Resolve 16 Free vs. Studio Features?

Frustrated longtime Adobe user, sick of the subscription fees, so giving a close look into Resolve.

With each new version, I try out the free "lite" version. Resolve 15 made SIGNIFICANT strides toward being usable. However, I do have some questions.

Limited import/export formats: I noticed Resolve 15 lite only accepts professional cinema formats. Output from bridge cameras and drones doesn't produce a picture. Is this a limitation of the lite version?

I'm used to using a plugin called NVENC, which uses the 3500 or so GPU cores to do the rendering. It's about 100x faster than using Adobe Media Encoder to make h.265 output, which is my main publication format since 2018. Does the Studio version of Resolve do the rendering on GPU instead of CPU? (I found the lite version to be glacially slow rendering, compared to what I was used to with NVENC).

Full screen output: In Premiere, I can set our Sony VPL VW675ES projector and our LG 31MU97-B DCI 4K displays as full screen outputs from the timeline by assigning different output ports on the GPU card. With Resolve 15, we could not get any full screen output. We did try using an Intensity Pro 4K card, but the output was only 3.8K at 30Hz, not 4K/60P, and we'd need a separate card for every display device (not enough slots free in our workstation for that). Has this been improved in 16?

What about supported output formats? Can we output Prores 4444, HEVC, DCI 4K sizes? We had problems with render errors just rendering 1080p h.264 on Resolve 15 and had to give up then.

Does Resolve 16 have a Pixel Motion Blur filter? Currently, when we shoot drone footage and do a slow yaw, the judder is quite bad because the shutter speed is high--but we can get perfect stills as there's no visible motion blur. We fix the judder by importing into AfterEffects and using that filter to change the effective shutter dwell to 180° and it looks great. So we get both the information captured in every frame and can have the motion blur added in post to make it look smooth on a large screen

We're getting closer to considering the switch, but there are a number of issues that need to fall into place for us to make the switch. Buying $29,000 worth of additional hardware is not in our budget.

Studio version does support more camera formats than the Free version. 10 bit H.264/5, for example.

Both 15 and now 16 offer the option of H.264 using the nVidia card. H.265 actually requires an nVidia card.

I don't recommend using the GPU for external display. You'll probably need the Decklink 8K Pro. You can send that through a D/A for multiple displays, though.

I'm on Windows, which offers no version of ProRes. But you can export up to 8K H.265.

Fusion is built into Resolve now, though I'm just not familiar enough with it to offer advice on motion blur.

Have you looked through this document?
https://documents.blackmagicdesign.com/ ... 4708600000

Good on the h.265. We're starting to use that a lot this year with drone footage.

Encoding USING the nVidia card? So it's integrated into the app. How's the speed? NVENC/Premiere is giving us a bit faster than realtime encoding of DCI 4K to HEVC 4K output.

I see in the manual there is support for automatic object removal, similar to AE's contextual object removal feature.

Page 80 shows Prores on the Quick Export menu.

The Decklink 8K doesn't have any HDMI outs. It's all SDI. Our projector and monitors are HDMI and Displayport. Apparently you can't get there from here.

I did note that on Resolve 15, titles needed to be rendered before playback. A weird throwback to Y2K Adobe products before Mercury Playback Engine. I hope that this is no longer necessary in 16.

Our current editing workstations are not regularly connected to the internet. In fact, we'd like to be completely offline, which is another reason we're dumping Adobe. Having to connect every 30 days to validate doesn't sit well with security minded IT folks.

Limited import/export formats: I noticed Resolve 15 lite only accepts professional cinema formats. Output from bridge cameras and drones doesn't produce a picture. Is this a limitation of the lite version?

Yes.

What about supported output formats? Can we output Prores 4444, HEVC, DCI 4K sizes? We had problems with render errors just rendering 1080p h.264 on Resolve 15 and had to give up then.

If you had problems even with H.264 in HD, you got to find out first what is wrong with your setup. It works finer for me even with the 'lite' version, albeit slower.

Export of ProRes is not supported under Windows and HEVC is dead slow if you need 10 bit.

Does Resolve 16 have a Pixel Motion Blur filter?

Not yet.

Buying $29,000 worth of additional hardware is not in our budget.

You won't need that much before going 8K and/or Multicam Red…

BTW, I made the switch with version 14 and never looked back, but some requirements of yours might need additional software, like pixel blur or perfect HEVC encoding to 10 bit.

Page 80 shows Prores on the Quick Export menu.

Yes, on a Mac. Not on a PC. Has always been possible to export ProRes on a Mac with FCPX installed, and now simply by installing Apple's Pro CODEC Pack (since they ripped out all the third party CODECs from it).

Good on the h.265. We're starting to use that a lot this year with drone footage.

Encoding USING the nVidia card? So it's integrated into the app. How's the speed? NVENC/Premiere is giving us a bit faster than realtime encoding of DCI 4K to HEVC 4K output.
.../...

With a big GPU, a 4KDCI HEVC H.265 10 bits in delivery is about ~ 68 fps with Nvidia.

[Peter Chamberlain]

Page 80 shows Prores on the Quick Export menu.

