Time to dump Adobe. First impressions of Resolve 14 and EditReady 2.0

[Andrew Reid]

Resolve has truly come of age.

Read the full article

[Geoff CB]

Once they fix the dropped audio issue glitch (no sound when playing on timeline) I'm switching.

[andrgl]

Always disliked Premiere. There's way too much to learn and so much legacy cruft. It feels like the perfect match for ENG shooters with a thousand hours of footage to organize and edit.

I've been cutting and rendering on Resolve since version 9. It's always been ideal for working with RAW and now the H264 performance is pretty much perfect.

If only there were tools good enough to rival Photoshop and After Effects, Adobe still has a stranglehold on 2D compositing.

[hijodeibn]

I dumped Premiere since Resolve incorporated the editing option, so glad now, I have not upgraded yet to the beta version, but if the audio is finally working properly I am buying the pro version…..  

[jcs]

I think it's important to learn multiple tools. There will be times when your primary tool has issues (bugs, or performance issues etc.) which another tool won't have, so you have options to move forward and aren't stuck. Resolve 14 plays the 1DX II 4K 8-bit 420 files OK, however still struggles with C300 II 4K 10-bit 422 files (both OpenCL and CUDA on OSX; will try on Win10Pro at some point). Hopefully they'll get performance sorted by the time beta is complete.

I'll purchase the $300 version, however I'd prefer to have online activation vs. a USB dongle as I switch frequently between OSX and Windows (and multiple machines + laptops).

[Andrew Reid]

Are you using Resolve 14 Studio or the free version?

[dbp]

How's the stabilizer? I've heard good things, but that was one thing that kept me in Premiere instead of Resolve 12.5.

I've been with Adobe for so long. It's what I learned on, and it's hard to break the habit. I'd love to move on though. Really hoping Resolve 14 is ready for the bigtime once the bugs are worked out.

Also be curious with how it fares with large projects with a ton of media.

[jcs]

4 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

Are you using Resolve 14 Studio or the free version?

The free beta- does the pro version have a faster/better decoder for C300 II?

[Andrew Reid]

They say you should use the Pro version for 4K editing.

Unfortunately my dongle isn't on me at the moment so can't test where I am!

[dvcrn]

> Will the final release of Resolve 14 support third party plugins like Film Convert and Twixtor on release or some point in the future?

FilmConvert already works with resolve. Just download the OFX version and it integrates perfectly 

[Pyriphlegethon]

I also currently use FilmConvert without issue on Resilve 12.5. Revision:fx has told me in the past that there's a limitation on the resolve side with frame availability for some of the time-based effects.

And I thought a big part of the announcement was that studio does NOT require a dongle anymore.

[Matthew19]

EditReady changes the color of my mjpeg files. Skin tones shift a bit from MJPEG to Prores proxy.

[jcs]

2 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

They say you should use the Pro version for 4K editing.

Unfortunately my dongle isn't on me at the moment so can't test where I am!

This is pretty cool: the OFX plugin architecture used by Resolve (and other high-end tools) is relatively simple and clean (unlike Adobe AE/PP, which is a unfortunately a mess (at this point, disaster is perhaps a more accurate description)). Third-party developers can have empathy for Adobe's in-house developers who have to work on the core product: it's no wonder there are so many bugs and development progress is slow. For years I had asked for example HW acceleration examples from Adobe which show a basic plugin which can directly access GPU memory, run GPU code, then store the result in GPU memory. All that was ever provided was a pointer to ancient/obsolete code which used OpenGL, and required copying the video frame from CPU RAM to GPU RAM and back (which makes the whole thing just about worthless). In 5 minutes of googling I found an example OFX plugin which does everything I had asked: processes everything from GPU RAM (no copies to CPU RAM and back), has complete examples for both OpenGL and CUDA, and the overall code is clean and relatively simple. Very cool!

https://github.com/baldavenger/SoftClipV2.1/blob/master/SoftClipPluginV2.1.cpp . https://github.com/baldavenger/SoftClipV2.1.

This is exactly what I'd found for plugin development for AE/PP: https://www.eehelp.com/question/gpu-accelerated-the-development-of-ae-premiere-pro-plugin/ (bold emphasis mine):

Quote

(2) of course, a plugin can use the GPU - in this sense there is not much difference between a plugin and a standalone application. There is however no GPU related example in the SDK, only a rudimentary and broken example for pipeline fixed simple integration of OpenGL (example of name "GLator"). But you can of course create your own OpenGL context (preferably a window/renderbuffer hidden) and interface the GPU as you wish. Don't forget the context between native AE and your own GL context switching.
So yes, it is possible, but you should do all the work yourself, the SDK provides just an empty frame and you must code your own functions to interface to it.

