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[KnightsFan]

10 minutes ago, kye said:

No need to buy a Fusion license, it's built into Resolve now with v15, so you get that with your existing license.

Yeah, but the one built into Resolve lacks a lot of features and it's really slow. It hangs and freezes doing simple comps, which run fine in the standalone version. At least that's my experience so far. There are more features in standalone Fusion than Resolve builtin, and even more in the paid version, some of which are looking really tempting--specifically the tracking features. Also I did some 4096x4096 comps in Fusion recently, and since the free version maxes out at UHD I actually had to export as four 2K images and then stitch them in ffmpeg. It's an easy workaround but it's kind of annoying.

14 minutes ago, kye said:

I'll paste it again - maybe this works? https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=47367

Huh, interesting discussion

17 minutes ago, kye said:

The downside to Resolve is bugs.  They're moving so fast to add features (or integrate entire packages!) that they have some lingering bugs and others that crop up randomly.  Id say Fairlight audio issues are with the interface, and wouldn't render out from the Deliver page, but I could be wrong.  I've been using it since v12.5 and have experienced a few annoying issues, but nothing in the exported files.

So far I've found fewer bugs in Resolve than Premiere, but I do avoid the "bleeding edge" features like Fairlight and Fusion. Back when Fairlight first was integrated, I had one issue crop up in the rendered audio file, but that was a few versions ago. Hopefully that's fixed. Still, not being able to reliably hear what you're working on makes it annoying.

19 minutes ago, kye said:

It's also worth noting that the screen layout of Resolve is quite flexible and you can expand, contract, minimise and hide panels as you like, but the controls to do those things aren't immediately obvious so there is a belief out there that you can't customise it at all.

True. But it's all so big and blocky. Like if I pop open my effects tab it takes up 1/4 of my screen, so I have to close it back down just to see what I'm doing. I'm constantly finding myself adjusting the windows. I believe that you still can't freely undock or rearrange panels except like the color scopes only--which makes it really hard to take advantage of dual screens.

 

Re: the rest of your post... I agree, and one reason I like Reaper so much is that it's scalable. If I want to record a sound, I open Reaper and hit record. If I want to EQ a single clip, it's a couple of clicks. If I need to mix for a surreal narrative project in both 2.0 and 5.1, with crazy effects, and dialog and ambient being piped through a vocoder and all kinds of crazy stuff, it scales really well. In Fairlight you've got to dive through menus to set up sends, the UI honestly feels very uncreative and inefficient. It just doesn't want to do things that it wasn't consciously designed to do by the developers.

[kye]

1 hour ago, KnightsFan said:

Yeah, but the one built into Resolve lacks a lot of features and it's really slow. It hangs and freezes doing simple comps, which run fine in the standalone version. At least that's my experience so far. There are more features in standalone Fusion than Resolve builtin, and even more in the paid version, some of which are looking really tempting--specifically the tracking features. Also I did some 4096x4096 comps in Fusion recently, and since the free version maxes out at UHD I actually had to export as four 2K images and then stitch them in ffmpeg. It's an easy workaround but it's kind of annoying.

Interesting.  I didn't realise that they were keeping Fusion as a standalone product, although that might not be the long-term direction.

I know that in terms of integrating or modifying software significantly, certain bits are a lot easier to get working than other bits.  Maybe the roadmap is to gradually add in the bits that Resolve hasn't enabled yet, or maybe not, who knows

1 hour ago, KnightsFan said:

Huh, interesting discussion

Yeah.  I found it interesting the BM guy searched the forum to see how many times it was mentioned, so maybe they do try and respond to users.  I kind of got the impression that they do, but also they have a strong strategy - integrating an NLE, Fairlight, and now Fusion into Resolve wouldn't have been them responding to forum users!

It was also interesting the BM guy said that it wasn't necessary, and someone countered by pointing out that 8K support also wasn't necessary..  touché!

1 hour ago, KnightsFan said:

So far I've found fewer bugs in Resolve than Premiere, but I do avoid the "bleeding edge" features like Fairlight and Fusion. Back when Fairlight first was integrated, I had one issue crop up in the rendered audio file, but that was a few versions ago. Hopefully that's fixed. Still, not being able to reliably hear what you're working on makes it annoying.

Agreed.  I noticed a huge difference in crashing between 12.5 and 14, so I think someone really pushed for it to get more reliable.  It went from crashing about every 20 minutes to maybe every 8 hours of use for me, so that's significant.

One thing I can kind of sense is that a lot of the niggling bugs have been around for many versions, so I think they might be harder to get to issues more to do with mashing things together instead of just isolated in one module or whatever.  Things like the "I get no audio" bug which seems to be fixed by anything from muting and unmuting in each panel to changing system output device or messing around with the database, and has been with us since v12.5 and probably before that even.

1 hour ago, KnightsFan said:

True. But it's all so big and blocky. Like if I pop open my effects tab it takes up 1/4 of my screen, so I have to close it back down just to see what I'm doing. I'm constantly finding myself adjusting the windows. I believe that you still can't freely undock or rearrange panels except like the color scopes only--which makes it really hard to take advantage of dual screens.

