Did Grant Say “Paid Updates”? - for civilized users

Please do don’t use this thread for uncivilized inflammatory comments.

This “Paid Updates” is very simple. You have many choices.

1. You don’t have Resolve, there is a free version and a Studio paid version for $295. If you’re a novice user or just for play, the free version will be more than enough. If you are a pro, livelihood depends on it, pay up the $295 and now you have a license of Resolve 20 for as long as you want to use it. You should be able to recover that cost on your next paid post work.

2. You bought a BMD hardware that comes with Resolve, you got the Studio for free. What’s to complain about. If you don’t want to pay for upgrades, don’t have too for the Studio, or downgrade to the free version (see #3).

3. You have Resolve and not a pro - the free version will still be available in R21 and onward. It’s still free. That should be more than enough.

4. You have Resolve and a pro - and now Resolve Studio has a very small upgrade fee on major version which is not a subscription, and the upgrade fee is $29.95 (Marc suggests in another post) or $49.95 (I suggested in another post), then that’s a no brainer. You need it, pay the upgrade fee. You don’t, stay on R20.

5. Still don’t like it, well there’s Adobe, Baseline, FCP, Avid, Pomfort Livegrade studio and many others for you to venture into. Most of them are not free. I’m sure you won’t be missed.

How much simple can it be? Also, if that upgrade fee of $29.95 or 49.95 will come, it won’t be for at least a year or two after R20 GA. So make your own coffee and save up. That is easy. No, seriously.

As long as there's no one flaming me for my opinion on why it should stay the same as it is now. Here it goes.

2. People need to stop saying you got Resolve for free. No. You paid for Resolve by purchasing the hardware. It was advertised as such. There would have been no sale otherwise. And if you bought a bunch of hardware with multiple licenses, it stops becoming a small update fee to keep everything up to date.

Which means it will probably keep me and others from purchasing hardware that is dependent on said
software to run in the future. Which in turn will probably make Resolve more expensive, indirectly.

4. Same as above. If it was free then suddenly becomes not free and you have all this bunch of hardware and licenses that need to be constantly updated (because lets be honest, nobody really uses Resolve 10 for example) and then overnight it becomes a subscription model (like the biggest fear we all have) it becomes a nightmare if you have multiple licenses.

Which then becomes again, why invest in more hardware that is dependent on Resolve to run.

5. Most people already pay for this too as there are a lot of clients still using Adobe. The odds of people remaining on Adobe are higher than the odds of switching.

And yeah, I sure won't be missed. But if I supported you (as in bmd) for years and then suddenly here's the door and the kick in the booty, what can I say...Thank you, I guess?

Again this is just my opinion and or concern. In the end only time will tell and in the end we can only vote with our wallets.

But I truly hope the BMD guy in the QA was right and they won't alienate us with this change.

P.S I would be happy if we got a stripped version that's just the edit page and the color page. Like it was in the old days. Keep it free for people who invest in your hardware.

4. You have Resolve and a pro - and now Resolve Studio has a very small upgrade fee on major version which is not a subscription, and the upgrade fee is $29.95 (Marc suggests in another post) or $49.95 (I suggested in another post), then that’s a no brainer. You need it, pay the upgrade fee. You don’t, stay on R20.

But we don't know if it will be that price. For that money, I'm totally game - but nothing official yet.

I'd also raise the question how this is to be done in general, how the process would look. Is my Dongle still going to work? Would I need to purchase a new Dongle every year? Or are my S/Ns and Dongle-Numbers put in some online sheet so I have to be online to install/activate?

I can kinda understand the frustration as there's little official word on what will come of it, all started by a little side note in a 2+ hour livestream; a bit unfortunate I'd say

Best Regards

I'd also raise the question how this is to be done in general, how the process would look. Is my Dongle still going to work? Would I need to purchase a new Dongle every year? Or are my S/Ns and Dongle-Numbers put in some online sheet so I have to be online to install/activate?

I can kinda understand the frustration as there's little official word on what will come of it, all started by a little side note in a 2+ hour livestream; a bit unfortunate I'd say

Best Regards

Yup. As a 100% dongle user this is on my mind as well.

