- Posts: 11
- Joined: Sat Feb 16, 2019 7:42 pm
- Real Name: Elizabeth Lowrey
. . . but there are currently some deal breakers for me. At least in terms of what seem to be current limitations of the program as an editor.
Some brief history.
I began a very modest video production business in 2001 using a Windows 2000 system and Adobe Premiere (before the "Creative Suite" days). I found Premiere very clunky and buggy, but I was untrained, had nothing else to really compare it to, and it seemed the best option at the time for my platform in my price range, so that's what I used on my early projects.
In 2003, I had some audio that needed major noise removal tools, and Premiere simply wasn't up to the job. I downloaded a trial version of Sonic Foundry's Vegas Video, with an Audio Noise Reduction plugin, and the rest is history. I couldn't believe how much more elegant that program was than Premiere from a user interface standpoint, starting with the (revolutionary at the time) fact that I didn't have to bother "importing" footage into bins. I could simply drag a clip from an open Explorer window directly into the timeline and, voila, it played. And it did this with virtually ANY media file format I had. And it was rock solid stable.
Moving around and doing things in Vegas was so intuitive, it was mind blowing. I almost NEVER had to consult a manual. Want to magnify or reduce the resolution of your timeline? Scroll the mouse wheel while pointing to it. Want a simple dissolve transition? Drag a clip until it overlaps another in the same track to the desired amount, which will instantly be evident from the visual outlines of the two clips. Want a different interpolation for the rate of that dissolve than the default ease in/out? Simply right click in the transition area and choose from a popup of 16 or so permutations. Want to pan/zoom on a still? Click an icon on the clip and enter a popup window where any change made to any parameter at any point in the clip's length automatically inserts a keyframe. Change your mind about the kind of interpolation you want for a particular keyframe? Simply click it and choose from a range (including "hold," an extremely valuable option.) Want to adjust the overall length of that panned/zoomed still without changing the beginning or end values of your keyframes for the clip? Simply drag the edge of the clip and the value of the first or last keyframe goes with it (as it should).
I thought it might be bad news when Sony bought Vegas from Sonic Foundry. Eventually it was but primarily because they apparently moved further and further away from the camera agnostic, format agnostic basis of the original program and were intent on using it to try to sell more of their cameras (e.g., slow to add P2 support, slow to add basic ability to edit R3D, etc.). While the program remained reasonably stable throughout my time with it, the performance began to lag with newer media formats and higher resolutions, and media management remained a resource hog and somewhat clunky, especially since none of the metadata developed within the program would ever move with the files and clips outside of the program. But the thing that finally drove me to looking for other editing solutions was and remains (even now, several years past MAGIX' acquisition of the software) the antiquated, inadequate support for R3D files and RED RAW workflow.
When I first tested Davinci Resolve several years ago, I was impressed with the interface but completely unimpressed with basic performance. After some reading, I realized my system was just too old to leverage the technologies basic to the way Resolve is coded (starting with how it uses video card resources), so I waited until I built a new system to try it again.
And so I have over these last two weeks with a brand new computer build, specs of which you can see in my signature. The general LOOK of the interface, media management, metadata handling, responsiveness, playback performance, the intelligent way that panels expand and contract are all SPECTACULAR. The support for RED RAW is all I could ask for. And the addition of Fusion as a full-fledged, node based effects package and Fairlight as a specialized audio environment is stunningly impressive.
I was ready to happily plunk down my $300 for the full version (ridiculous value!) until I started really digging into the editing features on a stills montage and discovered some (to me, coming from Vegas) mind boggling limitations:
#1 - The inability to create a transition/dissolve by simply overlapping clips in the same track. This seems so fundamental to me that I'm still wondering if I've somehow just missed it, like there's an undiscovered editing mode in which this way of working is possible. Yes, I know I can grab a transition from a list and drag it across abutting clips to create one of many varieties of transitions, but that is so much more limiting (I'll give examples, if you like) and time consuming than the Vegas way of doing things that I'm struggling to understand why the latter isn't already a feature of Resolve (or can't be added.)
#2 - The inability to efficiently and flexibly keyframe pans and zooms on stills (or even motion files, for that matter.) I do a lot of work quasi "animating" stills but often far beyond the basic "Ken Burns" zoom. The dynamic zoom feature of Resolve could be helpful in a number of situations but is far too limiting to replace the kind of custom keyframing I'm talking about where there is, for instance, a fade in and long delay on a highly zoom in portion of an image (e.g., a face) and then a smooth ramping to another face, followed by a hold there, followed by a gradual zoom out that holds on a wider frame, all synchronized in time with a voiceover or music or both. As you fine tune an animation like that, it's essential to have the first and last keyframes stay attached to the first and last frames of the clip so that you don't, for example, enter an animation midstream where you can't even SEE the beginning keyframe from which the animation is being calculated.
