DaVinci for Mac, game changer or game over?

[Barend Onneweer]

As for compositing in Scratch: a very vfx-heavy feature (The Storm) was graded and finished on Scratch in The Netherlands using Scratch to composite all the vfx elements like additional rain plates and water elements. Sort of like a 'poor mans Flame' (haha...). Elements were prepared on Flame or other tools and brought into Scratch as separate elements to be able to tweak for continuity etc.

I haven't seen 5.1 yet, but 5.0 does many (unlimited?) layers and blend modes. I wouldn't compare it to a compositor (yet) but it's nice to be able to have some elements separate when applying heavy grades (additional layers of rain being a good example). It doesn't do 3D tracking and I've stayed away from using 3rd party plugins (although OFX is supported) thus far.

I'm told 5.1 will have more in that direction but haven't touched it yet. Considering my background as a compositor I love to have some control over separate elements while grading, although some colorists may cringe at the thought.

Audio on the other hand is extremely limited in Scratch - but I personally don't care much. The risk of these types of applications is that they might end up being a 'jack of all trades, master of none'. After Effects has this tendency for instance. Feature-wise it's way more powerful and flexible than Scratch. But grading on it is a b!tch.

Barend

 

[lionel2p]

That's what I was hoping for, with Smoke on Mac and all, but alas, there wasn't even Lustre running anywhere in sight at Autodesk booth. Pretty disappointing...
Actually, speaking of Autodesk and Lustre. it's funny, but from talking with guys from DaVinci, I was told, that Autodesk was very determined to buy Davinci, before BM swooped in and bought it from under them. DaVinci employees were relieved, as it was understood, that Autodesk was planning just close daVinci for good. I'm sure, now after the announcement, Autodesk wish, that they did buy DaVinci and closed it down...

Yes, surprising for Luster at NAB. A Luster Mac could be a great thing and a good answer to BM Resolve. By the way, Smoke is an incredible conforming, compositing and finishing tool and it saves my life everyday on linux. The price drop was difficult for Smoke Advanced users to accept, but that's the way it goes...I'm more angry at Autodesk because they didn't made anything for Linux users like they did for Flare. But I don't want to kill Smoke because it's cheaper. It's a killing machine.

So I don't see the point with Resolve on Mac. Yes, it's not in the market for now, a few people tested it, but there's no reason at all to expect a pure shit or a non working app. BM contracted a big team for developpement. They can do what they tell, no doubt. Great colorists use Resolve and DaVinci for years. It would be "snobbish" to give up Davinci because it's now 995$...

For small (and bigger) companies, this annoucement is really important on many aspects. Potentially, you can make a small grading room for 15 K$ and cover from SD to 2K grading. Enough to change the grading market.

And for Assimilate, just a thought : when I was looking for a workflow two years ago, my country resseler told me it was the future solution for 1/5 the price of existing "big iron" on the market. So the price point was an argument, a big one. And the capabilities of the station was just on the paper for me, like today BM Resolve.

I've seen here dozen of threads comparing Scratch to Luster or Quantel without a real knowledge of other stations (do a search, easy to find) and nobody complains about that.

 

[Andrae Palmer]

I'm not sure, if it's included. I wasn't invited to the private demo
But if it is, you can drop the panel (I belive it's around $35k) and just use JL Cooper. That would make it a $60k full GPU accelerated Baselight. Pretty insane...

FilmLight launches low entry price point for Baselight at NAB 2010

Baselight includes a GPU renderer, Blackboard control surface, Baselight Kompressor and 12TB formatted RAID 5 storage as standard.

http://www.filmlight.ltd.uk/news_events/news/article/20100410_newbaselight

 

[Andrae Palmer]

Resolve's conforming capabilities are pretty standard- EDL and Cut List, not sure about ALE. Resolve doesn't support multiple layer timelline, so there is no plans to support at this time XML or AAF. Big ommisions, but not that suprising.

According to the BM director of software development, there is no support nor there are plans for aaf or xml. Down the road, who knows... But just because you're sending aaf to the post house doesn't mean, that the conforming is done on Resolve. You can send me aaf file and I would gladly use it, but I grade on Lustre and it also only supports EDL and Cut Liist. What's the point of using aaf on Resolve, if it doesn't support multiple layered timeline?

Davinci Resolve User Manual... Chapter 4... Page 63:

 

[shashbugu]

@ Andrae I like how you have Davinci coming soon to your facility

 

[Steve Das]

...For small (and bigger) companies, this annoucement is really important on many aspects. Potentially, you can make a small grading room for 15 K$ and cover from SD to 2K grading. Enough to change the grading market....

