Resolve Studio no more free updates?

Is that so?

BMD suggested that they may start charging for updates to the Studio version but it was not clear if that would begin with Resolve Studio 20 or perhaps in a subsequent major update. We'll see. If you look at what's new in Resolve 20, it's unbelievable that they haven't been charging for updates. I'm still dizzy from watching that 'what's new' segment, lol.

Yep, free lunch is over. From my understanding of what he said 20 is a free upgrade but then they might start to charge.

He clearly stated in the video that the Studio 20 upgrade is still free, but some special features in it _may_ cost extra. This is currently in discussion and no final decision.

Black Magic has been unbelievably generous with DaVinci Resolve. I would gladly pay for updates. I am sure the cost would be minimal considering it is Black Magic. I want them to continue to innovate at the same pace. I could not do what I do in my professional career without DaVinci Studio and it is the cheapest tool I have in my arsenal.

This was mindblowing. They added deep pixel compositing (the first outside of Nuke to support this) and finally updated EXR workflows, among many other things.

A lot of long-standing issues in the edit page have been addressed. Proper keyframe editor, some nice script-based editing (first outside of Avid for that).

I can't wait to see the release notes. Just overwhelming.

[Peter Chamberlain]

I just posted the read me above.

You should have a look at the Resolve New Features Guide.
https://documents.blackmagicdesign.com/SupportNotes/DaVinci_Resolve_20_New_Features_Guide.pdf?_v=1743836410000

Thanks for that link.
I Guess paying for an upgrade is something perfectly fair.

They mean that they aren't updating resolve-free anymore, outside of bugs, only studio is going to be receiving major updates -- due to the fact that it's almost all AI stuff, which is studio only. Resolve is forever a lifetime license.

I don’t THINK that’s what they mean.
Resolve Free is a version of Resolve Studio with some of the features turned off. They’re not separate codebases.

Warp text is a big deal!

If BMD wants to charge for a major version release from 21 onwards, that's fine, I will pay for it, hopefully it's not several hundreds of $$. The overall cost itself is so low, so it's gonna be a small number of that total cost anyway. The amount of changes introduced is just insane, there's no company out there, and certainly no competitor that does this much. It's just unbelievable.

He clearly stated in the video that the Studio 20 upgrade is still free, but some special features in it _may_ cost extra. This is currently in discussion and no final decision.

I like this approach. Make future upgrades and updates free, but charge for certain special features in the form of either one time payment, or a small monthly subscription fee for those who need to use it for a short time.

He clearly stated in the video that the Studio 20 upgrade is still free, but some special features in it _may_ cost extra. This is currently in discussion and no final decision.

I like this approach. Make future upgrades and updates free, but charge for certain special features in the form of either one time payment, or a small monthly subscription fee for those who need to use it for a short time.

No subscriptions please. Just charge once. I doubt BMD will go monthly subscription. Highly doubt that. For features or otherwise.

While it was not expressly stated, I suspect this will be Studio AI tools that off load processing to a Blackmagic Cloud service type product.

This sort of thing is becoming pretty common, and is actually a cost saver in the long term for most businesses. No need to buy heavy hardware for the occasional very heavy AI workload.

He clearly stated in the video that the Studio 20 upgrade is still free, but some special features in it _may_ cost extra. This is currently in discussion and no final decision.

I like this approach. Make future upgrades and updates free, but charge for certain special features in the form of either one time payment, or a small monthly subscription fee for those who need to use it for a short time.

No subscriptions please. Just charge once. I doubt BMD will go monthly subscription. Highly doubt that. For features or otherwise.

Definitely NO Subscription!!! That’s going to kill it.
An occasional one time upgrade charge is fine. Like R Studio 21 have a 25% upgrade charge that would last several more upgrades before another 25% charge like in Resolve 30. So if you have R20 studio (still free) then to go from R20 and older to R21 would be an upgrade cost of $73.75 or rounding it to $74 ($295 x .25). I think that’s fine. I prefer the current perpetual no upgrade but I can understand with the amount of features provided. One thing I hope that even with all the AI stuff it’s engineers will write efficient code to support older Intel Macs and their GPU, not just silicon only.

