According to the official Blackmagic Design (Germany) website, several PYXIS and Pocket Cinema Camera models are now significantly discounted, and not by the usual token amount after riasing prices (I see you, cat-toy-manufacturers!). The company’s German store currently lists the Blackmagic PYXIS 6K and the PYXIS 6K EF, both reduced from 3 089 € to 2 165 €, while the PYXIS 6K PL drops from 3 279 € to 2 300 €. These prices include VAT.

The Pocket Cinema Camera 6K G2, the 6K Pro and the Cinema Camera 6K also receive a 25 percent reduction. So, from 2675 € down to 2010€. The Blackmagic PYXIS Monitor range receives a smaller but still notable discount. The base monitor, the Monitor Kit and the Monitor EVF Kit are all down by 20 percent. The official banner labels every promotion as “Begrenzt verfügbar” (limited availability) and no end date is given.

Who this matters for

A 30 percent reduction on full-frame 6K cameras brings the PYXIS 6K EF and PL models into the low-two-thousand-euro bracket, a price point rarely seen in this segment. The promotion lowers the entry barrier for cinematographers moving up from mirrorless systems or small-format video cameras, and makes it easier for small studios to standardise on a 6K workflow without crossing into high-end rental territory.

For mobile operators, the Pocket 6K G2 and 6K Pro remain attractive for lightweight production and second-unit work, offering internal BRAW recording and colour science that integrates smoothly into DaVinci Resolve pipelines. At current pricing, the cost-to-performance ratio is difficult to criticise.

Check before you click

The promotion appears genuine and active across Europe, though stock levels are not specified and availability may differ by region. Prices on the German site include VAT, but delivery charges and import duties can still apply within the EU. Not every configuration or lens mount is discounted; buyers should confirm the mount type (EF, PL or L-Mount) before ordering. It is also worth verifying firmware compatibility and accessory fit if the camera will join an existing rig. As with any newly purchased production hardware, thorough testing before live use remains essential.

A rare exception

Digital Production does not usually cover seasonal shopping events. But when a company called Blackmagic runs an actual Black Friday promotion, the pun alone justifies a short mention and the discounts happen to be serious.

The post Black Friday Turns Blackmagic: 30% Off Cinema Gear first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Source: Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K

Or in short, the BMPCC 4K, is the first camera by BM to get the option of shooting ProRes RAW (PRR in short) by installing the 9.8 Public Beta firmware. Not a big risk, since you can always go back if that beta is not performing as expected. Filmmaker Christoph Janetzko from Berlin has kindly sent us a few samples to compare, shot at maximum quality in BRAW Q0 and ProRes RAW HQ (PRR for short) under identical conditions. We wanted to have a closer look at resolution and noise, since BRAW is based on partial debayer and ProRes RAW might retain some more information.

Shooting conditions and metadata

Both were shot at full DCI 4K from the sensor in 25 fps, which generated around 1.150 mbps in PRR, but only around 878 in BRAW. This is for identical scenes, in this case the focus chart, but these codecs are quite adaptive to image detail. For resolution, both were shot with a Minolta 50mm/1.4, stopped down to f5.6. It’s vintage, but still a damned sharp lens.

The clips show more metadata in both formats than the iPhone 17 in our recent test, like shutter speed (or angle), of course no focus data from a manual lens. What is missing in PRR, even from electronic lenses, is gyroscope data. In BRAW, these work with manual lenses too, if you remember to set the focal length in the camera.

Resolution and noise

Some users claim that BRAW is pre-filtering the image to improve compression, which might lead to loss of detail. From our test chart, we could neither prove that, nor a tendency towards aliasing with the unfiltered PRR footage. From the start, they look a tiny bit different, even if both decoded as BMD Film generation 5 (which can’t even be changed for the PRR clip). After some minor corrections of contrast and luminance, they look virtually the same, even as a 2x center crop. There’s also no aliasing with the unfiltered PRR shot. Can you tell the difference? There was no correction of colors applied.

For the noise test, we underexposed considerably, but of course identically. This camera has been around for a long time, and it’s not really a low-light monster. We raised the ISO from the recorded value of 400 to 1.000, which is the maximum for BRAW. ISO can be raised to 25.600 for PRR, but that would be a ridiculous level for these shots. Instead, we had BRAW raised by another stop with the Exposure slider, and raised PRR to a similar level in the waveform. BRAW is offering 5 stops here, while PRR has just one.

What’s missing for PRR shots in the RAW tab: the tint slider, white balance presets, and the Highlight Recovery option. A correction for the tint axis in particular would be desirable, our camera would have needed about +10 for either clip, but that can easily be corrected elsewhere in DR. If your clips were recorded externally with a Ninja V, some cameras and their color space plus gamma are identified, but adjustments are also very limited.

These shots confirm some mild pre-filtering in BRAW, resulting in a much smaller noise floor. So, at the cost of around 30% higher data rates, maybe there’s a tad more detail from PRR in the shadows. Sensors with more photocells may expose more of a difference, but I’d say this is still a matter of taste, not only storage space. Some may appreciate the mild softness of BRAW. With some noise filtering applied (more on that below), PRR can look cleaner than unprocessed BRAW. This also proves that the pre-filtering in BRAW is quite restrained. Of course, you can also filter BRAW if needed, but that needs extra time.

