I spent last weekend playing around with my Contour Shuttle Pro on the cut page and it certainly seems to have a specific purpose. I’m thinking as you are that it’s really meant for getting to the point quickly and then one clicks over to the edit page for finalizing the edit. The cut keyboard actually seems incredibly nice to for those who do this for a living.
Regarding titles: I feel like I just saw a video where they applied Fusion effects in the edit page. I.e. they weren’t “regular” effects but actual Fusion compositions that were saved as presets or something and were quickly applied on the edit page with some of all parameters available in the inspector. It seems that might be the way to go; create titles in Fusion, decide what parameters should be available for tweaking in the edit page, save as such, apply in edit.
Either way, I’m very much leaning towards learning Resolve as opposed to just playing around with it. Some time to dedicate, but it is fairly intuitive I find, even the color page!
Yes, this is one approach, but it’s messy TBH. A dedicated text/title tool is a MUST IMO, even Premiere has a fairly decent and intuitive text tool now. And everyone I’ve talked with about it agrees that the current text tool in Resolve leaves a lot to be desired. Thus forcing you to use Fusion one way or another… or going old school and jumping back and forth with After Effects like I currently do. I think it will only be a matter of time before they revamp the text tool one way or another. But yes, Fusion gives a whole range of fantastic possibilities… it’s just murky and messy when you want to go in to tweak the fine details unless you are very comfortable in Fusion. There is a big gap that BM needs to fill. We’ll see what they do. They’ve been insanely ambitious and very successful with their world-domination plans so far, so it will be fun to see what shows up in Resolve 16.x or 17.
Resolve overall is definitely my recommendation over the competition right now. In a pinch, I was even able to do some half-decent quick audio in it with the Fairlight page. I do some pretty heavy video/film work here in addition to audio post production and sound design, and we have purchased pretty much every app in these areas on the market. I find myself feeling very good about moving most projects over to Resolve + Nuendo, though, with some supporting use of other video/audio apps as needed. Like many other guys here, I need to have access to all the other industry standard stuff for client requirements, but for my own personal preferences, the Resolve + Nuendo combo is turning into a very powerful beast that covers 90%+ of what we do with a pretty good workflow.
Now if Steinberg would finally add really good ripple editing (PLEASE DAW GODS HEAR MY FERVENT PRAYERS, I BEG OF YOU!) – and it needs to be as good or better than Reaper’s ripple editing modes BTW, plus some other workflow features I’ve been hoping for, my audio needs would be pretty much complete with Nuendo + my select group of plugins (including RX + ReVoice Pro, etc.).
And then my video/film needs would be pretty much complete with Resolve + a few more workflow improvements + better text tools + After Effects. (Have to concede that After Effects is really the deep industry standard for motion graphics, and I don’t see Fusion taking over that role for me in the short term, although I haven’t spent enough time in Fusion yet to figure out where in my workflow it will eventually fit).
Anyway, Resolve + Nuendo just by themselves together can power a vast range of complex media and film projects. It’s really a great time to be making media – the only limitation is one’s imagination and skill.
I would like to thank everyone for their insight and direction. I just avoided spending money needlessly.
I am amazed of the power of Resolve. Black Magic is definitely giving Adobe something to worry about. I can’t stand subscription software and I certainly hope Steinberg never treads in that direction.
Adobe could win more business if they broke up their products into at least 3 categories. 1. Hobbyist - software would be basic, functional, and cost friendly. 2. Serious Hobbyist/semi pro - A purchasable fully functional software that contains advance capabilities. Pricey but still affordable to those that are serious. Upgrades would be offered for a reasonable fee but the initial software would still work 3. Professional - Fully functional software with even more advanced capabilities that meets and exceeds industry standards and demands. A subscription model might work here but the service would have to be stellar.
Glad to share some thoughts! BM is definitely being aggressive with development with Resolve… they have had a breakneck pace of development, adding vast feature sets in a relatively short time, folding in features from other apps they have acquired, etc… very very aggressive indeed, and for the most part, they have been making really good decisions about the direction of the product. Good enough that I’ve been happy to move paid client projects right over without breaking a sweat. And yes, Adobe is certainly taking note. Avid for sure too.
Just keep in mind that Adobe and BM have very different business models, and I’m not talking about subscription vs one-time license. BM has primarily been a hardware developer, and Resolve, IMO, is the gateway drug to get you into their system. So for BM, Resolve is almost like a loss-leader in the way that Apple sells Logic+Final Cut, etc., for an insanely low price to hook you into Apple hardware. Resolve could easily sell for $1000+ right now. The good news is that BM aren’t forcing you to buy their hardware to get incredible value out of Resolve. And BM is also not behaving like Avid does with its business model. It’s like BM learned from the pros and cons of Apple, Adobe, and Avid, and came up with a hybrid business approach to Resolve. It’s pretty good so far. Once you start buying their hardware you’ll start to see the grand game they are playing. It’s a massive ecosystem that is actually pretty cool. What I hope is that they never “require” BM hardware, or that will be the beginning of the end IMHO. Right now, buying their hardware gives you valuable (and logical) workflow improvements and in some cases high end features that can only be achieved with dedicated hardware, but you can still rock and roll very well without their hardware, on a vanilla Windows machine, for example.
Anyway, good luck in your projects. Let’s hope the “Force” remains with Black Magic, and they don’t turn to the “dark side.”
sorry but I won’t hope this. Business is business
A lot of opinions from editors, colorists, graphic designers, sound mixers, etc have been wrote about Davinci Resolve and a lot of them very interesting. DR is an unusual case in the media software developing: the challenge to integrate four image+sound different applications (with their respective four different target users), sharing the same timeline and multi compatible platform (Windows, Linux, MacOS)… amazing!!!. How do I see this soup of applications?
Davinci color grading is without doubt the main attractive. This high level- Hollywood grade tool available for just 300€ is enough to buy it. In the second term appears a NLE (it looks as FCP7/Premiere Pro mix) well designed and very well-targeted to “FCP7 frustrated editors (cheated for FCPX)” and “Premiere pro users exhausted of annual subscription plans”. Next come Fusion as a hypothetic visual FX and motion graphic program. And finally, Fairlight as the DR - DAW. Nuendo users, download DR free version compare the Fairlight vs Nuendo features and judge for yourself.
In my opinion DR will be a best seller for the color grading tool included (cost less than some audio plugins!); for 300€ will it worth to integrate it in any NLE workflow. For some editors DR can be a primary NLE: I see it as a great place to accommodate FCP/PP refugees (Although I very much doubt that high level Avid Media Composers editors migrate to DR only for NLE). I wrote Fusion as hypothetic motion graphics tool because this software it´s mainly aimed for film composition. Require a very step learning curve, very different to After Effects/Motion layer concept, need a powerful computer and beginners must be prepared to waste weeks to get decent results. Fusion artists won’t migrate to DR because Fusion, as only composition tool is still available as different app in Blackmagic, and it has more features that their DR brother and best aimed for team collaboration. About Fairlight, honestly , does anyone think that experienced Nuendo or Protools users will migrate to Fairlight? Post audio facilities with Protools expensive investments will migrate fo fairlight?
Perhaps two of the four DaVinci Resolve apps could be managed for the same person, but I dude that anyone could master three softwares simultaneously. And four? a joke!!
A more likely scenarios could be facilities with four DRv-workstations,/ four job function in collaboration with the same project,… and with the same Blackmagic hardware: from camera production to all the BM postproduction toys. In these scenarios I can understand how the software is so cheaper