He clearly stated in the video that the Studio 20 upgrade is still free, but some special features in it _may_ cost extra. This is currently in discussion and no final decision.

I like this approach. Make future upgrades and updates free, but charge for certain special features in the form of either one time payment, or a small monthly subscription fee for those who need to use it for a short time.

No subscriptions please. Just charge once. I doubt BMD will go monthly subscription. Highly doubt that. For features or otherwise.

The subscription will be for some of the AI features like AI set extender. It does sound like Studio 21 will be a paid upgrade and he was giving us advanced warning.

It was stated in the video (2:37:11) that set extension will be part of BM Cloud, so it's a subscription service.

You should have a look at the Resolve New Features Guide.
https://documents.blackmagicdesign.com/SupportNotes/DaVinci_Resolve_20_New_Features_Guide.pdf?_v=1743836410000

I agree with Charles. Resolve 20 is a massive update (100+ new and updated features), and BMD has to pay for R&D and support somehow.

I think most users would not mind if they charged $20-$30 (10% of the retail price) for a version update. I also don't mind paying a few dollars extra for access to an A.I. library for Set Extensions and things like that. Given that they rewrote millions of lines of code in the last year for this release, I think a modest update charge is perfectly fine.

Bear in mind if you bought DaVinci Resolve in 2010, you would have paid $995 and gotten 14 updates (Resolve 6 through Resolve 20) for free. If you had subscribed to the Adobe suite during that time, you would have paid $9000 -- $600 a year for 15 years -- for all the updates to the Adobe Creative Suite. To me, DaVinci Resolve is still an amazing bargain, and anybody who disagrees should look at the cost of Avid or Baselight or Nuke or Flame and see what it costs to run a post-production business.

No subscriptions please. Just charge once. I doubt BMD will go monthly subscription. Highly doubt that. For features or otherwise.

Definitely NO Subscription!!! That’s going to kill it.
An occasional one time upgrade charge is fine. Like R Studio 21 have a 25% upgrade charge that would last several more upgrades before another 25% charge like in Resolve 30. So if you have R20 studio (still free) then to go from R20 and older to R21 would be an upgrade cost of $73.75 or rounding it to $74 ($295 x .25). I think that’s fine. I prefer the current perpetual no upgrade but I can understand with the amount of features provided. One thing I hope that even with all the AI stuff it’s engineers will write efficient code to support older Intel Macs and their GPU, not just silicon only.

You guys misunderstood me..
What I meant is that BMD continue to offer free upgrades as usual, but for selective "special" features, they can offer the user 2 options of payments. We can consider those special features as extras or add-on features.

Here is example for both payments.
- Option 1: A one time payment of $50.
- Option 2: A monthly, not yearly, subscription of $5.

Option 1 is for those who want to own permanently.
Option 2 is for those who may need it occasionally, so they rent it when they need to use it.

You should have a look at the Resolve New Features Guide.
https://documents.blackmagicdesign.com/SupportNotes/DaVinci_Resolve_20_New_Features_Guide.pdf?_v=1743836410000

I agree with Charles. Resolve 20 is a massive update (100+ new and updated features), and BMD has to pay for R&D and support somehow.

I think most users would not mind if they charged $20-$30 (10% of the retail price) for a version update. I also don't mind paying a few dollars extra for access to an A.I. library for Set Extensions and things like that. Given that they rewrote millions of lines of code in the last year for this release, I think a modest update charge is perfectly fine.

Bear in mind if you bought DaVinci Resolve in 2010, you would have paid $995 and gotten 14 updates (Resolve 6 through Resolve 20) for free. If you had subscribed to the Adobe suite during that time, you would have paid $9000 -- $600 a year for 15 years -- for all the updates to the Adobe Creative Suite. To me, DaVinci Resolve is still an amazing bargain, and anybody who disagrees should look at the cost of Avid or Baselight or Nuke or Flame and see what it costs to run a post-production business.

