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‘Winning’ NAB vs winning new users
With the fast and furious updates to Resolve, BM has been ‘winning’ NAB for a number of years now, but that show floor success doesn’t seem to be turning into a boatload of new customers using Resolve as their primary NLE, DAW, etc.,. We don’t have to try hard to see where MC, PPro and X are being used, but aside from the occasional one-off story Resolve usage as an NLE seems invisible.
Are people just taking a wait and see approach on the ‘new guy’? Is there room for a fourth NLE to share the stage along side MC, PPro and X?
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39 Replies
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Well, Alpha Dogs post has a job email blast…someone comes to them looking for editors or onliners or assistants and they send out an email to their list of freelancers…and one of them about 3 weeks ago was looking for a few editors to cut on Resolve…and in a shared environment. Something never really attempted…editing, AND Shared…so it was new ground. And there were a lot of people who use Resolve to ONLINE…but to edit? It’s new at that…but growing. I’m using the editing capablities more and more as I find myself addressing notes after picture lock. But I haven’t dived into it as an editor yet. I know a few who have, as it’s free. But not sure it’s been used on paid broadcast work yet.
But…a friend of mine ran into someone at LACPUG who was looking for a Resolve editor, and gave my name to them. Haven’t heard from them yet, but right there are two examples of how this is creeeeeeeeeping into my market at least. I might have to approach it like I did FCP 2/3…cut a few personal things with it first to get the hang of it.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Resolve is trying to be what Symphony SHOULD have been for Avid? Or maybe a Symphony/DS combo seeing the Fusion integration in Resolve? The Swiss Army knife (DS) approach did not work for Avid. Will it work for Resolve?
But Andrew (IMHO) is right; for the last few years everyone says BM/Resolve is “killing it”, but that fades away once NAB is over.
I wonder what market BM is trying to take with Resolve.
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Visual Storyteller
https://vimeo.com/channels/1322525
Managing Partner, Low Country Creative LLC
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
Resolve is or will be in every edit,vfx,and post house across the board and across the world if not just for davinci. Something only adobe did before it overtook because of apples change of strategy. So davinci is there breathing down adobes neck. One false move and its curtains for adobe.
Ricardo Marty
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[Andrew Kimery] “We don’t have to try hard to see where MC, PPro and X are being used, but aside from the occasional one-off story Resolve usage as an NLE seems invisible.”
It all depends on focus. Outside of the circle of editors I am seeing a big uptake of use of Resolve. On a 5 camera shoot last night, every DP had Resolve and were talking excitedly about Resolve 15. I have a number of editors who have had Resolve up their sleeve for a few version now who are openly talking about it becoming their primary, particularly to facilitate a more seamless hand over to me for grade & sound. Even though they have their Pr, or X or 7 or MC as the primary they are using Resolve more and more. It feels very much like the way FCP unmined AVID all those years ago by being the go to NLE for personal use then rapidly became the primary. The RT performance has held Resolve back. The improvements to 14 and now the extra performance improvements in 15 might kick that door open.
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[Scott Witthaus] “I wonder what market BM is trying to take with Resolve.”
Are there any markets they’re not trying to take with Resolve?
[Scott Witthaus] “The Swiss Army knife (DS) approach did not work for Avid. Will it work for Resolve?”
Of course there are any number of reasons why DS didn’t work for Avid, but what I find most interesting is that the all-in-ones used to be priced at the top of the market, and now one is available at the bottom. I think the Good Enough Revolution favors the all-in-one approach.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
Doesn’t look like they’ll be supporting ProRes 4K any time soon though
(6’35” in)
\”Traditional NLEs have timelines. FCPX has storylines\” W.Soyka
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[Steve Connor]”Doesn’t look like they’ll be supporting ProRes 4K any time soon though”
ProResRAW. Interesting point of view that it is early days for the format. For Blackmagic, it’s got shortcomings in color science. I’m sure they will support it but he seemed very meh about it. “just a container with a LUT..”