In Resolve, I noticed that edge keyframes do not travel with the clip edges. If I shorten a clip after having applied a beginning position or zoom keyframe, that keyframe recedes behind the new clip beginning yet continues to influence the animation. The only way to edit or remove it is to open the keyframing subwindow below the clip, drag the clip start back beyond the old keyframe, move that keyframe to where you think you want to actually start the clip, then drag the clip edge to the position of that keyframe and hope you got the time right. If not, rinse, repeat.
That is incredibly labor intensive for something so simple. And that doesn't even hit on the biggest limitation, which is the lack of ability to select a smooth interpolation for a position keyframe on the extreme edge of a clip. I greatly appreciate that you can actually keyframe using points and Bezier curves with handles for most parameters. This is an improvement over the Vegas way of doing things, which limits you to a choice of preset interpolations (smooth, fast, slow, linear, hold, etc.) But without the ability to actually control the rate of change of a position animation in a linear, timeline interface, all the other control in the world is icing without a cake.
There are some other basic things I wish Resolve would adopt from Vegas, like a dedicated command to stop playback and leave the CTI wherever it falls at that instant (useful for timing with music and such) while still retaining the ability to playback from a given position and return to it after toggling the spacebar. With Resolve, there is a single play and stop command, apparently, which can be assigned to either behavior but can't simultaneously be accessible via separate keyboard shortcuts. But this kind of thing is small potatoes next to the issues with overlapping clips and keyframe animations.
I am posting this because one of the most impressive things to me about Blackmagic is the aggressive pace at which they are developing Resolve and the degree to which they are apparently listening to user feedback. In that vein, then, I am so, SO close to moving to your platform and buying into the paid version but can't do it so long as the above limitations exist.
If I've just failed so far to find functional equivalents to the above features, please forgive me and point me in the right direction.
Until then, congratulations to Blackmagic programmers and designers on a fantastic package that continues to grow. I hope one day it can serve all my needs.
Some brief history.
I began a very modest video production business in 2001 using a Windows 2000 system and Adobe Premiere (before the "Creative Suite" days). I found Premiere very clunky and buggy, but I was untrained, had nothing else to really compare it to, and it seemed the best option at the time for my platform in my price range, so that's what I used on my early projects.
In 2003, I had some audio that needed major noise removal tools, and Premiere simply wasn't up to the job. I downloaded a trial version of Sonic Foundry's Vegas Video, with an Audio Noise Reduction plugin, and the rest is history. I couldn't believe how much more elegant that program was than Premiere from a user interface standpoint, starting with the (revolutionary at the time) fact that I didn't have to bother "importing" footage into bins. I could simply drag a clip from an open Explorer window directly into the timeline and, voila, it played. And it did this with virtually ANY media file format I had. And it was rock solid stable.
Moving around and doing things in Vegas was so intuitive, it was mind blowing. I almost NEVER had to consult a manual. Want to magnify or reduce the resolution of your timeline? Scroll the mouse wheel while pointing to it. Want a simple dissolve transition? Drag a clip until it overlaps another in the same track to the desired amount, which will instantly be evident from the visual outlines of the two clips. Want a different interpolation for the rate of that dissolve than the default ease in/out? Simply right click in the transition area and choose from a popup of 16 or so permutations. Want to pan/zoom on a still? Click an icon on the clip and enter a popup window where any change made to any parameter at any point in the clip's length automatically inserts a keyframe. Change your mind about the kind of interpolation you want for a particular keyframe? Simply click it and choose from a range (including "hold," an extremely valuable option.) Want to adjust the overall length of that panned/zoomed still without changing the beginning or end values of your keyframes for the clip? Simply drag the edge of the clip and the value of the first or last keyframe goes with it (as it should).
I thought it might be bad news when Sony bought Vegas from Sonic Foundry. Eventually it was but primarily because they apparently moved further and further away from the camera agnostic, format agnostic basis of the original program and were intent on using it to try to sell more of their cameras (e.g., slow to add P2 support, slow to add basic ability to edit R3D, etc.). While the program remained reasonably stable throughout my time with it, the performance began to lag with newer media formats and higher resolutions, and media management remained a resource hog and somewhat clunky, especially since none of the metadata developed within the program would ever move with the files and clips outside of the program. But the thing that finally drove me to looking for other editing solutions was and remains (even now, several years past MAGIX' acquisition of the software) the antiquated, inadequate support for R3D files and RED RAW workflow.
