Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

DaVinci Resolve 18

blackmagicdesign.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 150 posts

Re: DaVinci Resolve 18

#51

Post by AussieWog93 »

capableweb wrote: post #25
rvieira wrote: post #24

I don't work in the professional media field, but isn't this ridiculously inexpensive for something that seems to be aimed at content studios, TV stations, etc (judging by the hardware compatibility focus and dedicated keyboards)? I was expecting these pro products to be on the order of the tens of thousands USD. I've paid this much for a hobby DAW.

Yes, DaVinci is ridiculously cheap, because the software is not how they earn their money, it's via their hardware. If you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the submission page, you'll notice a bunch of hardware for controlling DaVinci and its modules. It ranges from $400 to $50,00 and they have even more expensive hardware as well. This is where they get most of their profits from, and where the larger compan…

> Yes, DaVinci is ridiculously cheap, because the software is not how they earn their money, it's via their hardware.

DaVinci is ridiculously cheap because the entire company is owned by three guys, at least one of whom has a personal, burning disgust for the way that the television industry (in particular, the Australian television industry) used to be run back in the day.

I distinctly remember getting a bizarre company-wide memo at one point, directly from the CEO, where a particular product launch (I think it might have been the Pocket 4K) would assist in democratizing TV production to the point where no company could force the nation to watch Hee-Haw again.

He's genuinely on a mission from God to break up the monopoly in TV production, and profit comes second to that goal.

Re: DaVinci Resolve 18

#52

Post by aceazzameen »

traceroute66 wrote: post #46
ttoinou wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

600 USD per year is expensive

> 600 USD per year is expensive No. Its not. With the greatest of respect, have you ever run a business? I could list many reasons why 600USD is cheap, but I'll leave it with the easiest one to understand, the old adage "time is money". 1. How much are you paying those video editors using the Adobe suite that you're paying 600 USD each a year for ? 2. How many projects are those video editors working on ? 3. What is…

Sure, it's cheap for a business, but very expensive for an individual.

Re: DaVinci Resolve 18

#53

Post by borjamoya »

mynameismon wrote: post #48
borjamoya wrote: post #45

I've been using Davinci Resolve for almost three years and I can't emphasize enough how great this product is. IMO, it's miles away from Adobe Premiere. Not only because of its color grading capabilities, but I just find it way more intuitive than Premiere. And let's not forget that you also get Fusion, which is incredibly more powerful than Adobe After Effects. You can basically do all the post-production work in on…

I'm pretty sure Davinci Resolve has a free edition as well, which is rather complete in itself for nearly 99% of the people wanting to edit their videos (unless you are an aspiring film maker)

Yes, absolutely. It's more than enough for most people. The paid version is to unlock features that you'd want to use in higher productions.

Re: DaVinci Resolve 18

#54

Post by hdjjhhvvhga »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #51
capableweb wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, DaVinci is ridiculously cheap, because the software is not how they earn their money, it's via their hardware. If you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the submission page, you'll notice a bunch of hardware for controlling DaVinci and its modules. It ranges from $400 to $50,00 and they have even more expensive hardware as well. This is where they get most of their profits from, and where the larger compan…

> Yes, DaVinci is ridiculously cheap, because the software is not how they earn their money, it's via their hardware. DaVinci is ridiculously cheap because the entire company is owned by three guys, at least one of whom has a personal, burning disgust for the way that the television industry (in particular, the Australian television industry) used to be run back in the day. I distinctly remember getting a bizarre com…

You just convinced me to spend some money with them.

Re: DaVinci Resolve 18

#55

Post by FpUser »

We use their free version and are totally happy (well except the part that does final encoding to consumer format but we use different software for that).

Re: DaVinci Resolve 18

#56

Post by McDyver »

rvieira wrote: post #24

I don't work in the professional media field, but isn't this ridiculously inexpensive for something that seems to be aimed at content studios, TV stations, etc (judging by the hardware compatibility focus and dedicated keyboards)? I was expecting these pro products to be on the order of the tens of thousands USD. I've paid this much for a hobby DAW.

