Anyone here have both Final Cut Pro and Black Magic Resolve?

[lsquare]

I use both MacOS and Windows. Sadly, Resolve doesn't support ProRes RAW. I figured if I'm going to learn any NLE, it'll be Resolve since it's available on MacOS and Windows. Both of these NLEs are relatively cheap since it's a one-time pay and there are constant software upgrades. Did I get this right? What would you guys do?

[Benjamin Hilton]

As a 12 year professional editor and content creator who's used all FCPX, Davinci, and Premiere extensively, I would highly recommend putting in the time to learn Davinci Resolve. The only reason to lean the direction of Final Cut would be if you only plan on a simple editing workflow and will be limited on computing power. 

[bjohn]

I also have both and would recommend Resolve. I'm not sure how much of a future Final Cut has anyway, although it's a far more powerful tool than most people who've used it casually, even for a few years, realize. It just operates very differently from other NLEs and thus most editors used to traditional track-based workflows don't do well with it. Once you understand roles and how to use them it becomes quite powerful and its audio abilities are actually quite sophisticated (which you'd never guess at first). The Ripple Training tutorials opened my eyes.

But Resolve has many more features, is based on a traditional track-based model, and overall I much prefer using it. Obviously for color grading Resolve is better, and Final Cut doesn't have anything like Resolve Colour Management, which greatly speeds the process of bringing footage from multiple cameras into your working color space. With Final Cut you're limited to using camera LUTs, which is a poor solution in comparison. Resolve's audio module (Fairlight) is also much easier for traditional track-based editors to comprehend.

Resolve definitely has a high learning curve, but lots of good tutorials are available. The free ones from Blackmagic Design will go a long way to getting you started; if you watch a variety of youtube video tutorials from different people you'll get confused as everyone has their own preferred workflows and a lot of the youtube people don't know what they're talking about. Ripple Training has a good (Blackmagic-certified) set of tutorials on Resolve that are a good investment, and they keep them updated as new versions are released.

[newfoundmass]

As a Final Cut Pro user who has also used Resolve, my primary reason for sticking to Final Cut Pro is all of the plugins that I've purchased that are a part of my workflow. If I was starting over though there really isn't a single reason I can think of that I'd choose Final Cut Pro over Resolve. Export times are very impressive on the new chips Apple uses, but they aren't that much faster than the performance you'd get from Resolve.

 

There are still things about Final Cut Pro X that confuse and frustrate me, even after all these years, and honestly I've still not forgiven them for deviating so far away from the Final Cut Pro UI and workflow.

[Clark Nikolai]

I've used most of the big NLEs and prefer Final Cut. The magnetic timeline is so fast to use once you learn it that tracks seem so 20th century to me. Like they're something left over from a Steenbeck film editor or something whereas Final Cut is definitely from the 21st century. I'm sure if they hadn't patented the magnetic timeline all the other NLEs would have copied it by now.

The roles thing and the built in database are so good, again once you get to know them. I've assistant edited on both TV series and narrative films, (including a feature) using it and it's much less work and takes less time than my experience with Avid or Premiere.

I think Apple is going with the approach that they have something so good and it's so popular that they promote it much. They kind of don't need to as it's become the de facto standard for web video production. They don't update it as often as some would like but when they do it's always a better version of a feature than anyone else's and tends to be rock solid too.

I think it's not going anywhere, in fact they just had an update this morning.

[bjohn]

12 minutes ago, Clark Nikolai said:

I've assistant edited on both TV series and narrative films, (including a feature) using it and it's much less work and takes less time than my experience with Avid or Premiere.

I saw one editor speculate that an Avid editor with 20 years  of experience would take twice as long as an FCPX editor with 5 years of experience to edit the same sequence. It is not just fast, but intuitive; there's that famous demo video called "Editing at the Speed of Thought" and I always feel like that's an apt description of Final Cut. There's some front-end work to do in terms of assigning roles and such, but then once you get down to cutting a timeline you can just get into the flow instead of thinking, okay, which of my 80 tracks to I need to select for the audio and video of this clip that I'm about to add?

I saw that 10.8 update this morning, looks like they've added some useful new features!

[IronFilm]

On 6/20/2024 at 8:06 AM, lsquare said:

I figured if I'm going to learn any NLE, it'll be Resolve since it's available on MacOS and Windows.

...and Linux!

[Clark Nikolai]

8 hours ago, bjohn said:

I saw one editor speculate that an Avid editor with 20 years  of experience would take twice as long as an FCPX editor with 5 years of experience to edit the same sequence. It is not just fast, but intuitive; 

So true. I AE'd on a feature a few years ago that was using Avid and it took about five months, it would have been one month in Final Cut. I wasn't complaining since I was getting paid by the hour, but it was like going back in time.