The way preferred by most is probably (as I said above) using OpenGL and then compile GLSL shaders to run on the GPU. The main obstacle is to put your image of video uploaded to the GPU, so you must read each pixel of the AE pixel buffer, convert it to an OpenGL texture, transfer it to the GPU, then let the GPU do its magic and collated the rendering engine OpenGL renderbuffer pixel by pixel for the AE output buffer. Yet once, focus on the example of GLator to get an idea how to do this (although there are a few somewhat more effective methods).

This is a joke, and explains why third party plugins for Premiere never ran anywhere near as fast as Adobe's internal plugins/effects.

Premiere and After Effects are at least 10 years past due for a complete rewrite. It's kind of impressive they've kept it clunking along all these years, however they'd be better off (if they haven't already started) doing a from-scratch rewrite, just like Apple did with FCPX. Maybe even switch over to OFX for plugins/extensions. Keep the clunky version of AE/PP around while the new version is beta released and developers port their code over to OFX (unless it's somehow possible to make a compatibility layer and load old plugins (probably not worth it given the ancient convoluted design)).

[horshack]

BM had free hands-on training for Resolve at NAB this week. Three-hour course. They had 50 Macbooks set up in a large meeting room. The trainer was excellent. I left very impressed with the product (I use Premiere). Earlier in the day I was in BM's booth and grabbed one of the employees to ask a question about the interface - he knew the program inside-out. I asked him what he did at the company and turns out he's one of the software engineers for Resolve. Software engineers on the trade show floor interacting with prospects and customers? Now that is impressive!

[webrunner5]

I think Blackmagic down the road will be a powerhouse. For a new company they are going full speed ahead.

[Shirozina]

I have 14 studio and it certainly is an upgrade and resolve has been my main editing and grading tool for a while now but I wouldn't want to be without Adobe Creative suite at all. Premier has a clunky layout and certainly needs a revamp but it's integration with Adobe Audition and After Effects means it's got advantages over resolve even with the Fairlight panel. As far as I can see the Fairlight panel at present is just a mixing desk (which is not bad in itself) but it's not yet an audio processing tool like Audition anymore than the FX library in Resolve is any serious challenge to aftereffects if you want to do serious FX and compositing work. No doubt in teh future you will have to purchase extra Audio Plugins for Fairlight to get a complete set of audio processing tools? Any serious filmmaker should have a range of tools at their disposal and I don't see Premier vs Resolve as an either or choice - you need both! 

[cpc]

re transcoding in Windows:

You can easily make DNxHR/DNxHD proxies in Resolve itself as long as it can import the original files. There is also the notion of "optimized media", which is really just internally managed proxies.

[David OShea]

Nice article, but I think your selling Resolve a little short. Here's a couple of corrections for your article. The dongle is being done away with for version 14. It will still work for future releases but the new v14 will rely on per machine activation. The other thing is in relation to the plugins. Resolve already directly supports a range of third party OFX plugins. These include FilmConvert, ReVisionFX, RedGiant, Boris and etc... There's really a lot out there. Plus if you buy the full version, you get a really good/fast builtin noise reduction and motion blur effects.

Edit, forgot to mention VST audio plugins from iZotope, Wave and a plethora of others, together with the new Fairlight audio makes this release fairly unbeatable on the audio front.

[kaylee]

its too funny that resolve is the same price as fcp. bm is goin for blood i like it

im definitely gonna use resolve for my next project to see how it goes! i mean i like the program a lot, havent rlly used it as an editor yet tho

unquestionably bm is doing something great here – the whole IDEA of resolve as an editor is sicc as heck, and its really come along quite quickly

adobe needs to realize that charging $50 a month forever for BUGGY SOFTWARE PISSES PEOPLE OFF. its not even about the money, its about growing to *resent* that reoccurring charge – that is the shit that makes people investigate other platforms

[dbp]

I got another reason to dump Adobe.

There's a bug in the newest version where it'll delete all of your media files on the drive with the media cache folder. Happened to me on one drive. Assumed the drive was going bad, so I brought a new one. Moved the media cache folder to a different drive, and it happened on that one! Folder structure stays intact but files get deleted. Lots 2+ TB of data in both cases.

Luckily I was able to get it all back with recovery software, but the time it takes to transfer/format etc....  I mean, good god. 

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2306406