Denoising compared

Looking at those extreme night shots in part one and noticing that new ML Denoise feature in Apple’s Compressor, we decided to compare with Neatvideo 6 (NV 6 for short) and with the internal noise reduction in DaVinci Resolve (DR for short). Of course, next to image quality, speed is crucial, since none of the best denoisers is realtime. It has been a while that we evaluated Neatvideo 5, which has always been our “go to” solution for noisy footage. We have prepared 5 second clips at an ISO of 8.000 in ‘small’ HD (1.280 x 720) to compare, which you can download from a Google Drive. The first, without any NR, is just below. These are 1:1 center crops from the main camera of the iPhone 17, as seen in our last article. Please download the following ones and play as a loop to judge the quality.

No Noise Reduction – the orignal

Straight outta Resolve

Here Comes Compressor

With Neatvideo

NV 6 has been improved a lot on Apple silicon, we measured a speed advantage of 75-80% over version 5 under optimal conditions: rendering from the internal SSD to a Thunderbolt NVMe drive. The CPU cores get to full load, the GPUs nearly as much, while rendering at close to 8 fps in DCI 4K. You can hardly squeeze more out of a Mac mini M4 Pro. Memory usage for even larger frames has also been improved. Image quality was impressive, as usual, even if you’d not really want to use footage as dark as our sample without having documented Mafiosi fighting in the shadows (and gotten away with it). Or without grading it as a night shot, as we did.

Apple’s ML Denoise, which works only with iPhone footage and is only available in Compressor 4.11 up to now, did a pretty good job. It needed about twice as long as NV 6, rendering with the GPUs only, while using the full open gate resolution, so you could get some vertical wiggle room out of it. On a serious Mac Studio with 60 GPU cores it should fly, but Neatvideo might get close to realtime on that. We found the results quite impressive, but only the setting Low is preserving enough texture on the street, for example. Medium and High look too plasticky, and there are no other adjustments. But if you use an iPhone 17 anyway, it’s not too expensive at 50,- US$ for a license without time limit. You’ll have to live with watch folders and batch processing, instead of integration with DR, though.

DR’s internal NR features can get pretty close in quality to NV 6 with careful fine-tuning, as explained in this tutorial by Darren Mostyn. But NV 6 offers better tools for very precise adaptation to your footage. It is highly adjustable and integrates with DR, while Compressor only co-operates with Final Cut Pro (of course). And then, DR is more than two times slower, using only the GPU cores, at similar settings (better or high in either software). Image quality might be even better with AI UltraNR, but that is unbearably slow if you don’t own a high-end Nvidia GPU. Finally, if there is too much noise in your sources, the software solutions don’t turn PRR noise into pretty grain, it gets blotchy in the darkest areas, just like from other cameras. Better add some convincing grain, if needed, but watch your final compression.

Conclusion

Footage in ProRes RAW out of a BMPCC 4K demonstrates the quality and malleability of the format in DaVinci Resolve, even if a few parameters are still missing. But there is not much of a reason to switch, since the same footage in BRAW is just as good, if not better in the shadows, and you save space with it.

Footage from the iPhone 17 at low light is impressive for such a tiny sensor, and it cleans up pretty well with a good denoiser if needed. It should not stand out in a negative way when used in a major production. But be aware that this is still quite new, so expect bugs or missing features, like those reported in forums for most of the camera apps currently recording the new codec.

P.S. The first chart on top is from ProRes RAW.

The post ProRes RAW vs. BRAW first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Uli Plank.

Very soon after making that big arctic wave with DaVinci Resolve (DR for short) version 20.2 supporting ProRes RAW, Blackmagic (BM for short) has fixed some of the most annoying bugs with 20.2.1. Now we can truly explore ProRes RAW from an iPhone 17 and other sources. Clips from an iPhone 17 were kindly supplied by Kurt Friis Hansen from Denmark, who shot some tests with all three lenses, carefully framed and exposed. These are night shots, so we have very high contrast and low-light. We are of course very curious when it comes to noise from that small sensor, and the influence of compression and pre-filtering (if any). So his footage should be perfect to check these – but there was one hurdle.

System requirements for MacOS

While DR is still running fine under MacOS Sonoma 14.8, you’ll not get access to all the advanced adjustments you may expect from a true RAW format. There’s simply no choice under the entry “Plugin” other than “Standard”, so you can only adjust exposure and white balance. After all, in many cases that may already be enough, if you don’t decide to stick to the camera metadata anyway. The decoding from RAW should be set to HLG, as this is the iPhone’s color space, at least it’s not labeled „none“ anymore. But you’ll have the option of decoding into Apple Log or Log 2 (yes, a new, flatter version).

But where is the rest? Well, it was obviously up to Apple to care for that, since it all showed up on a machine with MacOS Sequoia 15.7 installed. Even the current versions of Apple’s Compressor (4.11) and Final Cut Pro (11.2) need Sequoia to receive the updates. Final Cut Pro, or FCP in short, BTW has lost the “X”, just like the new MacOS naming. On a system with those already present and with DR updated to 20.2.1 we had access to all the parameters you’d expect from a serious RAW format. Now, this system had already receiced Apple’s recent Pro Video Formats update and was showing all new features right away. After receiving information from others, who were not as lucky, we needed to dig deeper.