8 hours ago, bjohn said:

I saw that 10.8 update this morning, looks like they've added some useful new features!

Yeah, AI enhanced interpolation with slo-mo,  better auto colour correction and working with the new multi-cam iOS app.

[dgbarar]

I started editing video on a Mac with PremierPro in 2013.  Way too slow.  Then I switched to FCP in 2014.  Much faster on a Mac.  However, in 2019 I ran into an issue with planer tracking in FCP.  I was videoing a room that I was panning across.  There were windows in the room that I wanted to mask out.  However, when a window went out-of-frame the mask distorted badly.  I tried everything, but could not get it to work.  FCP did not have a planar tracker at that time.  So, I decided to try Davinci Resolve and was able to complete my project.

Davinci Resolve seemed “natural" to me.  I also learned Fusion.  I found nodes much easier keyframe and it was imbedded as part of Resolve.  None of this layer stuff in Motion that I found difficult work with.  The only advantage of Motion is that it encodes about 3x faster than Fusion.  But round tripping and cumbersomeness of key framing in Motion takes more time than the encoding in Fusion.

i still have PremierPro (it’s part of Adobe Cloud) and FCP but I never use them.  Actually, I am thinking of taking FCP off of my computer.  Davinci Resolve Studio is a far more complete and easier to use product than any of the other NLEs.  I am not going back to FCP or PremierPro.

Don

[kye]

On 6/20/2024 at 4:06 AM, lsquare said:

I use both MacOS and Windows. Sadly, Resolve doesn't support ProRes RAW. I figured if I'm going to learn any NLE, it'll be Resolve since it's available on MacOS and Windows. Both of these NLEs are relatively cheap since it's a one-time pay and there are constant software upgrades. Did I get this right? What would you guys do?

I think the answer really depends on your individual circumstances.  

People tend to give advice based on their own situation, which is fine, but almost always underestimate how different the situations of others can be from their own.

Some key considerations to frame the discussion should include:

• If you are going to be collaborating with anyone else
  obviously, if you're planning to collaborate then having the same platform makes certain things 100x easier.
   
• What your workflow is like
  Some people shoot, edit the footage with a simple rec709 conversion, then Picture Lock, then sound design / music / VFX / colour grading / etc all get done, then output and distribution.
  Others may do the edit but will go back and fine-tune it as colour grading and VFX and sound design etc are all being integrated.
  Others my do all the stages simultaneously, in workflows where the concept of Picture Lock makes no sense whatsoever.
   
• How well your footage is shot
  Some projects have complete control over lighting etc during filming and need basically zero colour grading in post.  Others need a lot more finesse, which is well beyond the scope of FCPX.
   
• What the turn-around times are for the project
  If you need to turn something around in 3 days, but need to do round-trip the colour, get Picture Lock before the composer can start composing the score, etc etc then good luck, but if you're in Resolve and editing in the cloud (or with Resolve Server) then you can have the whole team working on the project literally at the same time 
   
• What codecs you're using
   
• What tools you need for VFX / colour grading / audio
   
• What tools you're used to using and how much time (if any) you can devote to switching

I feel like there is an increasing divide between the formal "industry" way of doing things, where (in theory) everyone does their bit in a sequence and (in theory) the process doesn't go back to an earlier stage, and everything can be done in separate pieces of software..  and the way that small teams or solo operators might sculpt an edit, with everything done within the same package and where everything is able to be finessed right up to hitting Export.

[John Matthews]

On 6/19/2024 at 10:06 PM, lsquare said:

I use both MacOS and Windows. Sadly, Resolve doesn't support ProRes RAW. I figured if I'm going to learn any NLE, it'll be Resolve since it's available on MacOS and Windows. Both of these NLEs are relatively cheap since it's a one-time pay and there are constant software upgrades. Did I get this right? What would you guys do?

Since you're a newbie, have you considered iMovie? 

[Clark Nikolai]

12 hours ago, kye said:

• If you are going to be collaborating with anyone else
  obviously, if you're planning to collaborate then having the same platform makes certain things 100x easier.

This might be something that takes some figuring out. On the series I worked on, with the initial meetings with the producer, both the editor and I preferred Final Cut, the producer had heard some things from the early days of the FCPX launch and was hesitant. We did have to figure out a workflow though and buy a third party plug in to output a AAFs for the audio editor (who used ProTools). I'm so glad we didn't end up having to use something else.