Hello. Wondering if anyone uses DaVinci Resolve 16 for video editing, and your opinion on the suite. Any feedback is welcome.
LP
Hello there, I do use the free version. I find it amazing. Although, I am not sure what you mean by ‘Suite’. All I know is that, there are two versions,
- Davinci Resolve 16 Studio (300 USD)
- Davinci Resolve 16 (Free)
The free version serves most if not all of my purposes so far.
It looks like it won’t burn a DVD. The export function seems limited.
I never tried that. I use it for YouTube videos mostly.
Well it’s not really a DVD authoring software. What else are you looking for in the delivery page?
It would be nice to send the audio to WaveLab. It would be nice to have more export options. I wonder how Vegas Pro stacks up.
You mean round-trip the audio?
I’m not really sure why you’d want to round trip to Wavelab from Resolve, or maybe more accurately why just a regular export/import/export/import wouldn’t do the job.
You might get more useful answers if you described what you want to achieve from the software - your overall goal. Resolve didn’t start as a video editing software and its primary strength is still color work as far as I can see. It does editing quite well in addition to 3D compositing, audio work, and media management/transcoding. It’s a very competent software, especially considering the price.
I have been using Premiere Pro CS6. I don’t like subscription software and looking for something similar. I did run the audio from my last video thru WL and got great results. Have you tried Vegas Pro?
No I haven’t Vegas.
What do you mean by “run the audio” “thru”? I’m trying to figure out exactly what you need to do so people can give you a good recommendation. It’s a bit hard to understand (though I certainly need more coffee).
I rendered the last video to a DVD format which gave me two files: a video file and a stereo wav audio file. I opened up the audio file in WL and “mastered” it. Basically added a bit of compression and EQ on the entire track. I set the loudness to industry standard; sounded much better.
I am looking for a new good video editing suite that is somewhat like Premiere Pro but updated. I use CS6 which receives no updates or any real support. Vegas Pro looks promising. Thank you for your input.
Ok, but I’m not sure I understand what it is you want Resolve to export that you think it cannot export. If you’re looking for actual authoring of a DVD then I’m not sure if Resolve does that, but if you’re just looking to adjust loudness using various tools and then export a video file and a stereo wave file then Resolve can absolutely do that.
I’ve been using DaVinci Resolve Studio consistently since v12, have been through the beta testing cycles of v14, 15 & 16 with Blackmagic ; now on the current version 16.1.1. It is certainly a very mature package now, not perfect by any means, though no packages are & certainly in the realm of NLEs. I’ve have also worked with Adobe Premier & Final Cut Pro X over many years as well.
Much of this thread seems to relate to Resolve’s Delivery page (export) and that indeed has many, many options including to FCPX, Pro Tools, AAF, H264, YouTube, masering formats like Atom, etc. No, it does not include DVD burning, that is a far rarer consumer format these days; otherwise, it would be more usual to (say) make an Mp4 and distribute that via cloud, stick, whichever. If for TV or pro film industry, there are a zillion options there - and this is Resolve’s background setting /expectation.
Resolve includes a sophisticated (though a little non-standard) DAW in its Fairlight page following the purchase of that company a few years ago. Fairlight offers far more in terms of audio production than any other NLE available in my view; most are toys.
Re. round tripping, this is precisely what I do with all of my projects, between Resolve Studio 16 and Nuendo 10. Workflow is usually something like:
Assemble, edit and produce all of the footage (say 1 hr doco format for example); Assemble and prepare all of the audio tracks, including voice-over, wild camera sound, SFX, music temp etc. Resolve ‘can’ produce this, but I still find that a bit clunky. Therefore my next step:
Render out (via delivery page) a suitable movie size /format & individual audio tracks in preparation for Nuendo. There are a number of ways to do this (personally, I find AAF a little unreliable). What I do is select a suitable video codec and size for Nuendo, then in the audio export component of this, each track can be individually selected, ie, this then becomes a multi-track audio /movie file.
Import in Nuendo then, it nicely puts the movie on its own track and extracts each of the audio tracks and places them on their own tracks as well (nice feature, Steinberg). Then do the usual DAW stuff, de-verb, de-noise, trim, finish or add music cues, etc.
Then bounce a final audio master & in my case, loudness Normalise to -16LUFS. At this point I could also fly it over to Wavelab if I wanted, but usually Nuendo is fine with the whole thing.
Then drop that audio master back into the Resolve Timeline, check, & render the whole thing out to the required delivery format;
I usually make this first render a high rez ‘Master’ format (say 1080p, 10bit, DNxHD in either an MFX of QT container); then can bounce this to other delivery formats as needed, eg, say MP4, YouTube, Vimeo etc. If DVD (rare) I use something like Ashampoo Burning Studio or Premier Elements.
I hope this helps. At some point, Resolve Fairlight is going to develop to the stage where round tripping is no longer necessary, but for now, that design remain a little odd and somewhat buggy in places, eg, Audio interface patching IO, no ASIO support, some odd editing processes by comparison to what we now expect in DAW ‘conventions’ such as found in ProTools, Nuendo etc.