Problems upgrading projects

To check things, we made a virgin installation of Sequoia 15.7, adding only Apple’s video codecs and DR. When trying to copy and open one of our existing projects, we were back to square one: no RAW parameters. We carefully went through many iterations of installing fresh systems, and combinations of DR installed first or after Apple’s codec pack. What worked in the end was starting a fresh project in DR, importing PRR clips and voilá – all parameters availble! We got confirmation that it should work from Sequoia 15.6.1 upwards. But an existing project doesn’t show these when simply adding PRR clips, you need an empty project and import some PRR footage first. After that, you can also import timelines from other projects. Having test clips shot open gate, we configured our project for DCI 4K at 25 fps and scaled full with crop

True RAW, finally

Now it’s all there, even if there’s a minor cosmetic error: as long as Demosaic is set to Standard you can’t really use the three sliders on top of the right side. They should be greyed out, since they only become workable after switching Demosaic to Custom, and they only work on clips from an iPhone 17. What’s more annoying: you still can’t define RAW presets for PRR under Camera RAW in the project settings, so you’ll need to change them one by one. At least, they get copied by using gallery stills. We found all information about those three sliders in the help files for FCP, but not yet in DR.

Color Noise will not increase it, but reduce – of course. The other two are doing pretty much what the name implies: enhance only edges, and/or apply sharpening. As usual, use with discretion, and they can also slow down playback in high resolutions. On our very noisy test shots at night they are pretty useless, color noise didn’t do much and the other two look ugly, as you’d expect. There is another option in Compressor, which Apple seems to keep for themselves: ML Denoise (yes, machine learning) at three levels. It’s not even in FCP 11.2, but Compressor is not expensive, and we’ll do further testing.

The hardware

There’s not really much in the metadata, just the camera, its manufacturer, plus location and date of the shot. You don’t even see which lens was used in the metadata in DR or the shutter angle, even if the latter exists in the file. A bit depth of 16 for video seems slightly exaggerated, even Nikon is just claiming 12 bit for all three of the codecs offered in their new ZR.

Audio in the iPhone is limited to 16 bit and ProRes RAW internally to the standard version, HQ needs external recording. Some claim that you can trick it into using that, by setting up with an external SSD and then removing it. But do you really want such massive data inside the phone? Even if our noisy night shots may be at the upper limit, while ProRes RAW is quite variable, see here.

The data rate for video in our test samples in ProRes RAW open gate (4224 by 3024) is quite high at around 1200 mbps, recording at 25 fps. The best news here: this is constant frame rate! True, there is a beta version of Mavis Camera with CFR, even on older iPhones. But only for the iPhone 17 it’s officially announced. And before you start bothering BM: no, that will not come to older iPhones, you need extra hardware in the phone for this. We got that ‘straight from the horse’s mouth’, as they say. Now, that hardware also allows BM to add their Camera ProDock, which offers the connections needed for professional work, like timecode and genlock. Only SDI output is missing, you’ll need to use HDMI. But for a price of 325,- US$ that’s still impressive.

Image quality

Right from the start, the samples taken don’t look all the same quality wise, even if taken under identical conditions and all set to ISO 5000 in the RAW tab. According to Apple, all the sensors now have 48 megasensels. Yes, I refuse to call them pixels, since this is RAW and pixels only exist after debayering (aka demosaicing) anyway. While the new wide and tele shots have far better resolution than the 12 ‘mpx’ ones in older models, at closer inspection they are slightly worse than from the 24mm f equivalent still called the main camera for good reason.

The wide, a 13mm equivalent, has about 120 degrees of view and one would expect serious distortion from such a tiny ultrawide. It’s actually there, but automatically corrected when Processing is set to “iPhone ProRes RAW”. The correction and the resulting cropping nevertheless result in some loss of resolution, since it can’t use all the sensels at open gate. At f 2.2 it’s a bit slower too, but that does not result in much more noise. If raised from log to good contrast in post, it also vignettes.

Photographers, like Lux Camera, are pretty impressed with the tele, a 100mm equivalent. They even enjoy it when zoomed in further by what Apple calls “optical” zoom quality, while that is not of much interest when filming. Since the stabilization in the iPhone is not working when shooting PRR, a 200mm equivalent would need a tripod made of concrete. Even at its true resolution, the tele is softer than the main lens. Our clip at dark night is also clearly showing the fact that this lens is more than one stop slower at f 2.8.

Conclusion

We don’t expect anybody to replace an Arri Alexa with an iPhone for a major production. But for the first time a smartphone can be teamed-up in a professional environment with reliable synchronisation and serious grading options. No more fiddling with asynchronous sound, no more guesswork where a shot belongs in time or fighting compression artefacts. You can get into really small spaces, hand that phone to actors, or hang it on a pretty small drone. Heck, for that price you can even risk to crash it, if needed to get that perfect shot.

And other cameras, like the BMPCC or the Nikon ZR? We are seeing a shift of paradigm here, away from clunky external solutions, to recording compressed RAW in cameras. Red’s monopoly seems to be gone, and it’s good to have choices! Of course, we’ll have a closer look at BRAW vs. PRR and also at denoising those extreme night shots above.

Hell Froze Over – ProRes RAW for Resolve

The post ProRes RAW News – Fresh from the Freezer first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Uli Plank.

