Marc Wielage wrote:I'm still against this because of the sheer complexity of the program and the radically-different user interface. Fusion alone has a 1500-page manual (reference and user), and the Resolve manual is already 1200 pages. Why not throw a page layout program, a word processor, and a spreadsheet in there as well? We could call it "Resolve 1-2-3"!
The point is that all of these tools ultimately need to perform the same functions. That is why Resolve included an Edit tab way before Blackmagic had any aspirations to turn it into a competitive NLE-- you need to be able to perform basic timeline manipulation in order to grade something. Throw in transitions and split screens and suddenly you need to be able to composite as well.
VFX tools like Fusion or After Effects are essentially supersets of an NLE, they can (and have to) be able to edit timelines, do colour manipulation, compositing and much more. An application like Resolve really is just an interface to cherry pick features from that superset and make it easy to use for an operator who isn't doing full on 3D VFX compositing but who only needs to grade.
I've long held the opinion that Adobe should just kill the Premiere codebase for this very reason; just make Premiere a separate GUI that just uses the After Effects engine under the hood. That would also be a good thing for After Effects because it would actually force AFX developers to make it capable of playing back a timeline in real time, something it hasn't been able to because of legacy baggage it lugs around. But Adobe wouldn't listen anyway, so why even bother.
Marc Wielage wrote:I think there's more value in having a suite of separate programs that can all run simultaneously and easily hand off pieces of data to each other seamlessly and quickly. For this reason, I would've much rather had Fairlight as a separate piece of software that just runs alongside Resolve (or down the hall with another operator), and then immediately can connect and exchange files or timelines as needed.
It's an attractive idea but it doesn't work. Just look at the horror that is Adobe Dynamic Link which is mind-bogglingly slow and always crashes when there are tight deadlines involved. I always use intermediate lossless or DNx renders because they're infinitely faster and stable. Round-tripping timelines between Premiere and Audition is also clunky as hell. You always lose information in the process, because the engines are different and they interpret the data slightly differently. Resolve's Fairlight integration works so well exactly because the audio in the Edit tab is now just a simplified view into the Fairlight engine. Any volume, pan or transition you add in Edit gets perfectly mirrored in Fairlight and vice-versa. Add the collaborative network features, bin and timeline locking and chat and suddenly your whole team is spending more time working on a project and less time importing, exporting, round-tripping and making sure nothing gets lost in the process.