Totally agree, and I would be happy to pay 10% of the retail price so that BMD can continue devloping new great features and fix bugs.

In another thread Peter Chamberlain wrote:

To clarify, v20 release will be a free upgrade for current DaVinci Resolve Studio users.

In another thread Peter Chamberlain wrote:

To clarify, v20 release will be a free upgrade for current DaVinci Resolve Studio users.

That is good news and very generous from BMD. I truly appreciate it ...

However, if they decide to charge for V21, I hope the upgrade price will be affordable for most users.

If BMD wants to charge for a major version release from 21 onwards, that's fine, I will pay for it, hopefully it's not several hundreds of $$. The overall cost itself is so low, so it's gonna be a small number of that total cost anyway. The amount of changes introduced is just insane, there's no company out there, and certainly no competitor that does this much. It's just unbelievable.

I was absolutely ecstatic to pay $1000 for Resolve back when the first Mac version (7.0) came out. My company certainly couldn’t afford Resolve when it literally cost $250,000 just for a barebones setup. But we could certainly handle $1000, and it allowed us to make a TON more money than we did when we were hamstrung with Apple Color.

I was even more ecstatic when price for Studio was later lowered to $300.

Even though I’m now a freelancer, I’ll be happy to pay for major upgrades to Studio if it means better features, stability and support.

$49 annual upgrade fee? I think most users would be happy to pay that.
BMD is one of the best companies I've seen in my 50+ yrs on this planet. Happy to support them.
$99 annual fee? Not as happy. But not unreasonable.
Over $99 - now it could turn into a decision to think about for many?
Subscription fees for the main program? Can't imagine. BMD has to know many of their new users came here to escape the Adobe model.

Subscription fees for the main program? Can't imagine. BMD has to know many of their new users came here to escape the Adobe model.

Subscription fee for the main program is totaly unacceptable as this is the major reason why me and so many users left Adobe. However, subscription fees for certain, special add-on AI tools would be acceptable providing it's a monthly (or even weelky) without anual commitment. Also, offering one time payment option.

My feeling tells me that BMD will go with a similar approach. As for the free version, I think maintaining updates with bug fixes and general enhancements would be enough for most users. And any user want more professional tools should pay for the studio version.

I suggest you listen to what Grant Petty actually says rather than speculate on the future. Go to 2.37.22 in the Nab 2025 update which you will find here.

I suggest you listen to what Grant Petty actually says rather than speculate on the future. Go to 2.37.22 in the Nab 2025 update which you will find here.

I watched it and what I understood is that Resolve Studio 20 is still a free upgrade for Studio owners, but BMD will probably start charging for next version, but not for sure yet.

You guys misunderstood me..
What I meant is that BMD continue to offer free upgrades as usual, but for selective "special" features, they can offer the user 2 options of payments. We can consider those special features as extras or add-on features.

Here is example for both payments.
- Option 1: A one time payment of $50.
- Option 2: A monthly, not yearly, subscription of $5.

Option 1 is for those who want to own permanently.
Option 2 is for those who may need it occasionally, so they rent it when they need to use it.

We'll have to see, maybe monthly subscription option which will be best value plus you can buy AI credits at anytime. Assume they're using BlackMagic Cloud for this because if you're a paid cloud user they already have your payment details and the AI processising will be done on their servers so seems logical enough.

NO SUBSCRIPTION FOR Resolve ever. An upgrade fee of 10-25% of the Studio Price is reasonable. Don’t complicate it with subscription prices on certain features. That’s a deal breaker for me. I know how BMD had managed to sustain a perpetual licensed software that everyone had been happy for a very long time. I’d hope and like to see that continue on. So on every major upgrade, a 10-25% charge is fine.. and that’s not an annual charge because major upgrades usually happens every couple years or so. Stop suggesting making certain features a subscription plan.