Blackmagic has released a new version, now 20.2, of its increasingly popular software for video editing, colour correction, visual effects, animation and audio editing. Originally developed as pure colour correction software, more and more functions were added over time and the software has since found a large following—particularly because of its outstanding price-performance ratio—and because beginners are enticed to take their first steps with a free version. So far, the software can be purchased without subscription obligations. The software seems more like a supplementary “side business” for Blackmagic, alongside its many high-end hardware products for film and television production.

Anima-what?

Countless tests and tutorials by enthusiasts of the programme are circulating on the internet. We have also published articles on DaVinci and indicated that we wanted to take a closer look at the software’s animation capabilities. Blackmagic proudly announces on its website that DaVinci Resolve is Hollywood’s number one choice for post-production. The list of features is correspondingly long and may well overwhelm beginners. The latest version is said to contain over 100 new features for all areas of video editing and post-production, including new AI functions for audio editing.

As already explained in other articles, DaVinci Resolve uses 7 workspaces, which are arranged to structure work in DaVinci (an explanation of this system was already provided by Alexander Richter in his article Goodbye Adobe Premiere): “Media for ingest, Cut for the first rough cut, Edit for the actual editing, Fusion for compositing and motion graphics, Color for, you can guess, colour correction, Fairlight for audio and Deliver for final rendering of files.” Even if this all sounds rather complex, most 2D animation and video editing programmes work in a similar way, with “individual differences,” as our colleague already mentioned.

Since DaVinci Resolve is essentially a huge collection of different tools, we have, as promised, focused “only” on the one aspect of animation for now. Of course, you should understand the principle of the 7 Pages in DaVinci, even if you “only” want to animate.

Everything Moves

In principle, all motion effects, in fact, all animation of parameters of imported objects in DaVinci, are based on the program’s sophisticated keyframe technique. Edit is not only responsible for the correct cut; it also allows you to quickly drag transitions, titles, and filters directly into the timeline and manipulate numerous parameters via the Inspector. By setting keyframes at different points on the timeline (click the small diamond-shaped symbols on the far right), animations can be created quickly and relatively easily.

Recently, the Edit Page also offers access to a convenient view of the keyframe editor (also as a floating window), where keyframes can be copied and moved, and animation curves can be edited using Bezier handles (for example, Ease-In, Ease-Out, Ease-In/Out, and Linear) easily accessible easing functions… a feature welcomed by many users. This method of animating in DaVinci is also suitable for programme newcomers and promises quickly acceptable results.

Pathfinder

Another animation method promoted by Blackmagic is path animation, something competitor programmes also offer. Animations along a path are highly requested by many users. DaVinci offers complex possibilities here.

One of the simplest methods, for example, aligning and animating text along a path, requires only a few clicks, if you know where to look. A “stripped-down” example: in the Fusion Page, you create a text node with one click. DaVinci automatically connects this to the obligatory MediaOut node. Afterwards, the Inspector offers various options to enter and edit text. Almost all settings can be animated using the already mentioned keyframes.

Pathplayer

To bring a path into play, in the Layout tab (next to the text symbol) the type should be changed from Point to Path. Then a curve can be drawn directly in the view window. The text immediately adapts to this curve. The curve can be edited, and the points and Bezier handles can also be animated. At the bottom of the menu there is an item “Right-click here for shape animation.” Oddly enough in testing, this worked flawlessly, but not on every computer (curves seemed to be generated, but were “invisible”). Maybe we should ask the people at Blackmagic about this. Paths can also first be created (or imported) as Polygon or B-Spline nodes and then assigned.

The Fusion Page overall offers, thanks to its node-based approach and additional complex effects for texts, blurs, masks, 3D animations and particles, even more possibilities for visual design than are found in the Edit Page. In the Fusion Page, unlike the Edit Page, only a single clip is ever worked on.

To use Fusion effectively, you should embrace the node-based approach (there are quite a lot of nodes, not all of them reveal their purpose by name, but if you already know the desired name, you can help yourself with the Shift and Space keys while searching). The display of nodes can be enlarged via right-click and “Show/Show Tile Picture,” so that helpful thumbnails assist with orientation in the Node Editor. Still, you should expect a learning curve that is not too shallow.

3D Effects

In Fusion, DaVinci Resolve can create or import simple 3D objects, e.g. in Alembic, FBX, or USDZ format. 2D graphics can be converted into 3D objects and assembled into a scene with the 3D renderer and lighting nodes. The options of the 3D tools are extensive and complex. Building a 3D scene appears more laborious than in “usual” 3D tools, though perhaps it is only a matter of practice?

Conclusion

Simple animations can quickly lead to acceptable results even for beginners. The ability to control almost every scene parameter with keyframes in the timeline makes such animations easy. The Fusion Page, however, already introduces a corresponding learning curve. Node systems take some getting used to for some, although for professionals they are effective once accepted and understood. The range of functions with filters and effects is huge. The names of the nodes are not always self-explanatory. Many of the possibilities for effects and animations can already be created by experienced users with some of DaVinci’s basic tools (even with the free version).

The 3D tools appear relatively cumbersome, as is also evident from some of the many video tutorials circulating on the internet and they are obviously to be regarded more as a supplement to the “all-round programme.” Overall, DaVinci Resolve is not only suitable as a highly effective film editing and effects software, but also for many areas of motion graphics animation.