Re: the rest of your post... I agree, and one reason I like Reaper so much is that it's scalable. If I want to record a sound, I open Reaper and hit record. If I want to EQ a single clip, it's a couple of clicks. If I need to mix for a surreal narrative project in both 2.0 and 5.1, with crazy effects, and dialog and ambient being piped through a vocoder and all kinds of crazy stuff, it scales really well. In Fairlight you've got to dive through menus to set up sends, the UI honestly feels very uncreative and inefficient. It just doesn't want to do things that it wasn't consciously designed to do by the developers.

I agree it's big and blocky.  I alternate between using it on a 13" laptop and using the same laptop with a UHD display.  It's better on the larger display, but it's definitely not as customisable as would be ideal.  

I think this is due to the heritage of it being around for a long time, like most other long-lived software packages look old and inflexible.  In a sense this is something that also runs through the film industry too, so much of the processes, techniques, terminology, etc is rooted in out-of-date technologies or previous limitations that are no longer present.  This is really a symptom of what happens when you take a challenge (make a film) break it up into the steps (shoot, develop, edit, test-screen, picture lock, sound, colour timing, distribute) and then when the technology changes you update each part individually but not the way that it was broken up in the first place.  The things that the film-industry talks about as being revolutionary seem completely ridiculous when viewed from an outside perspective, like the director working with the colourist to create a LUT that was used on-set to preview the look as it's shot, or being able to abandon the idea of the picture-lock by being open to making changes to the edit if the audio mixing discovers any improvements that could be made.
These are obvious no-brainer things if you haven't gotten used to those limitations over time.

In terms of Fairlight I think that's the case too.  Having a mixing desk approach made sense when audio equipment was all analogue, but it's always seemed restrictive to me.  Here's a screenshot of the free modular software-only tracker that I was writing music with about 20-years ago.

Every blue box was an audio generator and every orange one was an effect.  Every arrow had a volume control and every module had an unlimited number of inputs.  Every module could be opened up and adjusted with sliders for each parameter.  Every slider could be automated.  Anyone could develop new modules and share as .DLL files.  
As computers got more powerful you could have more modules.  We got to the point where it became difficult to work with because you couldn't adjust the size of the boxes on the screen and so you'd have stacks of boxes on top of each other.  I used to write tracks like the above where there was a separate effects chain for every instrument, except things like compressors where you want them to drive the whole mix.  My friend used to connect every module to every other module just to see what they sounded like, and he'd get these amazing textures and tones.  He was a big fan of Sonic Youth and apart from writing electronic music with me he also used to play guitar and integrate samples from that, and later on we get into glitch and heavy sampling.  

I think I would have gone insane if I'd been trying to write music limited to the architecture of a mixing desk, or couldn't just right-click and bring up a new module..  what do you mean every reverb instance costs $1000?????

[KnightsFan]

6 minutes ago, kye said:

 In a sense this is something that also runs through the film industry too, so much of the processes, techniques, terminology, etc is rooted in out-of-date technologies or previous limitations that are no longer present

I agree with pretty much everything you said, but i especially agree with this.

I have no doubt fairlight and fusion will continue to improve. A fully integrated, single post production application would be absolutely heavenly for quick turn around and light work. It will be interesting to see if they can make it flexible and stable enough over the next few versions.

That sound software you screenshotted looks like the kind of intuitive UI that i think thay fairlight lacks. One glance and i understand how it works. But yeah it would get cluttered very quickly with large projects.

[kye]

46 minutes ago, KnightsFan said:

I agree with pretty much everything you said, but i especially agree with this.

I have no doubt fairlight and fusion will continue to improve. A fully integrated, single post production application would be absolutely heavenly for quick turn around and light work. It will be interesting to see if they can make it flexible and stable enough over the next few versions.

That sound software you screenshotted looks like the kind of intuitive UI that i think thay fairlight lacks. One glance and i understand how it works. But yeah it would get cluttered very quickly with large projects.

I think they will continue to improve too in terms of features, but possibly not in terms of the architecture.  Things like the UI will probably require a significant re-write, but that might be to our advantage because if they work on it they'd have to re-write it completely, which means that they might completely re-design it too.  My vote would be to enable everything to be docked and undocked so you can move everything around.

One thing that I think modern computers are severely lacking in is UI innovation.  We have GFX cards that can render a 4K virtual universe in real-time but the windowing that we use on normal applications hasn't had a single innovation (except multiple desktops) since 1988!  
What about having dynamic modes where the windows get bigger when in the middle and when you're not using them they settle on the sides of the screen like thumbnails?  You can't argue that there isn't spare screen realestate on a 24inch UHD display when you're working in a word processor..  

We give Canon shit for not delivering the full capability of their hardware - todays UI design is the equivalent of getting 240p from a 1DXmk3!

Anyway UI rant over.

In terms of adding complexity to Fairlight, that will be a long time coming I think.  If you operate in the physical world then the mixing desk is still a good way to run a studio, and considering that things like recording an orchestra aren't going to change, any time soon at least, that mindset of how it works will be with us for a long time.

But you're right that they could add a modular UI like that to simulate the patch bay that normally sits along side a mixer, which is required as soon as you have more effects modules than you can have wired in at and one time.