NO SUBSCRIPTION FOR Resolve ever. An upgrade fee of 10-25% of the Studio Price is reasonable. Don’t complicate it with subscription prices on certain features. That’s a deal breaker for me. I know how BMD had managed to sustain a perpetual licensed software that everyone had been happy for a very long time. I’d hope and like to see that continue on. So on every major upgrade, a 10-25% charge is fine.. and that’s not an annual charge because major upgrades usually happens every couple years or so. Stop suggesting making certain features a subscription plan.

First of all, please stop yelling! Using all CAPS is rude and against the rules of this forum.
Second, like everyone else in the forum, I have the right to suggest whatever I like.. It's called freedom of speech.

Many people feel very strongly about subscription licensing. I am one of those too. I will not spend any money on a subscription.

Many people feel very strongly about subscription licensing. I am one of those too. I will not spend any money on a subscription.

As I mentioned before, my suggestion is that BMD can offer both options, perpetual and subscription and the user choose what's best for him.

Many companies are already offering both options, like Magix, Newblue FX, BorisFX and CorelDraw. Unlike the greedy Adobe, you still own the software after your subscription is expired .. you just won't get the latest versions unless you renew or buy a perpetual license.

To me, I wouldn't pay subscription for the main software, Resolve Studio. But I wouldn't mind a small subscription fee for some very special features that I do not need to own permanently. However, if the upgrade price is very affordable, then I prefer.

Well, it's a BMD forum so obviously it is full of fun-boys who don't care about subscription or charge for upgrade, like all other forums and software communities, silly..

Hate all subscription plans in all softwares, hate all upgrade charge in all softwares.
Why would someone justify the company move to subscription plan, why is that fair?
Of course, majority of companies is moving that way so yeah, why will BM not?
Let's all be fun-boys and just justify that move, let's gave them more money...silly and stupid thing!!
Also as a colorist and a teacher and trainer, promoting DR as one time purchase suddenly change, a big BS from blackmagic!

Grant, the blackmagic founder, has long said he detests the subscription model. Thus I don’t think it’ll be coming to Resolve.

Blackmagic Cloud does is a subscription. So there’s room for some sort of service as a subscription model - but not for the software in general.

They’ll do what they’ll do. Is there something productive in this to discuss here? Could be but haven’t heard it so far.

Grant, the blackmagic founder, has long said he detests the subscription model. Thus I don’t think it’ll be coming to Resolve.

Blackmagic Cloud does is a subscription. So there’s room for some sort of service as a subscription model - but not for the software in general.

They’ll do what they’ll do. Is there something productive in this to discuss here? Could be but haven’t heard it so far.

Yeah making no sense to go on and keep getting worked up about total uncertain speculation, and add insulting comments like 'BMD fun-boys' or whatever.

fwiw I think there's justification for a subscription if there's on-going additional cost to BMD - the generative AI stuff needs to be run in a data center, so there's cost there.

I'd like to see something like:

- Free Tier [Free upgrades]

- Studio [Free upgrades]

- Studio Premium [Paid Upgrade / Subscription] includes features that generate additional costs to run (external AI stuff)

Not that my opinion on this matters, but I would rather see generative AI as a feature within the Black Magic Cloud echo system than somehow tied to the version of Resolve. If I want generative AI for a month, I can subscribe to that feature as part of my cloud account for 1 month and then stop using it after that without it affecting anything to do with my Resolve license (assuming I have Resolve Studio already, of course, I can see why generative AI wouldn't be part of the Resolve Free offering).

A couple people mentioned here 'cloud AI', where processing would run on BM servers.

I believe Photoshop does this for some of their features. My assumption is that PS is sending the image to Adobe servers with the prompts and sending it back, you can't uses them without and internet connection.

Adobe no doubt has a bunch of reasons for this. Is the model going to take up 10's gb of disk space? Does it need huge amounts of ram to run? Model can update on server end without user doing anything.

