own two piece of software – Resolve and Revival – which he saw as their future. In that step he also cut off all existing support contracts from previous customers, because it would have meant maintaining the hardware business and parts stockpiles, which he deduced (rightly) as an unsustainable model. So pre-BMD it was a hardware company – and that’s what he changed.
But yes, I agree, the hardware panel costs what it costs. What I don’t understand is why the Linux version costs an extra $20K for Linux licensing. Is that simply because it’s only going to large facilities that can bare the freight?
[Tim Wilson] “Contrast this with the Teranex converters. Grant was able to take a $90,000 box, add features, reduce the size, make it quieter, AND drop the price to $1995 (yes, a drop of $82,000) and still make a profit because, after the initial, very expensive development of a Teranex converter had paid for itself, the thing was damn near nothing BUT margin.”
Unlike the Davinci 2K, Teranex was the software, plus custom chips. The chip manufacturing had already been offloaded and the development cost amortized through several previous sales. Teranex had already done themselves what Grant did, only years before – through the introduction of the original Teranex Mini and their licensing deals with consumer TV set and DVD player manufacturers.
At the time of their sale to BMD, the big bucks Teranex product was actually a very sophisticated image restoration system for film transfers and other services. That still hasn’t been revived by BMD, since what they sell now is primarily a format/standards converter, whose development goes back to the first Teranex products.
Grant has been very intelligent about buying the right companies at the right point. That’s why he would have never been interested in picking up Avid when that was bandied about months ago. It wouldn’t have been a good deal. The beauty of what Grant has been doing in all of these moves is acquire and stockpile one helluva a lot of IP. He retains the core value, dumps the overhead (accounting, marketing, business management) and secures cheaper hardware manufacturing sources. With this IP portfolio, he is now free to mix and match this technology in ways that these individual companies never could have done on their own. A lot of this IP has yet to find its way into a BMD product.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Resolve 12 has many high end delivery codecs, but misses a few important generic ones (Mac platform):
– there is no MPEG2 export
– you can only output H264 through Quicktime. No generic MP4 output
– there are no presets for mobile devices or tablets– No Parking Production –
Adobe CC2014, 3 x MacPro, 3 x MbP, Ethernet File Server w. Areca ThunderRaid 8
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[Morten Ranmar] “- there is no MPEG2 export
– you can only output H264 through Quicktime. No generic MP4 output”MPEG2 requires paying a licensing fee, therefore many encoders do not include it. MP4 is a wrapper, like QuickTime. If you want an H.264 codec in an MP4 wrapper that’s a different issue. H.264 in a .MOV wrapper is there because Quicktime supports it. There are probably also licensing fees that are applicable to the software developer, but not the end user, for H264 encoding outside of QT.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[David Powell] “Its extremely annoying that I can’t do it in X”
David, sorry to burst in, but I am wondering,
couldn’t you just make a compound clip of the project
you wish to use as a source clip?
You would then be able to skim it and edit unto your main project from it…
I know visually it’s not the same as two open timelines,
but it’s pretty similar to Avid/FCP7 ‘s loading of timelines into the source monitor.
Regarding markers I’m guessing it wouldn’t inherit previous markers in the project
like Avid or FCP7 do (I’m not in front of X),
but you could always create your compound clip first thing
and then place markers on it…
Please correct me if I’m wrong,
I follow X closely but am mainly on FCP 7 and Avid. -
Mauricio ,
No I can’t. I mark up the sequence while I’m creating a live cut (which is why Adobe’s targeting problem hurts me) and then I make a smaller highlight from those selects. Also, all my projects are multicam. FCPX does not properly cut multicam nests back into sequences. That was a major problem when I first tried to cut from a nest the I/O points are way off (and even the camera if I remember correctly). Stacking timelines is truly the most superior way to do this.
So X would have to fix the multi-cam nest problem inherit the marker markers to the nest, at least from the top most video connected. As of now I have to copy and paste which is a pain. -
[Oliver Peters] “But yes, I agree, the hardware panel costs what it costs. What I don’t understand is why the Linux version costs an extra $20K for Linux licensing. Is that simply because it’s only going to large facilities that can bare the freight?”
Hardware panels are not my area of expertise, but after the initial investment in R&D, manufacturing, etc., wouldn’t the margins improve over time? It’s not like a new model is rolling out every year.
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[Andrew Kimery] “It’s not like a new model is rolling out every year.”
But I’d bet they aren’t selling a lot of them either. My guess is that the Linux seats are more likely to buy a Resolve panel than the Mac or PC seats.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com
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