It is! And you can also get the speed editor + resolve for the same price. Kind of "do you want a free speed editor with that?" :)

Re: DaVinci Resolve 18

#57

Post by gizajob »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #51
capableweb wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, DaVinci is ridiculously cheap, because the software is not how they earn their money, it's via their hardware. If you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the submission page, you'll notice a bunch of hardware for controlling DaVinci and its modules. It ranges from $400 to $50,00 and they have even more expensive hardware as well. This is where they get most of their profits from, and where the larger compan…

> Yes, DaVinci is ridiculously cheap, because the software is not how they earn their money, it's via their hardware. DaVinci is ridiculously cheap because the entire company is owned by three guys, at least one of whom has a personal, burning disgust for the way that the television industry (in particular, the Australian television industry) used to be run back in the day. I distinctly remember getting a bizarre com…

Also a great place to work too. Former member of the Decklink team here. Grant seems to genuinely care about the well-being of his staff, as much as a busy man in his position can. Great benefits like mixers with food and drink on a Friday to get to know other people in the company, and free food and coffee daily. Also enjoyed the rather "flat" organisational structures of managers and engineers. I'm sure in my team, if I recall correctly, the "team-leader" was regularly rotated amongst the engineers as just another role to be done, not some excuse for egoistic power-tripping. Almost like a chore that someone had to do. I think their organisation reflects in the quality/affordability of their products, as being engineer led.

Re: DaVinci Resolve 18

#58

Post by omershapira »

rvieira wrote: post #24

I don't work in the professional media field, but isn't this ridiculously inexpensive for something that seems to be aimed at content studios, TV stations, etc (judging by the hardware compatibility focus and dedicated keyboards)? I was expecting these pro products to be on the order of the tens of thousands USD. I've paid this much for a hobby DAW.

Broadcast system economics are fascinating:

• Selling to the pro field (50+ person studios) is a meager few billion dollar market, but highly demanding in terms of features. In Israel (where I worked in TV a decade ago), there are likely under 1000 'pro' edit stations, for almost 9M population [1]. • Selling to the general public is a much larger chunk, but you're competing against iPhone apps (previously against multimedia software, which is geriatric by now).

That's why the prosumer market is that lucrative: Same software as pro, with some flags to limit features. For every professional who can shell $5k (/year, which is new), there are 50 hobbyists willing to pay $250. Triple the income stream with marketing as the sole expense.

But not all companies have access to broadcast markets. For example, Adobe never got Premiere into newsrooms, but did make money off After Effects and Photoshop in design departments there. So Adobe changed their licensing structure to account for a different consumer:prosumer ratio by creating a "bundle" license paid monthly. Studios paid less (licenses for AE used to be single payment, and a lot) and consumers paid more.

Avid made money primarily from broadcast & film, so their flagship products factor that in their licensing, so their prosumer ratios are tilted towards their primary market (more expensive prosumer products).

I wonder how many studios switched to Blackmagic software. Davinci and Fusion (their compositing software) don't have a lot of success stories nowadays, but the feature list (multicam! high end grading! scripting! compositing!) is objectively more focused towards serving studios than Adobe's. I hope the adoption story looks a lot different this decade.

[1] I don't have official numbers, but a post house owns 5-50 Avid licenses, there's about 15 of them, plus universities, schools, military + corporate offices. That's still about 1 broadcast license per 10K population.

Re: DaVinci Resolve 18

#59

Post by Youden »

traceroute66 wrote: post #46
ttoinou wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

600 USD per year is expensive

> 600 USD per year is expensive No. Its not. With the greatest of respect, have you ever run a business? I could list many reasons why 600USD is cheap, but I'll leave it with the easiest one to understand, the old adage "time is money". 1. How much are you paying those video editors using the Adobe suite that you're paying 600 USD each a year for ? 2. How many projects are those video editors working on ? 3. What is…

Resolve is a $295 one-time purchase and includes many of the features of the Adobe suite though, so I think in a relative sense, Adobe is expensive.

Re: DaVinci Resolve 18

#60

Post by therouwboat »

rglullis wrote: post #38
alpaca128 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For every Blender we have countless other projects getting almost zero donations or support. Why take that risk if the current model works for the Resolve team?

Blender made their opening conditional on getting support. They basically ran a crowdfunding campaign that said they would open source it when they reached X amount of money. (I think it was 500k€ at the time) that was good not just financially but also because it worked as a marketing/awareness tool. BMD could do is something similar. They could make every (yearly?) release closed but GPL it once their revenue hits…

They had to buy rights from investors and it was 110k eur.

https://www.blender.org/about/history/

Post reply on HN