The post Resolve Animation: Everything moves! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Ralf Gliffe.

Hello DaVinci Resolve

Now I had six months to leave the Adobe ecosystem and transition away from Premiere, Audition, Encoder, Photoshop and Lightroom. Those tools are embedded into my workflow like no other. Every single video and image was created in these packages but now it was suddenly over. What happened?

Adobe Premiere

A quick background to who I am and how I use those applications: My name is Alexander Richter, I’m a Technical Director and Coach for Visual Effects, Animation and Games who worked at Weta FX on Avatar: The Way of Water. I’m also a YouTuber who creates educational masterclasses, especially for Python scripting. Over the years, Premiere has become my go-to editing software. I’ve used it to edit two-hour podcasts, ten-minute YouTube videos, hour-long coding masterclasses, trailers, short films, and social media clips. 

I’ve a mobile setup with a laptop paired with an additional screen, nothing resembling a dedicated suite. For me, the on-the-go experience is crucial. The machine itself is not an overpowered workstation, but a professional-grade mobile device, powerful enough to handle real projects, yet light enough to keep my setup flexible and portable.

For this test I used DaVinci Resolve 20 (free and studio) and compared it to Adobe Premiere Pro 2025 using a  Dell XPS 15 9510 Laptop (11th Gen Intel Core i7-11800H @ 2.30GHz with 32 GB RAM pushing a Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Laptop GPU) in a Windows 11 Home System, showing on a 3.5K OLED display and an additional Full HD ProArt monitor. My clips are usually HD to 4K, Desktop recordings and the output of a Sony A6600. Just so you have a reference when talking about performance and things.

My use case is very common for any type of content creator nowadays. However, Premiere has always felt heavy and clunky, and that feeling has intensified over the years. A quick edit was impossible due to its cumbersome structure and long loading times. Still, Premiere mostly provided a reasonable editing experience until everything started to crumble.

“Death by a thousand cuts.”

I first realized something was wrong a year ago when the audio waveforms didn’t align with the actual audio. Since audio plays a crucial role in editing (D’uh!), I had to start guessing where to cut. The correct waveform appeared when I zoomed out but it was far from optimal. “That’s new!” I thought to myself and deleted the cached files, which fixed the problem temporarily, but the error came back.

It was then that I noticed a few things in quick succession: 

1. an unchanged clunky interface
2. missing simple audio and video features (Who needs sharp videos?!)
3. lack of actually functional AI tool integration
4. and more and more bugs. 

Adobe updates introduced half-baked features that are prominently displayed on the splash screen while neglecting functionalities. With each year and missing update, Premiere slowly became a dinosaur until it was overtaken by a free software.

Why DaVinci Resolve

DaVinci Resolve by Blackmagic Design is an editing software that began as a color grading program and is still used for that purpose in many professional productions. It now occupies a similar niche as Premiere, and with its latest releases, it has significantly caught up to the editing giant while offering incredible value.

You might be wondering: Why DaVinci Resolve and not one of its famous competitors like Avid and Final Cut Pro? Adobe Premiere is editing software for personal and professional videos which doesn’t require a degree to use or master. Whenever I expressed my dissatisfaction with Premiere, the most common response was: “Why don’t you try Resolve?!” so I did, but it took multiple attempts before it finally stuck. DaVinci Resolve covers a similar audience as Premiere and is also used in major film and series productions, such as Netflix’s Stranger Things, though less frequently than Avid or Premiere.

Honorable mentions are: Avid Media Composer, which is probably the most famous and used for professional filmmaking while leaving others behind including amateur editors. If you ever use Avid you know how well it performs but it is also unintuitive for a beginner. Then there is Final Cut Pro – a staple in Mac editing which dropped the ball in the last years, especially for professionals. Additionally it’s focused on the Apple ecosystem, and as a Windows user this won’t work for me. Finally there are Autodesk Flame (No chance) and Assimilate Scratch, which are not primarily editing systems.

First impression

First I downloaded DaVinci Resolve from the Blackmagic Design website, installed it, and it was ready to use – no registration or payment required. The process was very straightforward and seamless. After being greeted by the project manager, I created my first project and was ready to start editing after a few minutes.

Here are my first impressions of working with DaVinci compared to Premiere:

• Fast save
• Smooth performance and editing
• Editing is slightly different but mostly intuitive. It feels more natural and fluid, and the workspaces are overwhelming but clear
• The UI is more modern but also crowded and unchangeable
• My first bug was losing shortcuts on fullscreen preview
• Occasional warnings and hiccups if studio features are used (needs restart)
• First crash in a simple scene but it was restored without data loss
• One of the exported videos had artifacts

Small Projects: DaVinci feels easier and more accessible for simple edits. Premiere Rush was created alongside Premiere for simple edits, but it feels rather like a temporary fix than a real solution. Despite combining the equivalent of at least five Adobe software packages, DaVinci feels lighter and opening a fairly simple scene with 4K clips illustrates that point:

• DaVinci Resolve: 21 seconds
• Premiere: 38 seconds

First bug: I encountered my first but with DaVinci Resolve by losing the shortcuts I had just learned. For some reason, the editing shortcuts stopped working, though the others were still fine. After experiencing this issue multiple times, I figured out what was causing it. The bug only appeared when I used dual monitors and Cinema Viewer mode on the preview window. It looks like a bug, but it’s actually a feature – sort of. 