PS
My main gripe is that Nuendo still does not support high end GPUs properly; I ‘still’ get laggy screen update behaviour that is apparently related to Nvidia drivers, in this case, the latest Studio drivers for an RTX 2080Ti. And so these two fields of audio and film production remain a little ‘incompatible’ in some respects: the NLE requires a chunky GPU, in many cases, multiple GPUs for render and overall compute purposes; without a significant investment in a high end GPU, the NLE can easily go nowhere or at least be very slow; conversely than same high end GPU scenario can bring quite some frustration to DAW operation and where those GPU expectations tend to be very minimal and certainly outdated. In 2019, a DAW should be able to easily co-exist with these modern GPUs. Alas, after much research and many attempts at recommended fixes (usually via messing with Nivida’s control panel, G-Sync, V-Sync, whichever) - Nuendo still has this annoying screen update pause every few minutes of so. I do wish they’d fix this. I can also confirm that this behaviour does not exist with Pro Tools or Digital Performer.
DaVinci Resolve Studio is excellent, well worth the cost, I far prefer it to Adobe Premiere and Final Cut.
Great info! Has anyone here used Vegas Pro?
+1! I worked for a long time in Premiere, but Davinci is much better!
Yes, used Vegas Pro extensively in addition to Premiere, Final Cut and most others on the market. A good friend of mine convinced me to try Resolve and I am happy I did. While I still have to use Premiere for some clients, I have been transitioning everything I can over to Resolve slowly but surely. I now trust it that much to basically dump Premiere.
TBH though, it really all depends on what you want and need to do. I should have qualified my prior statements that just like with DAWs, everyone will have their own preferences and needs. I do media production and film (and post production) here, and each app has its strengths, and in the end, you can get great results from all of them. The only real limiting factor for many projects is really just the USER. 
We live in an amazing time with so many great tools. So if you have a bunch of colleagues that use one specific app, then that’s a big advantage to go along with what they’re using, for example. However, if you are flying mostly solo, I would objectively lean towards Resolve based on my experience so far compared to all the others. Resolve is, at least as of 15 and 16, very impressive and extremely powerful overall. And subjectively I am very relieved to be using it now compared to my long unhappy marriage to Premiere.
Having said all that, Vegas Pro is the least “pro” of all of them IMO, with the exception of its audio capabilities, which I find to be relatively advanced, which is not surprising given its origin as an audio program. Although others are catching up and maybe coming very close in that area. However the rest of it sadly still feels like amateur hour. Even though it looks great on paper, it’s just not “premium” and very few pros I know actually use it, let alone prefer it. That’s just my experience with it. Your’s may be different. I do know people that get totally good results from it, but it just always feels lacking every time I use it. MAGIX, to me, is where great apps go to stagnate. In the hands of a more ambitious and profitable Sony development team perhaps, Vegas Pro might have had a real chance. And if MAGIX ever sells Vegas Pro to another developer, I’d be very interested again.
Premiere Pro is very powerful of course, but I just don’t like it. And I don’t like Adobe. Don’t mean to be negative. I use it all the time because I have to due to clients. And Premiere along with After Effects together form a super powerful combination used in countless pro projects. Adobe of course has one of the best (if not the best) video plugin support if that matters to you. I have used it for many years and keep using it out of necessity, but it has let me down so many times when the going gets tough or the projects are very complex, that I just grew very tired of it and have been hoping for a real contender to step up for years…
Final Cut is Final Cut. I don’t want to get into the Apple thing and Final Cut’s history, but suffice it to say that I am very happy to leave that forever in the dust. But some people still love it. Good for them.
There are others of course, and I won’t get into those.
Anyway, to make a long story short, like I mentioned, a good friend of mine convinced me that Resolve had finally matured as a video editor (it was already a world-class color platform, etc.), and I have to say it’s fully ready for prime time for very serious video and film projects. While there are certain shortcomings in some areas that show how relatively “new” the editor is compared to Premiere, for example, the overall feature set is very powerful indeed and coming along beautifully. In fact, once you get into compositing inside Fusion (which does require going through a steep learning curve IMO), or really learn the color tools, etc., any lingering shortcomings I have felt compared to Premiere have been more than erased. More importantly, the workflow is outstanding for what I need to do, and ultimately I don’t miss anything from Premiere or the other apps. I also find it to be much more stable in complex projects and I can get more done in less time with less hassle overall. It’s fully pro and there is NO need for Premiere unless one of your clients or collaborators requires it. Now I’m speaking of the Resolve STUDIO – not the free version. Although the free version is crazy powerful for sure. But for $300, the Studio version is totally worth it.
Those are my two bits. Good luck!
uarte,
If you’ve tried out the new “cut page”, how do you like it?
Whew! Great info. I will look at the pro paid version of Resolve for it’s specs.
Love the concept, still needs polish IMO. Personally, I wish those ideas were more integrated into the full Edit page, but I get where they are coming from, probably smarter in the long run to do it the way they did it than what I personally want. It doesn’t take away, just adds to flexibility though and further cements their approach as differentiating the pages into workflow models, kinda makes sense. So overall good and probably very smart. Now I wish they would spend more time on typical workflow needs like quick, powerful and flexible titles/text. Maybe that will get its own page in the future? Right now the built-in text tool is too simple, and the full Fusion features are overkill. So anything medium to complex with titles/text I tend to do in After Effects and come back to Resolve. That’s mostly an issue of habit though since I’m so familiar with After Effects. But I would rather spend more time in Resolve if the built-in text tool was stronger (and I’m not really fast in Fusion yet). Anyway, as to your question about the Cut page: it’s good.
There aren’t that many relevant differences between the two for a lot of people. If I remember correctly you end up needing “studio” if you’re doing cinematic 4k+ work, stereoscopic etc. But all the way up to HD and I think even UHD the regular version is fine.