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The anecdotes from Shane and Michael are exactly my point. BM gets an insane amount of ink with every update to Resolve, but when it comes to finding users in the wild it’s always ‘I know a guy who know’s a guy’. ???? The real world usage just doesn’t seem proportionate to how excited we get about the strides that Resolve is making.
I remember at NAB in 2015 (when Resolve added multicam as well as a bunch of audio and general playback improvements) everyone was talking about it being the year Resolve breaks out… but not so much. Eventually it will be ‘the year’… or maybe not. ????
[Walter Soyka] ” I think the Good Enough Revolution favors the all-in-one approach.”
I agree, though I don’t know how compatible Blackmagic’s approach is with the Good Enough Revolution. The GER in video post seems to centered around a strong NLE that has ‘good enough’ abilities in audio, grading, GFX/VFX, etc.,., with the trade off being that the tools are slimmed down (‘good enough’) and easier to use, but at the cost of having limited breadth and depth compared to stand alone audio, grading and GFX/VFX apps. For example, getting up to speed on the first party color tools in X or PPro in order to get good enough results will take much less time than teaching someone how to use Resolve.
Blackmagic is coming at this from a different angle though by pretty much putting four stand alone apps inside of Resolve. From their own marketing material, ” It’s like getting 4 high end professional applications for the cost of one!” The GER approach doesn’t jive though with having to learn multiple high end apps (with their breadth and depth) in order to get your work done.
Blackmagic’s ideal situation seems to be the vision of a post house full of NLE, DAW, grading, GFX/VFX specialists that will all use Resolve for their respective disciplines. The major hurdle here is of course getting all those different specialists to use the tools BM is offering. It’s the same hurdle Apple faced with getting specialists to use Soundtrack Pro or Motion, and the same hurdle that Adobe still faces today with apps like Audition (and formerly PPro). An ecosystem is only a selling point if everyone wants to join the ecosystem.
On an related note, I’ve seen two video editing jobs at Apple pop up in the past few months and both of them were looking for people with FCP X, PPro and AE skills. No mention of Motion. I don’t think that’s a slight at Motion’s capabilities, I think it’s more of an indication that the talent pool for Motion users isn’t as broad or deep as the talent pool for AE users. If the best talent available doesn’t use Resolve are you going to go with them and their software of choice, or are you going to keep going down the talent ladder until you find someone that uses Resolve (neither is the right, or wrong, approach for all situations)?
Assuming that Resolve as an NLE, DAW, GFX/VFX, grading super-tool does catch on then I think it’s a big problem for all post software venders as even pay-once-upgrade-forever FCP X is way over priced by comparison.
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[Walter Soyka] “Are there any markets they’re not trying to take with Resolve?”
Have not seen on request for Resolve as an editor. Spot work editorial, web marketing arena? None.
Color corrector? Yes. Editor? No.
[Walter Soyka] ” I think the Good Enough Revolution favors the all-in-one approach.”
OK, are you saying that Resolve and all it’s tools are part of the “Good Enough Revolution”? I don’t think they see themselves that way.
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Visual Storyteller
https://vimeo.com/channels/1322525
Managing Partner, Low Country Creative LLC
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
Old codger remembrance time…
There was a time in the 80’s. early 90’s when every shop, cable station, local news station, and independent home editor I knew, regardless of what software NLE they were running publicly and “professionally”… had a pirated copy of Adobe Premiere *somewhere*. Usually an older version, kept in a back-up suite or something… but they had it and they had it running.
Adobe made noises like it would go after those pirate uses, but my recollection is that it was a weak, ineffectual effort at best… and it all couldn’t have worked out better if it had been planned, because what that wave of pirated copies did was establish a wide, early user base of people who got their hands on the program and it captured a lot of mindshare in the editing community. More people used Premiere because of this exposure versus Avid, which was much more secure and locked-down by comparison back then.
I see DaVinci Resolve’s “free taste” as a logical extension of that approach, and I think it’s working better than we know.
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