The issue seems to be related to Cinema Viewer mode switching the shortcuts to navigate the video rather than the edit. To avoid this issue, use the “Workspaces/Video Clean Feed” feature with the Studio version.  With the free version, however, you’re stuck with either a smaller preview or no shortcuts. Editing without shortcuts is torture, so a small preview it is until we upgrade to the Studio version – we’ll get to that a bit further on. Version 20.1 finally allows us to hide the media pool window which which expands our preview even further.

Transform Inspector: DaVinci offers much more precise number sliders with the mouse. In addition to the rough sliders, it’s easy to make precise adjustments by selecting the numbers and moving the mouse for a fine selection. This is especially important when working with colors.

Effects and Presets: I’ve seen the text presets in Premiere before, but I’ve never really used it. This is the first time I’ve started integrating them into my new and shiny Resolve workflow. DaVinci’s basic video transitions and effects are much better than Premiere’s. These effects provide a more consistent experience and deliver a professional result.

Though my first impression with DaVinci Resolve was positive, I constantly felt stuck looking for simple elements and had to Google A LOT. No matter which tool, there is always a learning curve, especially once you go into professional territory. Luckily, there are enough tutorials out there to guide you through the rough spots.

Workspaces

One feature that instantly sets DaVinci Resolve apart is its “Workspaces. These transform Resolve from a pure editing software into an all-in-one solution that covers all our video editing needs from start to finish.

Adobe uses workspaces more as layout presets to organise its panels, whereas a complete edit often requires a variety of software packages (Premiere, After Effects, Audition, …). A major drawback is, that these software packages are disjointed in terms of UI, functionality, and connections. Premiere offers a dynamic link feature that sends current edits to After Effects for motion graphics work. However, this feature can be clunky and can cause crashes and slowdowns. Additionally, there is always a delay or export involved when switching to different software. In contrast, all the DaVinci workspaces are fluid and can be accessed with close to no latency.

DaVinci offers seven workspace environments connected to the same edit. Media for ingest, Cut for the rough first collection, Edit for the real editing, Fusion for comp & motion graphic, Color for – you guessed it – color grading, Fairlight for audio and Deliver for the final rendering of the files.

Media

Media is our first workspace, where we prepare our project, import and organize clips into bins. We can also add attributes (sequence, shot, etc.), precut clips, synchronize audio and video, and pretransform clips (which is an awesome feature). Most of the time I skip the Media workspace since my edits often involve little media or they’re added over time. However, a more complex production will find this workspace useful when working with the cloud features or with a team.

Cut

Edit

The core workspace for me is Edit. This is where the magic happens. Despite my experience with Premiere Pro, Camtasia, and Avid, I still needed some time to get used to the core editing process in DaVinci. One improvement I appreciated was how seamlessly the clips connected and moved within the timeline. Ripple cutting, moving the cutting point, and adjusting the clip’s content felt very natural. Premiere treats media like concrete blocks, DaVinci’s clips feel much more elastic and moldable – including the link between video and audio.

Fusion

For all graphics and motion design we’ve got the Fusion workspace. It’s a node-based compositing software similar to Foundry’s Nuke, which is also sometimes used in professional productions, so it’s not just an afterthought. I personally use Fusion for simple effects, such as round borders for my webcam video. One reason to use it more sparely is that the DaVinci Effects presets cover a lot of the important aspects, while Fusion adds custom effects directly into your edit. Fusion has a steeper learning curve than After Effects, and some of the workflows are different, but it has the capabilities to replace or extend After Effects.

Color

Next is the Color workspace. DaVinci is famous for its color grading tools and capabilities. This is where it all started before it became a designated editing software. A few years ago Resolve wasn’t a competitor to Premiere, but to Baselight, Nucoda, Lustre and the other Grading Suites. That’s one of the reasons I was drawn to the software: It offers a more sophisticated color grading solution for videos. It is still used by professionals as a dedicated color grading tool, even though the edit is done in Avid, Final Cut or Premiere – it’s that good.

Premiere’s Lumetri setup is decent, but not exceptional – considering that it was birthed by the excellent Speedgrade, many years ago. Its usability is far from the smooth, clear experience of photo editing software Lightroom which always struck me as odd since they’re from the same company. Unsatisfied with the quality of the colors, I tried the Photoshop LUT workflow, in which I exported a still frame from Premiere, color graded it in Photoshop (which has better tools), and exported a LUT or matched colors in Premiere. However, the results weren’t satisfying, so I abandoned this path quickly.

Color correction and grading in DaVinci is far more complex and less accessible for casual colorists  with its node based system than Premiere’s Lumetri. DaVinci has a steeper learning curve and more depth, making it more interesting for professional video creators.  

When comparing my color correction in DaVinci to Premiere, it looks stronger and more contrasting, especially the skin looks much more realistic than the more magenta tone in Premiere. DaVinci’s workflow guided me to keep the colors closer to reality instead of oversaturating them and making them look unnatural. I’m sure the result will further improve as I gain more experience with DaVinci’s color system.