I would question the practicality of sending a video to a remote server, the file sizes are orders of magnitude more than stills. Downloading a 10gb model to your machine once makes more sense than sending 10gb files to BM for every render.

I would also wonder how many client NDA's would actually prohibit this? But then again, maybe the studios that are running airgapped machines to assure integrity aren't interested in these types of tools anyway?

Adobe certainly got a lot of flack for their terms and conditions being ambiguous on what data they are taking from customers.

I would question the practicality of sending a video to a remote server, the file sizes are orders of magnitude more than stills. Downloading a 10gb model to your machine once makes more sense than sending 10gb files to BM for every render.

You will probably only be sending it a single frame, and it sends a frame back with limited use like in the demos people were making a couple of years ago creating 9:16 scenes out of widescreen. They are all static scenes with generated image showing at top and bottom

Not that my opinion on this matters, but I would rather see generative AI as a feature within the Black Magic Cloud echo system than somehow tied to the version of Resolve. If I want generative AI for a month, I can subscribe to that feature as part of my cloud account for 1 month and then stop using it after that without it affecting anything to do with my Resolve license (assuming I have Resolve Studio already, of course, I can see why generative AI wouldn't be part of the Resolve Free offering).

Steve, I am with you on this. I have no interest in using generative AI with Resolve Studio at all. I don’t want my content to be leaving my box, even if it is a single frame. I use the dongle so my box is not connected to the internet except for software upgrade purposes which is far in between. So like you, I don’t want GenAI features affecting or having to do with my Resolve license.

First of all, please stop yelling! Using all CAPS is rude and against the rules of this forum.
Second, like everyone else in the forum, I have the right to suggest whatever I like.. It's called freedom of speech.

I want people like you to understand that I have my position on what I like. I’m not yelling, I’m pointing out a point. Like you, I have the right to say what the hell I want and ask me if I care what you like. That’s what I want. Bottom line, this is a forum where people express their opinions. And like you said, it’s called freedom to speech. Actually, this is really a useless discussion thread because BMD will make their business decisions not based on what the temperature of discourse is in this forum, but what makes business for them. I’m not going to waste anymore keystrokes after this post. Good luck to you all.

I have the right to suggest whatever I like.. It's called freedom of speech.

Sorry to "that guy" who has to correct statements like this on forums, but the BMD forum is not the government. You don't have "freedom of speech" on a private forum. You of course have the right to suggest whatever you like. But you don't have the right to expect/force a private forum like this one to give you an unbridled platform for your views.

Charging for the "Cloud" or anything that uses BMD's servers for processing is perfectly fair (and probably necessary).

Charging subscription for updates of the software itself - feels a bit sneaky, considering the policy over the past years, but hey, that's their software, their decision, and the good old capitalism.

What wouldn't be fair would be to start charging for the already sold version downloads and re-activations (and that isn't planned as far as I understand).

fwiw I think there's justification for a subscription if there's on-going additional cost to BMD - the generative AI stuff needs to be run in a data center, so there's cost there.

I'd like to see something like:

- Free Tier [Free upgrades]

- Studio [Free upgrades]

- Studio Premium [Paid Upgrade / Subscription] includes features that generate additional costs to run (external AI stuff)

100% agree. If you use Resolve professionally, there really should be a higher tier which includes 24/7 phone support AND notification of known bugs BY Blackmagic Design. This hush hush secrecy in a product that many of us need as the center of our business is not sustainable.

I like the Topaz model where you buy the license then pay a 25-50% fee if you want to upgrade to the new version (or, more specifically, after your 1 year upgrade license expires.) I think even a $0.99 / month subscription would convince people that they're heading down the Ad*** toilet hole.

If the Studio license now included paid updates, BM would urgently need to improve its support.

Current example: No nVidea support for RX50XX in DR19, but only starting with DR20... This must not happen again.