When I first tested Davinci Resolve several years ago, I was impressed with the interface but completely unimpressed with basic performance. After some reading, I realized my system was just too old to leverage the technologies basic to the way Resolve is coded (starting with how it uses video card resources), so I waited until I built a new system to try it again.
And so I have over these last two weeks with a brand new computer build, specs of which you can see in my signature. The general LOOK of the interface, media management, metadata handling, responsiveness, playback performance, the intelligent way that panels expand and contract are all SPECTACULAR. The support for RED RAW is all I could ask for. And the addition of Fusion as a full-fledged, node based effects package and Fairlight as a specialized audio environment is stunningly impressive.
I was ready to happily plunk down my $300 for the full version (ridiculous value!) until I started really digging into the editing features on a stills montage and discovered some (to me, coming from Vegas) mind boggling limitations:
#1 - The inability to create a transition/dissolve by simply overlapping clips in the same track. This seems so fundamental to me that I'm still wondering if I've somehow just missed it, like there's an undiscovered editing mode in which this way of working is possible. Yes, I know I can grab a transition from a list and drag it across abutting clips to create one of many varieties of transitions, but that is so much more limiting (I'll give examples, if you like) and time consuming than the Vegas way of doing things that I'm struggling to understand why the latter isn't already a feature of Resolve (or can't be added.)
#2 - The inability to efficiently and flexibly keyframe pans and zooms on stills (or even motion files, for that matter.) I do a lot of work quasi "animating" stills but often far beyond the basic "Ken Burns" zoom. The dynamic zoom feature of Resolve could be helpful in a number of situations but is far too limiting to replace the kind of custom keyframing I'm talking about where there is, for instance, a fade in and long delay on a highly zoom in portion of an image (e.g., a face) and then a smooth ramping to another face, followed by a hold there, followed by a gradual zoom out that holds on a wider frame, all synchronized in time with a voiceover or music or both. As you fine tune an animation like that, it's essential to have the first and last keyframes stay attached to the first and last frames of the clip so that you don't, for example, enter an animation midstream where you can't even SEE the beginning keyframe from which the animation is being calculated.
In Resolve, I noticed that edge keyframes do not travel with the clip edges. If I shorten a clip after having applied a beginning position or zoom keyframe, that keyframe recedes behind the new clip beginning yet continues to influence the animation. The only way to edit or remove it is to open the keyframing subwindow below the clip, drag the clip start back beyond the old keyframe, move that keyframe to where you think you want to actually start the clip, then drag the clip edge to the position of that keyframe and hope you got the time right. If not, rinse, repeat.
That is incredibly labor intensive for something so simple. And that doesn't even hit on the biggest limitation, which is the lack of ability to select a smooth interpolation for a position keyframe on the extreme edge of a clip. I greatly appreciate that you can actually keyframe using points and Bezier curves with handles for most parameters. This is an improvement over the Vegas way of doing things, which limits you to a choice of preset interpolations (smooth, fast, slow, linear, hold, etc.) But without the ability to actually control the rate of change of a position animation in a linear, timeline interface, all the other control in the world is icing without a cake.
There are some other basic things I wish Resolve would adopt from Vegas, like a dedicated command to stop playback and leave the CTI wherever it falls at that instant (useful for timing with music and such) while still retaining the ability to playback from a given position and return to it after toggling the spacebar. With Resolve, there is a single play and stop command, apparently, which can be assigned to either behavior but can't simultaneously be accessible via separate keyboard shortcuts. But this kind of thing is small potatoes next to the issues with overlapping clips and keyframe animations.
I am posting this because one of the most impressive things to me about Blackmagic is the aggressive pace at which they are developing Resolve and the degree to which they are apparently listening to user feedback. In that vein, then, I am so, SO close to moving to your platform and buying into the paid version but can't do it so long as the above limitations exist.
If I've just failed so far to find functional equivalents to the above features, please forgive me and point me in the right direction.
Until then, congratulations to Blackmagic programmers and designers on a fantastic package that continues to grow. I hope one day it can serve all my needs.
Intel core i9-9900K 3.6 GHz
MSI GeForce RTX 2070 ARMOR 8G
Gigabyte Z390 Designare
64 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4 3200MHz
2x Samsung 970 Pro EVO NVMe 500GB
4x Seagate Exos X10 10TB HD in Hardware 0 RAID (LSI MegaRAID SAS 9271 PCIe 3)
MOTU Traveler Audio I/O
MSI GeForce RTX 2070 ARMOR 8G
Gigabyte Z390 Designare
64 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4 3200MHz
2x Samsung 970 Pro EVO NVMe 500GB
4x Seagate Exos X10 10TB HD in Hardware 0 RAID (LSI MegaRAID SAS 9271 PCIe 3)
MOTU Traveler Audio I/O