Fairlight Audio

Our next workspace is the final but important touch before we deliver our edit: Fairlight. Previously I had to use Adobe Audition to boost and balance my audio because Premiere’s audio effects are too shallow and not built for quality audio manipulation, which – again – is strange. This back and forth led to additional workflows, mistakes, and more files. Exported WAV files can easily take up an additional 10% of the project’s space. An 80 GB podcast episode can easily accumulate another 8 GB of Audition-edited WAV files.

DaVinci’s Fairlight allows us to add advanced audio effects in real time, disable them during the editing process if necessary, cache them and render them all at once. This small change has had a huge impact on my workflow. While creating a video to explain Git for the Python Advanced masterclass, I made an incorrect statement about a particular detail of ‘git revert’. Previously, due to the more time-consuming recording process using Audition, I would correct this by editing and adding a text overlay, in order to avoid a rerecording that often did not match in sound. This time, however, I tried using the audio recording option in Fairlight. The benefit was that I could work directly in the edit while using the same effects added to the mix track. This workflow is seamless and frictionless. The additional audio recording blended in with the rest of the audio. This improved the quality of the edit while providing a simple, quick way to make additions and updates.

Tip: Create a global preset for your microphone to reuse it for each future recording.

Deliver

The final step in our editing process is exporting, which is called “Deliver” in DaVinci. Deliver is very similar to exporting in Premiere, but it feels more preset-based than Premiere’s approach of setting exact bitrates. Deliver also combines Adobe Encoder elements to set up multiple renderings, which is practical and somewhere between Premiere and Encoder.

Timeline Render: One nice feature is that we can see the progress in the timeline while the export runs, which provides a nice visual effect and can highlight slowdowns and bottlenecks.

In Premiere 100% isn’t ready: A small but strange thing Premiere always does is that 100% doesn’t mean it’s done. Oftentimes it still needs time to actually write the file and do final processes which makes the progress bar very unreliable. As someone who used to this I was pleasantly surprised to see that in DaVinci 100% actually means ready-to-use.

Burn-in: To add watermarks and project overwrites, we need to use Workspace/Data burn-in.

The overall workspace experience is fantastic, offering a breath of fresh air compared to Adobe’s disjointed, outdated approach. However, although we can access editing features in each workspace, the workspaces themselves often have unique workflows and must be treated as mini software packages, which requires learning how they work.

Transition

The most painful part of the transition is having to relearn certain workflows. This includes everything from handling media and editing to using shortcuts and workflows, and organising the project structure. At the same time, we now have a collection of legacy files that we won’t be able to access once our Adobe subscription expires. We need to plan for the future!

When transitioning from Premiere to DaVinci, it is important to proceed slowly and deliberately. One good approach at the beginning is to keep expectations and frustrations to a minimum by choosing small edits for your initial projects. This will help to cope with the constant challenges and setbacks that come with using a different software. Working on smaller projects also gives us time to experiment and explore the differences and additions in a low-stakes environment.

At first, DaVinci’s names and navigation can feel unfamiliar. While some names and command locations feel more natural and intuitive compared to Premiere, others are located in strange places and have either unnecessarily long names or unusual terminology.

After we got over the first bumps, we must prepare for the future when we lose access to our legacy Premiere files. We can either export clean copies of the edits without certain effects, transitions, music, overlays, etc., or export our Premiere files as XML data files to import them into DaVinci Resolve.

• Export Adobe Premiere to DaVinci Resolve: Open a Premiere project, go to File/Export/Final Cut Pro XML …
• Import Premiere XML to DaVinci: File/Import/Timeline

Importing edits into DaVinci is not without its flaws and can result in errors. When I tried to convert my Premiere project to DaVinci, I was partly successful, but had issues with a few elements, such as adjustment layers. Therefore, I would only use it for important edits that need to be adjusted afterwards to work properly in DaVinci.

Every transition takes time and effort, so it’s important to define your reasons for making the change and set aside time for adjustments at the outset. DaVinci’s UI takes some getting used to, as the individual UI elements aren’t fully adjustable or undockable, which can limit how you work optimally with your setup. The shortcuts are different, too, and it takes a moment to understand them. The most dangerous ones are DEL and BACKSPACE; both delete the clip, but ‘DEL’ will also ripple-move all the other clips, which isn’t always what you want.

One of the benefits of a transition like this is that we get the opportunity to restructure and cleanup our legacy projects and files which can be significant for our future workflows. Additionally cleaning Premiere previews, autosaves and old files can free up multiple gigabytes of space. I personally saved over 20 GB cleaning up 4 projects.

Honestly, I’ve spent a lot of time Googling and watching tutorials on simple things, such as how to export a still image and how to customize the layout, as well as setting up DaVinci and getting to grips with the slightly different workflow. At the same time, it was exciting to experience the energy of Resolve, which offers a focused set of features that cover most/all of what you would want from an editing experience.

The transition will take some time, but the more you experiment with the different workflow, the more you’ll wonder how you survived without those features and a more streamlined but occasionally complicated, way of working.

DaVinci Resolve Free vs Studio

After working with the DaVinci Resolve free version, an important questions popped into my mind: Do you need the DaVinci Resolve Studio version, or does the free version offer everything ? To answer this, we first tested the free version of DaVinci Resolve for a month to see what features we had and missed. Afterwards, we asked Blackmagic for a DaVinci Resolve Studio key to test the full functionality.