If the Studio license now included paid updates, BM would urgently need to improve its support.

Current example: No nVidea support for RX50XX in DR19, but only starting with DR20... This must not happen again.

I think it's most likely Nvidia's fault, 3 months later and Studio 20 only has H.265 422 10 decode and encode, what happened to H.264 422 10 decode and encode?

The other products it was promoting in January that should have also had the additional decode/encode (Capcut, PowerDirector) I don't think updated yet, In April, (as they did in January with Resolve) Nvidia did a press release about 422 10bit in Premiere Pro, but I don't think Premiere has updated yet either
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/studio-ai ... es-laptop/

I'm willing to believe it's Nvidia's fault but you can't make the leap based on others not supporting a feature.

Software updates are going to be a balancing act. Anybody who needs 4.2.2 HEVC has had an option for years now. Intel four or five generations of chips for both laptop and desktop. Then Apple.

264 I don't think any current camera is actually using it. Maybe a Fuji model has 264 4.2.2? Anybody else with a newish camera? That means anybody who has those files has figured out something. 264 is also easy enough to brute force with modern chips

I think it took a year plus for Resolve to support the HEVC 4.2.2 on the IGPU. It then took Premiere two or three years more. There are still things the IGPU supports that nobody offers software for.

The balancing act means you don't invest in supporting features that benefit relatively few people.

Two extra cents...

Whether obtained with hardware like me, or bough separately, it would be normal that a license includes at least some upgrades, though it is understandable that in the long-term they may want to try to increase their income from the software, though in their case the software is also something that helps sell the hardware.

No subscription please, or if they really want to, a two way thing: 1) fixed price for the major upgrade (10-15% of a new license seems reasonable), or 2) a small montly amount (that over the time between major upgrades probably will bring to the same, but be "felt" less).
Minor ugprades should always be free, because they include bug fixes, and if one does not buy the upgrade or stop the subscription, the software should continue to work and be possible to uninstall and reinstall it, even moving it to other hardware (actually, in some countries technically it is a legal requirement).
Dropped Adobe for that.

Though notice that going to a subscription or even upgrade fee, means that they will have to change the way they manage things, to manage renewals, expiration, subscriptions, etc., and it is not going to be a two minutes change.

About "cloud AI", no thanks.
Can always be optional if they really want to, but there are people that have the hardware and do not want, and/or cannot, for different reason, send their stuff "to the cloud", especially being so-called "AI", even because people should stop talking about "the cloud" like if it was some fantasy place, it is hardware (e.g. storage, servers, networking) and software (e.g. OS, applications) physically somewhere and run by someone.
Unless BMD wants to go Apple way and start using specific instructions only to force people to use the newer GPUs (e.g Blackwell, for NVIDIA), otherwise, older cards may give slower performances, but may still be nice - and actually, it is not always the case, I use CUDA with Da Vinci, but another software uses OpenCL for some things, and I realised one of my older cards is much faster than a new one there, though it is true it was a kind of a special GPU.
Though this is again something in which if they start going that way, they will soon discover they will also have to manage that, both technically but also in terms of administrative, financial etc.

About some comments on "fun boys" (if I remember correctly the expression) that sounded honestly disparaging...

Don't forget those amateurs fun boy makes for quantity, and quantity allows bigger revenue for BMD that allows them to reduce the prices, which allow then even professionals but not forcibly with huge pockets to be able to buy the same or higher end, and to spend in innovation so that, e.g. even things that are not the top of their range and cost can give great results, especilally in good hands.
BMD can boast that some parts of "Avengers Age of Ultron" were done using Pocket Cinema 6k, but that was not a amateur improvised thing, it was an estimated 250 million USD budget movie with a revenue of more than 1 billion 400 millions USD.
Even better for software, once the development and release costs are recovered, any and all extra copies sold are mostly profit, so, the more amateurs buy Studio for its reasonable price and free upgrades, even if they always use only 10% of the functionalities, the more revenue for BMD to be able to invest.