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2. People need to stop saying you got Resolve for free. No. You paid for Resolve by purchasing the hardware. It was advertised as such. There would have been no sale otherwise. And if you bought a bunch of hardware with multiple licenses, it stops becoming a small update fee to keep everything up to date.

Correct, Resolve is $300. But if Resolve were to stand independently and not be subsidized by BM hardware sales, I doubt it would be a $300 software. Probably at least $800 with an annual cost to upgrade. You can call it a subscription or not, but there would still be a cost to upgrade to the next version.
Hardware sales may no longer be enough to justify the subsidy. Maybe that is why Grant mentioned "Paid Updates". The Bell Curve is now trending downward?

Either way, IMHO, even if the cost was another $300 yearly, Resolve would still be the best deal in the industry. And I think a lot of the defenders of the "paid updates" line feel the same way, more or less.


Regarding BM Hardware needing Resolve, BM can just release a simple software to convert the media. I mean, that is RED's entire business plan. They and their users seem to be fine with that (and the entire post-production industry also).

Correct, Resolve is $300. But if Resolve were to stand independently and not be subsidized by BM hardware sales, I doubt it would be a $300 software. Probably at least $800 with an annual cost to upgrade.

Note that the software-only version of Baselight is nearly $10,000 ($9480). To me, that's realistically what Resolve could cost if Blackmagic didn't subsidize by being a (mostly) hardware manufacturing company.

I would be fine if all future updates of DaVinci Resolve were about 10% of the retail price ($30), but it's not my decision to make. I think it was a bargain in 2010 for $995, more of a bargain in 2017 for $495, and a huge bargain in 2021 for $295. Bear in mind the real cost of Resolve is the hardware it takes to run it: the monitor, a control surface, interface cards, very fast drives, and a very powerful workstation. To me, it's still a $50,000 system, once you bring in all the other stuff.

This photo was from NAB 2010:



People need to stop and consider what an incredible buy Resolve is -- not nit-pick over possible/theoretical upgrade costs.

Let’s wait and see what the upgrade program and cost will be in a couple of years. I say couple of years because Resolve 20 GA will probably be, based on past releases, 3 to 4 months away… so that will be mid 2025. Grant said that R20 studio will still be a free upgrade still and it will probably be in NAB 2027 when we will hear and see R21. I am not expecting any paid upgrades on point releases (I.e. 20.1, 20.2.1, etc..) or that will be absurd. Like Marc, I’m all for a 10-20% max upgrade fee on major releases, so something between $29.95 and $49.95 is reasonable. I’m not sure paying $300 each year is sustainable too as that will be a form of subscription even though unlike Adobe, you still get to use the last. Erosion you upgraded - paid or otherwise. So lots of time to contemplate, meanwhile Resolve gets better.

The dongle matter is a legit concern. I have dongles too and I have them on a couple of my systems in addition to software keys. I hope it’s linear with whatever they decide for activation keys.

The biggest concern I have with Resolve is really not paying for the upgrade but all these AI enhancement that at some point will rely on generative AI models that will cost more since BMD will have to pay the modeling and AI companies for them. That will end up costing Resolve. It will also require computer hardware that is more powerful with very expensive GPUs. It’s one thing to spend $295 on Resolve and a percentage of that for upgrades, it’s unsustainable to always have to be on the leading edge of hardware paying $$$ just to use Resolve. There are those who want to be in the bleeding edge of technology and think the AI features will make them edit or grade better. I don’t believe that and I personally don’t need the AI tools to do what I need out of Resolve. I use Resolve to edit and grade indie films both short and feature length. I have not even used the entirety of Resolve 19 studio to deliver a professional product to date and it’s been a great journey. So if AI features are to going to impact the cost and hardware requirements for Resolve, then BMD might have to think of a third tier - Free, Studio, Studio AI or Studio + optional AI subscription. Having been also in the software industry for over 30 years, that would be my 2 cents in this discussion. But again, for now, I’ll wait and see what happens in the next 2 years with Resolve… and if there’s still an economy to sustain post work.

Bear in mind the real cost of Resolve is the hardware it takes to run it: the monitor, a control surface, interface cards, very fast drives, and a very powerful workstation.

Its either sell hardware and provide software to run it or provide the hardware dirt cheap and make your sales via software.