How could this grading room be done on only $15K...?

Seems like monitors alone could take up the whole expense...

 

[jake blackstone]

Davinci Resolve User Manual... Chapter 4... Page 63:

I wonder, if AAF capability will apply to Mac version, as I specifically asked about it no less, than 2 different people (director of software development and the demo artist, who's a colorist from their Singapore facility) and both stated, that EDL and Cut list was the only recognized formats. I even asked the demo artist to see the conforming dialog, but he wouldn't show, stating, that's it just a standard EDL interface. I suspect, because Resolve on a Mac was so new to everyone, that as a result I was getting some conflicting info from both of them... I know I was pretty adamant on no AAF support and, frankly, I still feel the same way even after seeing it with my lying eyes. I just can't understand what is the point of AAF support, if the software doesn't support multi layered timeline. There are some other unexpected omissions, that I was surprised to see, such as no stabilization, no ability to reuse or copy the tracking info for different shapes (no biggie, as it seems, that the tracker is even faster, than in Lustre or FilmMaster), no noise reduction of any kind ($1495 for Revival. I start seeing the trend) and the most puzzling, no TIFF support.
Actually, there was another omission, that was THE most surprising. Mac Resolve has no HDMI or DVI dual monitor mode! So, if you planning to grade it on your Dream color or any other kind of HDMI or DVI monitor, you'll need another piece of external hardware from BM or someone else- SDI to HDMI converter. I pointed out to BM, that at $995 people not are looking to grade on SDI monitors and it would be very important to have the dual monitor mode right out of the box, so he agreed, that's this is something they haven't consider and wrote it down. Also, that wold have an added benefit of freeing the PCI slot for something else, like RR (no support at this point). Will see, but I doubt, if it'll make it in. This way they will be losing the sale of an SDI I/O card and they make no secret, that that was the plan from the get go to drive the sales of BM hardware through the loss leader Resolve on the Mac.

 

[shashbugu]

I wonder, if AAF capability will apply to Mac version, as I specifically asked about it no less, than 2 different people (director of software development and the demo artist, who's a colorist from their Singapore facility) and both stated, that EDL and Cut list was the only recognized formats. I even asked the demo artist to see the conforming dialog, but he wouldn't show, stating, that's it just a standard EDL interface. I suspect, because Resolve on a Mac was so new to everyone, that as a result I was getting some conflicting info from both of them... I know I was pretty adamant on no AAF support and, frankly, I still feel the same way even after seeing it with my lying eyes. I just can't understand what is the point of AAF support, if the software doesn't support multi layered timeline. There are some other unexpected omissions, that I was surprised to see, such as no stabilization, no ability to reuse or copy the tracking info for different shapes (no biggie, as it seems, that the tracker is even faster, than in Lustre or FilmMaster), no noise reduction of any kind ($1495 for Revival. I start seeing the trend) and the most puzzling, no TIFF support.
Actually, there was another omission, that was THE most surprising. Mac Resolve has no HDMI or DVI dual monitor mode! So, if you planning to grade it on your Dream color or any other kind of HDMI or DVI monitor, you'll need another piece of external hardware from BM or someone else- SDI to HDMI converter. I pointed out to BM, that at $995 people not are looking to grade on SDI monitors and it would be very important to have the dual monitor mode right out of the box, so he agreed, that's this is something they haven't consider and wrote it down. Also, that wold have an added benefit of freeing the PCI slot for something else, like RR (no support at this point). Will see, but I doubt, if it'll make it in. This way they will be losing the sale of an SDI I/O card and they make no secret, that that was the plan from the get go to drive the sales of BM hardware through the loss leader Resolve on the Mac.

the collapse timeline feature for AAF export in Avid is what Ppro and FCP lack. Exporting more than two video tracks out of any NLE to EDL is a course for disaster. thats why XML export/import is far more powerful and conducive. With the new Blackmagic sdi/hdmi monitoring you would'nt need a Pcie slot (at least thats what I'm reading). You are right at this stage in the game a multi-track timeline is a necessity.

 

[shashbugu]

Can the mods please create a Davinci workflow forum. I think its rather disrespectful to scratch users willing to ask important questions or discuss worflows if we keep hijacking thier forum

 

[Andrae Palmer]

Perhaps I'm not understanding the usage of "multitrack timeline":

Isn't this a multitrack timeline?

 

[Barend Onneweer]

Well the whole point of this thread was to state Assimilates demise, so in that respect all the 'born-again-DaVinci-fanboyisms' would seem to be quite on-topic...