Yes, on a Mac. Not on a PC. Has always been possible to export ProRes on a Mac with FCPX installed, and now simply by installing Apple's Pro CODEC Pack (since they ripped out all the third party CODECs from it).

No need to install FCP to get ProRes codec on Resolve as we support it natively.

Limited import/export formats: I noticed Resolve 15 lite only accepts professional cinema formats. Output from bridge cameras and drones doesn't produce a picture. Is this a limitation of the lite version?

Not sure exactly what you mean here, I'm using the latest 16 beta but with 15 I had no trouble importing and editing drone footage, which is 90% of my footage. I primarily shoot 4K30p but have done 4K60 with no issues other than laggy timeline playback..

Encoding USING the nVidia card? So it's integrated into the app. How's the speed?

On my system, significantly faster.

CPU is around 40 to 50 fps for H.264
GPU is well over 100 fps.

i7 8700
GTX 960

I did note that on Resolve 15, titles needed to be rendered before playback.

Text+ (Fusion) titles perhaps. Depending on your hardware.

Normal Text titles never did.

Apparently you can't get there from here.

BMD doesn't make any HDMI 2.0 I/O hardware that I've seen. You are limited to SDI if you want 4K @ 60 fps.

For now...

viewtopic.php?f=21&t=92552

Apparently you can't get there from here.

BMD doesn't make any HDMI 2.0 I/O hardware that I've seen. You are limited to SDI if you want 4K @ 60 fps.

For now...

viewtopic.php?f=21&t=92552

Jim,

it's been more than 2 to 3 years that BMD has Decklink 12g cards coming out of HDMI + 2.0 in 4K @ 60p

Hardware is a real stickler.. we've been doing DCI 4K 60P out through our current Premiere 2019 setup with simply the GPU outputs (five in all).

Nice to know Prores is available natively in Resolve 16. Prior to Premiere 2019, I could not export Prores on Windows.

I think those titles may have been Fusion titles. The text tools seemed primitive compared with what I'm used to using in Premiere since CS3.

We edit a lot of footage from DJI drones. Mostly was h.264 at 24FPS, but this year we started shooting HEVC exclusively at 24FPS. But the h.264 footage would not display video. Instead there was some red warning message about unlinked footage or some such--I don't recall the details.

68FPS is good HEVC export speed. By big GPU, are you referring to the nVidia GV100? Or the RTX2080Ti?

Yeah, there was some sort of render error in h.264 on Resolve 15 lite. Same workstation that runs Premiere with zero issues. Dual Xeon E5-2667, 128GB ECC RAM, 1080Ti, 12TB of SSD storage drives, etc. A medium to high spec machine, which should be capable of running Resolve nicely. I know it has no problem handling five DCI 4K clips picture in picture, rotated, LUTs applied and sharpening applied in Resolve 15 at full frame rate. By contrast, Premiere can handle just one DCI 4K clip at full frame rate. And that was back on Windows 7. Windows 10 boosted workstation performance significantly, so I am anxious to try Resolve 16 on it at some point when it is released in final form.

BMD has Decklink 12g cards coming out of HDMI + 2.0 in 4K @ 60p

Yep. The 4K Extreme 12G. Missed that one before.

Prior to Premiere 2019, I could not export Prores on Windows.

You still can't with Resolve. ProRes is Mac only.

But Cineform are DNx are native options.

I think those titles may have been Fusion titles. The text tools seemed primitive compared with what I'm used to using in Premiere since CS3.

Then they likely weren't Fusion titles, which offer a LOT more flexibility than what PP offers, at least outside the EGP.

BMD has Decklink 12g cards coming out of HDMI + 2.0 in 4K @ 60p

Yep. The 4K Extreme 12G. Missed that one before.

The website says "Up to 25P".. but then the specs list HDMI "2160P 60".. even so, it looks like only ONE HDMI out per $895 card. Our workstation has one available unobstructed slot.

That's what D/A's are for.

That's what D/A's are for.

"D/A" as in digital to analog converter? I'm not sure I understand.

Sorry. Distribution Amp.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?s ... 953047191&

The Feature Comparison document on the support app hasn't been updated since Resolve 15 Beta. Would be nice if it could be updated for Resolve 16 - and probably be a little more specific; as a lot has changed, since then.

Same thing with the CODEC document, which seems even more out of date.

With the lack of a Studio "Trial" version, a lot of people depend on these to properly evaluate whether or not an upgrade is needed or worth the purchase.

Does anyone know if the detailed and tabulated feature comparison list for Resolve 16 Free vs Resolve 16 Studio has been updated or not?

This list would also answer the OP's query directly.

For the previous some of the previous versions of Davinci Resolve, this used to be listed online on Resolve's homepage as a table and there was a pdf document as well. Unable to locate it at the moment under Blackmagic Support page where you can find other documents..

https://documents.blackmagicdesign.com/ ... arison.pdf
Resolve 15 feature list comparison list is still active as above. Updating this to Resolve 16 shows nothing..

February 2020...stilll can´t find this list updated for version 16...am I the only one?

[Peter Chamberlain]

Both are scheduled for updates in a few weeks for a sandy desert show