DaVinci Resolve is a blessing because the core software is free and includes most of the features you need to get started. The free version has everything required for basic editing tasks. The Studio version becomes interesting when you start to explore more detailed elements, such as AI image enhancement and video effects, to give your work that extra oomph.

Here are a few of the Studio features that might make it worth upgrading:

• Media has built in Face Detection
• Edit can go above 4K resolutions (BMD sells a 17K camera, sooo….). Also, you get AI Upscale: Upscaled a Google Meet webcam video using the highest settings possible (4x NVIDIA RTX Video ULTRA) and the results were barely noticeable. So, it’s something but maybe not always delivering.
• In the Color workspace, you get Magic Mask, HDR Tools, Advanced Noise Reduction, Depth Map, Film Grain
• Fusion also has the Magic Mask, as well as tools for VR and Script Control.
• Fairlight Audio brings Auto Classification, Voice Isolation for noisy environments.
• Delivery goes for the 4K or higher resolution, with 60 frames or more.

One thing that confused us was determining whether something was a missing feature or a bug. The UI is relatively fixed, and I had an issue with placing my preview window correctly, as the options were limited or the shortcuts were removed in full-screen mode. I later found out that the Studio version offers more options for full-screen preview. It’s a mystery why this wasn’t clearly stated in the menu, as it felt like the free product was broken.

Upgrading from the Free to the Studio version was also a little strange and confusing. Instead of entering a key to upgrade, we have to install the Studio version, as it’s a different build. There is no indication whatsoever in the free version on how to do this, and when we try to install the Studio version, it recognises the free version and doesn’t allow us to install it. It never highlights that these are different versions, which made us believe that it was in fact the same software. We only found out later that it is not.

Therefore, before installing the Studio version, we have to uninstall the free version. After installation, we can enter our Studio licence key when we first open the software. The switch is confusing, but luckily it’s only a one-time process while we had no issues continuing our previous projects with the studio version.

Overall, DaVinci Resolve offers the best free software for editing, color grading, basic sound manipulation and compositing. I recommend using the free version until you find yourself in desperate need of the Studio features. Then it’s time to save up for the incredible deal of a $295 lifetime licence.

Let’s do a quick cost comparison after 10 years of editing:

• DaVinci Resolve: $0 – $299
• Premiere: $2,638.80 (Premiere only) – $6,598.80 (Creative Cloud), plus perks like 100 GB of storage, etc.

In terms of costs Blackmagic wins over Adobe by a significant margin (10-30-fold price difference). When comparing costs, it is important to remember that Blackmagic Design is not primarily a software company. Unlike Adobe, which focuses on subscriptions and a broad ecosystem of small utilities, Blackmagic earns its margins with hardware. Resolve itself is aggressively priced, or even free, but the company offers a wide range of dedicated peripherals: From the compact Editor Keyboard and Edit Pad to full-size grading panels that scale from roughly €300 up to €30,000.

In my own workflow, which is deliberately lightweight and laptop-based, these tools are not essential but if you work on a static workstation, the integration of dedicated hardware can significantly accelerate editing and grading. In addition, Blackmagic sells a range of I/O, Grading Panels and routing devices like the DeckLink, UltraStudio, and other “connecting boxes”, Cameras and their different parts, and many more things – which Adobe does not provide. While these are outside the scope of my everyday use, they can be decisive in your workflow.

Resume

Is DaVinci Resolve the perfect replacement for Premiere Pro? After a while, we often think the grass is greener on the other side – and sometimes we’re right. DaVinci Resolve has its flaws and a few kinks, but overall it delivers high-quality editing software that doesn’t cut corners, providing everything you need in one suite.

A huge benefit of DaVinci Resolve over Premiere and supporting software such as After Effects, Audition and Encoder is that everything is in one software package and can be easily accessed without the need for exporting, rendering or creating unnecessary external links, which can cause issues. Also, the other Adobe software often only shares the company name, neither workflow nor UI philosophy and needs to be relearned from scratch.

One major drawback of DaVinci Resolve is performance. I’ve encountered hiccups and stutters much earlier when doing anything remotely difficult, such as working with 4K materials, compound clips, and audio denoise effects, especially combined. Overall Premiere performed better longer before it required any pre- or proxy renderings.

My main reasons for switching to DaVinci Resolve were costs, missing features and Premiere bugs, but I was surprised at how quickly I could adapt to the basic features and become productive in Resolve. It’s also important to prepare old Premiere files for the time when they become inaccessible, and to export important elements and templates as video files in case they are needed in the future.

Overall, DaVinci Resolve outperforms Adobe Premiere in almost every category, but most importantly in terms of workflow, AI features and price. There is something else that Adobe seems to have forgotten: Excitement. I’m excited about every DaVinci update (Version 20.1 allowed to hide the Media Pool which increased the Preview. Nice!), whereas with Adobe it is the same as with Microsoft: ‘A new update?! What have they broken this time?!‘

My final verdict is to switch to DaVinci Resolve as soon as possible, but be aware that there are some initial hurdles before you can reap the huge benefits.

And, by the way, if you want to “Roundtrip” between Premiere and Resolve, Uli Plank has a helpful article about …

What about Roundtrips? Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve

The post Goodbye Adobe Premiere first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Alexander Richter.