 

[shashbugu]

Well the whole point of this thread was to state Assimilates demise, so in that respect all the 'born-again-DaVinci-fanboyisms' would seem to be quite on-topic...

Well lets be honest. Scratch is by far the sexiest and most straight forward finnishing tool in the biz. It is plenty powerful extremely scalable and very supportive of its cutomer base. It can edit, midly, composite, color grade, and finnish. its user interface is very very visual, the parameters are neatly displayed and the timeline is Angelic. What more can you ask for. Its the perfect tool for the Reduser. Its constantly being upgraded with lots of snazzy features standard with the industry. Is it expensive? Depends on how desperate you are for an out the box perfectly working system.
Will I buy it? I probably would buy it instead of a complicated Baselight or Lustre system.
So the question is a $995 Davinci vs a $995 Scratch. I will buy the scratch in a heart beat. The Davinci that rates with a scratch is $50,000 and it does not even do what the Scratch can do.

A company that has about 20 employees including the cleaning lady can re-invent itself and adapt very quickly. If they go software only they can sell Scratch for $5,000. Just having half of the Red, Arri, Aaton, and other evolving camera owners, including a vast list of editors, colorists etc buying licences they will do very well

 

[Andrae Palmer]

What do you guys mean by a multitrack timeline? In the manual I'm seeing multiple tracks in the timeline. I know jake has used the term... "multiple layered timeline". There is a Layer Mixer Node.

 

[Lucas Wilson]

Can the mods please create a Davinci workflow forum. I think its rather disrespectful to scratch users willing to ask important questions or discuss worflows if we keep hijacking thier forum

Shashbugu - I appreciate your comment, but don't worry about it. This is an interesting discussion and not disrespectful.

Lucas

Lucas Wilson
------------
ASSIMILATE dude
LA, CA, USA

 

[M Most]

Well lets be honest. Scratch is by far the sexiest and most straight forward finnishing tool in the biz. It is plenty powerful extremely scalable and very supportive of its cutomer base. It can edit, midly, composite, color grade, and finnish. its user interface is very very visual, the parameters are neatly displayed and the timeline is Angelic. What more can you ask for. Its the perfect tool for the Reduser. Its constantly being upgraded with lots of snazzy features standard with the industry. Is it expensive? Depends on how desperate you are for an out the box perfectly working system.

For the first time on this thread, I completely agree with you. Although I am also a big fan of Baselight...

 

[Jorge Torrens]

What do you guys mean by a multitrack timeline? In the manual I'm seeing multiple tracks in the timeline. I know jake has used the term... "multiple layered timeline". There is a Layer Mixer Node.

The two tracks timeline in Resolve is if I'm not mistaken for dissolves, not compositing.

The Layer Mixer Node is used to combine mattes not layers.

 

[Fredrik Harreschou]

Perhaps I'm not understanding the usage of "multitrack timeline":

Isn't this a multitrack timeline?

From just looking at that image, no. I think it´s more like a container to visually represent the two layers that make up a dissolve. But I could be wrong.

Multilayered timelines usually have independent scale/position/rotation/opacity for each layer/track.

 

[Dominic Cochran]

And for Assimilate, just a thought : when I was looking for a workflow two years ago, my country resseler told me it was the future solution for 1/5 the price of existing "big iron" on the market. So the price point was an argument, a big one. And the capabilities of the station was just on the paper for me, like today BM Resolve.

I've seen here dozen of threads comparing Scratch to Luster or Quantel without a real knowledge of other stations (do a search, easy to find) and nobody complains about that.

They're trying to buy time with the vaporware talk. I just wish they would have come out with a Mac version like so many were pleading for them to do before. I'm sure they'll catch up now, thanks to BM!

 

[Lucas Wilson]

They're trying to buy time with the vaporware talk. I just wish they would have come out with a Mac version like so many were pleading for them to do before. I'm sure they'll catch up now, thanks to BM!

Vaporware? Huh?

What am I missing?

Lucas

 

[mikeburton]

I've never used a DaVinci personally but have sat in on many sessions. I have personally completed a few features and shorter commercial projects on Scratch. I also do all my offline editing on a Mac. Do I wish Scratch was ported over to Mac? Well, yes ultimately, but I respect the reasons why they haven't yet. Until NVidia and Apple allow for an SDI daughterboard and more advanced graphics cards there really is no point. They realize that their tools run the way they do based on proper hardware configs.
I personally love their UI, wish for some better editing tools (although I realize they aren't an editing software) and hope for more RAW camera support like Phantom etc.
I would purchase a Scratch over DaVinci any day of the week right now if I had to choose. That said, with the existing Mac Hardware I have it wouldn't hurt to own and offer both.