Doing both has never worked. I don't know of a single company that successfully charges their clients for both the software and the expensive hardware they sell.

Apple used to do it...didn't work. Now their upgrades are free.
Microsoft updates are also free.

Sony with their Playstation do it the other way around. They subsidized the cost of the Playstation (the components inside were nowhere near that cheap) and they made money selling games and exclusive games.

This is what my concern was in the other, now locked thread.

Based on the above, if you start charging your hardware customers for the software then how long it will take for Resolve to creep back to its real price. And then the Ai stuff on top...

It's a problem to sell people a perpertual license (that is the impression people have - legal excuses does not matter) and then later start to charging for it on top or require people to buy again.

So that's a situation BMD has put themselves in.

Disregarding that and viewing it with a fresh perspective, Resolve should be a free program with a paid subscription for advanced usage.

The advanced usage should then be correctly structured, so it really is only the bigger productions that pay more for it.

The whole idea is to disengage pricing from features and instead charge people based on what it's worth to them.
In the optimal world, everyone would get the same product, but pay based on the value of the product to their product. But it's difficult to effectively structure pricing like that.

Other commercial software does this by offering the full or mostly full program for free for home and student use, but businesses (over a certain size) has to pay the full price. And i think that's fine.

Even if i use something like temporal denoise or HDR, they don't justify the cost if it's a small student project or toying around for fun.

So the goal for BMD should be to build a pricing structure for Resolve that matches what the user is willing to pay, but still let everyone use all the features.

Adobe went from high single / yearly costs for their programs to cheaper 50usd a month pricing, and their revenue went up something crazy like 5x, with more happy users (though 12 x 50usd is still a lot for some...).

Tbh in world where software is constantly evolving and needs continous work, it never made sense to pay one-off amount for a perpetual license.

Agree with a lot of this. But users being happy with Adobe’s subscription model? I think that’s a bridge very much too far.

It's a problem to sell people a perpertual license (that is the impression people have - legal excuses does not matter) and then later start to charging for it on top or require people to buy again.

So that's a situation BMD has put themselves in.

Disregarding that and viewing it with a fresh perspective, Resolve should be a free program with a paid subscription for advanced usage.

The advanced usage should then be correctly structured, so it really is only the bigger productions that pay more for it.

The whole idea is to disengage pricing from features and instead charge people based on what it's worth to them.
In the optimal world, everyone would get the same product, but pay based on the value of the product to their product. But it's difficult to effectively structure pricing like that.

Other commercial software does this by offering the full or mostly full program for free for home and student use, but businesses (over a certain size) has to pay the full price. And i think that's fine.

Even if i use something like temporal denoise or HDR, they don't justify the cost if it's a small student project or toying around for fun.

So the goal for BMD should be to build a pricing structure for Resolve that matches what the user is willing to pay, but still let everyone use all the features.

Adobe went from high single / yearly costs for their programs to cheaper 50usd a month pricing, and their revenue went up something crazy like 5x, with more happy users (though 12 x 50usd is still a lot for some...).

Tbh in world where software is constantly evolving and needs continous work, it never made sense to pay one-off amount for a perpetual license.

That is difficult to execute. You never know what features will be popular. And not every user is the same. Some HDR is important. Some 4K+ resolution is more important. Many free version users want both.

Please do don’t use this thread for uncivilized inflammatory comments.

This “Paid Updates” is very simple. You have many choices.

1. You don’t have Resolve, there is a free version and a Studio paid version for $295. If you’re a novice user or just for play, the free version will be more than enough. If you are a pro, livelihood depends on it, pay up the $295 and now you have a license of Resolve 20 for as long as you want to use it. You should be able to recover that cost on your next paid post work.

2. You bought a BMD hardware that comes with Resolve, you got the Studio for free. What’s to complain about. If you don’t want to pay for upgrades, don’t have too for the Studio, or downgrade to the free version (see #3).

3. You have Resolve and not a pro - the free version will still be available in R21 and onward. It’s still free. That should be more than enough.

4. You have Resolve and a pro - and now Resolve Studio has a very small upgrade fee on major version which is not a subscription, and the upgrade fee is $29.95 (Marc suggests in another post) or $49.95 (I suggested in another post), then that’s a no brainer. You need it, pay the upgrade fee. You don’t, stay on R20.

