When will it be non-beta...

Hi,

A quick question - I am still using 16 Studio version, and I know Black Magic is quick with updates, but how long do you hold-outs plan to wait before installing 17? For BM, is it possible to project how long it will take to get a non-beta version on the street?

I'd like to install the beta, and there are some killer features in 17, but I lean towards reliability, and 16 has been reliable for me.

Cheers,

Ed

I'm sure they have some goal for a date in mind. Personally, I hope they don't worry so much about making a specified date and worry about getting the software solid.
From the looks of what happened with Resolve V16, it looks like it was something like 6 months to go from announcing the beta to a final version.

I tend to always tinker with the betas because most of what I do is relatively simple and not mission critical work.
I would never upgrade if I was in the middle of working on a bigger project....even upgrading to final versions.
I always backup my databases and name them by date and version as once the database is upgraded, there is no going back to the stable non-beta release with it.
It's always tempting to upgrade because of new features, but you would need to really put some thought to whether the possibility of any advantage of new features outweighs the risk of potentially losing a lot of time with bugs, redoing work because of differences in how some tools work, etc...

I think a lot of people set up a separate test system they can hammer on betas while keeping a production system humming away with a stable release.

Yes, well....
It's an early beta. I had hopes that after an extra-long development cycle that the normal 6 months of public beta could be shortened significantly. But they've made a lot of changes under the hood to Color and Fairlight, in particular. So, the normal 6 months is probably what we'll see. For upgrading large complex projects, like the ACES one I'm presently doing in 16, I may not be able to ever upgrade it to 17 without going through all the color graded shots and tweaking them. I'm hopeful that won't be the case, but the color shifts I and a few others have seen so far between graded shots in 16 vs how they look in 17, give a little concern. Hopefully that can be sorted out...but we'll see.

We users don't typically know when a Beta version will go Gold. It just...happens one day.