5. Still don’t like it, well there’s Adobe, Baseline, FCP, Avid, Pomfort Livegrade studio and many others for you to venture into. Most of them are not free. I’m sure you won’t be missed.

How much simple can it be? Also, if that upgrade fee of $29.95 or 49.95 will come, it won’t be for at least a year or two after R20 GA. So make your own coffee and save up. That is easy. No, seriously.

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He said paid updates sometime in the future

It's a problem to sell people a perpertual license (that is the impression people have - legal excuses does not matter) and then later start to charging for it on top or require people to buy again.

So that's a situation BMD has put themselves in.

Disregarding that and viewing it with a fresh perspective, Resolve should be a free program with a paid subscription for advanced usage.

The advanced usage should then be correctly structured, so it really is only the bigger productions that pay more for it.

The whole idea is to disengage pricing from features and instead charge people based on what it's worth to them.
In the optimal world, everyone would get the same product, but pay based on the value of the product to their product. But it's difficult to effectively structure pricing like that.

Other commercial software does this by offering the full or mostly full program for free for home and student use, but businesses (over a certain size) has to pay the full price. And i think that's fine.

Even if i use something like temporal denoise or HDR, they don't justify the cost if it's a small student project or toying around for fun.

So the goal for BMD should be to build a pricing structure for Resolve that matches what the user is willing to pay, but still let everyone use all the features.

Adobe went from high single / yearly costs for their programs to cheaper 50usd a month pricing, and their revenue went up something crazy like 5x, with more happy users (though 12 x 50usd is still a lot for some...).

Tbh in world where software is constantly evolving and needs continous work, it never made sense to pay one-off amount for a perpetual license.

I disagree with this sentiment. I don’t want to encourage any and all subscription model. Also Resolve is a product made for use by professionals. The novice and students are not the core customers for this product. For them, there’s the free version. Students don’t buy BMD hardware. If you’re a creative content maker on social media, consider yourself a business and pay up. I have no sympathy for cheapskate YouTubers or anyone who wants free and makes money from its use. If you make money from it, pay up. If you’re just playing around or want a one off feature for some home projects, get the free version. My understanding is that the free version (not the Studio that comes with hardware sales) will always be free.

BMD perpetual licensing model has been around since day 1. The only thing changing is an upgrade fee for “major versions”. If one cannot afford it, that just means it has no value for them and the need cannot be substantiated.

Okay, here’s another way to do this. Don’t make any changes to Resolve pricing model. Keep it the same. Increase the price of the hardware to subsidize for the difference. That would work too, except that the hardware will be price a lot more. I think that’s fine because only pro users and productions will use the hardware. Students and novice just stick with keyboard and mouse, and whatever third party computers and monitors they own - none of which BMD sells and can be purchased from your local or online retailers.

Last, I am confuse by those who says Resolve should be free or there should be no charge for upgrades, but are suggesting a subscription model for a premium versions for businesses. That just doesn’t make sense. If you are not in business, a free version already exists and will continue to be free. You don’t need Studio if you are a student or a novice user. The free version is available and not a trial with lock features. It has 80-90% of Studio and should be well suitable for any student or novice. And to close this, I don’t equate Resolve as a solution for students to make their Final Cut. I equate a student using the free resolve just to learn and practice.

Let’s do what’s right because if BMD can’t pay for the R&D of Resolve, it doesn’t matter if it is free because they won’t be able to deliver the excellent functionalities we all have enjoyed and it’s only us who will be in a disadvantage. I am also hopeful that the upgrade cost will only be on Studio and won’t be an annualized cost but only on major upgrades, and most likely it’s not going to cost more than 20% of the sale price ($295). Unlike the tariff from the orange blob that will kill an entire economy, this is a no brainer and super reasonable.

Many free version users want both.

And here lies the problem. If you want both or all, then don’t use the free version. Pay up. It’s that easy. Otherwise, you have a free version to do SDR, for instance. That should be enough for most people who cannot afford $295 and any upgrade fee if that ever comes around.

If the upgrade fee is $29.99/$49.99 for special AI features on major release version. I am ok with it.

If the upgrade fee is $29.99/$49.99 for special AI features on major release version. I am ok with it.

With or without AI, that’s still reasonable IMO. Also, AI is overrated and a waste of resources for those who know how to effectively and efficiently use Resolve. BTW, I am not equating AI with effects that can be used in Studio. Effects are not AI. They’ve been around since I was using Resolve 10.

If the upgrade fee is $29.99/$49.99 for special AI features on major release version. I am ok with it.

Generative AI (non local) will always cost money (maybe a promo period where it's free) then it will be part of a subscription or you pay for AI credits, this is paid via BlackMagic Cloud. The annual Resolve fee would probably be paid via BM cloud too and you'd be automatically billed yearly unless you cancel, but cancelling would mean your Resolve still works but you have no further updates. This speculative model would mean everyone must have BM Cloud, vey easy for billing all in the one place.

This may also help for the security of their software, I had noticed they went a bit overboard with their DRM/copy protection in 19.1.1 and 19.1.2 annoying many people, then walked it back with 19.1.3, 19.1.4 so they must want stronger protection which BM Cloud may be able to do with better precision

Generative AI (non local) will always cost money (maybe a promo period where it's free) then it will be part of a subscription or you pay for AI credits, this is paid via BlackMagic Cloud. The annual Resolve fee would probably be paid via BM cloud too and you'd be automatically billed yearly unless you cancel, but cancelling would mean your Resolve still works but you have no further updates. This speculative model would mean everyone must have BM Cloud, vey easy for billing all in the one place.

This may also help for the security of their software, I had noticed they went a bit overboard with their DRM/copy protection in 19.1.1 and 19.1.2 annoying many people, then walked it back with 19.1.3, 19.1.4 so they must want stronger protection which BM Cloud may be able to do with better precision

I have been designing and developing RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) systems for very large companies since 2021 and know a lot about Generative AI. I concur with CougarJoe that it will always cost money and you pay for consuming the models, which BM will be the vendor in the chain of access. I also agree if that will be something used by Resolve, it should not be included with Resolve but through a RAG interface via BM cloud and paid through the BM cloud subscription. So in this case, Resolve Studio will be sold as it is today and a RAG agent will be available (an app that will be shipped similar to the Proxy Generator Utility) that can, through a BM paid AI subscription just like BM cloud storage, have access and use of GenAI features. BM will not be able to provide GenAI for free or for cheap and will have to pass the cost to the users needing it.
Still that’s different from paying for major Resolve Studio upgrades to support the R&D of Resolve, which IMO should be a minimal fee of no more than 20% of the license price. So far, I think the sweet spot is 10% or $29.95 on certain major upgrades.

I wish people would actually listen to what Grant said rather than start wild speculation.
Watch the NAB 2025 update video on the Blackmagic website from 2.09.05.

Last, I am confuse by those who says Resolve should be free or there should be no charge for upgrades, but are suggesting a subscription model for a premium versions for businesses. That just doesn’t make sense. If you are not in business, a free version already exists and will continue to be free.

It makes sense from the viewpoint i suggested; people pay based on what it's worth to them, not what it cost to develop or how much it helps someone else.

This is how all product pricing works, it's just very difficult to execute.

It's quite common for software to have different pricing in different regions.
This is because different regions have different levels of buying power.
Even though it's the same product being used for the same thing, it is being sold at different prices.

The same thing is strived for within the same economic regions, but with differentation between groups based on usage.
In an optimal world, you would give the full program for free to students/hobbyists (anything non-profit) and at the same time charge production companies an obscene amount because they need it more.

For example Fusion 360, is free for non-profit use. They have an additional subscription add-on that adds critical features for exporting drawings for actual production usage. That's very accurately based on the difference between 3d printer hobbyists and design companies sending their drawings out to a production company.

Autocad does something similar. If you're a student or startup company, they give you a free license for a number of years.

In essence, pricing is not fair. Pricing is set based on how much a customer wants to pay, which again is dictated by their finances and how much they need it. I'm just playing the devils advocate here and explaining how a company sets pricing. Personally i use it and prefer it cheap.

I don't know BMD's pricing plan, but i would say that Davinci Resolve is heavily subsidized by HW sales.
Their HW products consistently drop heavily in price over the years before being discontinued, rather than being discontinued at a high price. This indicates a good margin over the production cost.