DaVinci for Mac, game changer or game over?

[Anthony Gratl]

I wonder if anyone would get punched in the face.

David.

Jeez Dave, that's real positive:emote_popcorn:

 

[David Battistella]

Jeez Dave, that's real positive:emote_popcorn:

staying positive doesn't mean I can't be funny. I just forgot to put this in

 

[Ben Rojas]

Since you own neither a SCRATCH nor a Resolve, what do you base this on - demos at trade shows? Really? Do you also believe every word the car salesman tells you? Not trying to pick on you specifically, but it's comments like this that have made me stay away from this thread.

I work and earn my salary in the real world - with real shipping products and real customers who have clients breathing down their necks. Realistically, it is another 6 months until the $999 version has a real foothold and the market can decide what to do with it. That's a lifetime in the post-production software world.

The Blackmagic announcement is exciting... I love disruptive technology and disruptive announcements. It makes people think hard and work hard, and usually the industry is better for it.

But not *one* person on this thread has seen anything other than a trade show demo of this product. Not one. And if you believe everything you see in a floor demo at NAB, I've got some lake property in the Mojave to sell you...

Lucas


Lucas Wilson
------------
Reality Police
ASSIMILATE, inc.
LA, CA, USA

That's laughable Lucas... What? You guys don't preach your product on the trade show floor? You guys are just as much out for a sale so please give us a freakin' break. "Disruptive Technology", LOL, so I take it that's what RED was when they started. My take on why you're not in here commenting is that BMD, sooner than 6 months, will be handing you your ASSimilate on a plate unless you guys can figure out a business model to put Scratch out at 1K.

 

[Gabriele Turchi]

Actually the sales representat
ives guys said that will ship in 2 months...

 

[Frank Cueto]

Actually the sales representat
ives guys said that will ship in 2 months...

JAJAJA... I dont trust the sales guys...


Lil anecdote... about 16-17 years ago we acquired a SABRE editor from Grass Valley. IT was a VERY advanced editor that could control our K-scopes, GVG 1000 switcher and ACCOM DDR's amongst other things. It required so much power that it's interface ran on an INDY from SGI.

We received it and it worked for a couple days, afterwards it started misbehaving and we called the factory for support. We where told the SABRE didn't exist... We called and called and only our sales guy would call us back...

Long story short, it just so happened that our sales guy walked into the GVG R&D lab and sent us a beta/prototype of that system when it wasn't even in BETA (i don't know if it was a even an announced product!!! It never got finished, the guy who was the Lead engineer on it got killed on a motor-bike accident, shame..

In a nutshell, dont trust sales guys much....

 

[Anthony Gratl]

staying positive doesn't mean I can't be funny. I just forgot to put this in

i guess the passionate part is the actual face punching?

or should i say :0

 

[Lucas Wilson]

My take on why you're not in here commenting is that BMD, sooner than 6 months, will be handing you your ASSimilate on a plate unless you guys can figure out a business model to put Scratch out at 1K.

ASSIMILATE doesn't base its business decisions on slightly wild-eyed "the end is near" listserv threads. If we, as a company, operated on a purely reactive tactical basis - which is what you advocate here whether you realize it or not - we would have been out of business a long time ago.

Also, our PR world is wider than REDuser. If you just feel like hearing my voice, you can listen to FXGuide's excellent NAB summary podcast, of which I am part, and where I do comment about Blackmagic and Resolve.

I also commented on it in several press interview at NAB. Whether those comments see the light of day is entirely up to those writers/editors.

Lucas

"The spot where we intend to fight must not be made known; for then the enemy will have to prepare against a possible attack at several different points; and his forces being thus distributed in many directions, the numbers we shall have to face at any given point will be proportionately few." - Sun Tzu

 

[Lucas Wilson]

As you probably remember Lucas, in the past I was always defending Scratch, when it was unfairly attacked. I do not have personal ax to grind and personally I find Scratch to be a capable conforming and grading tool. Calling Scratch a capable compositing system is a bit of a stretch. Not having truly dedicated control panel will always be a bit of disadvantage. Any serious colorist will attest to that. And I still do not believe, that Scratch can create a monitor LUT from scratch, as I'd described.

Well... it does do the LUTs as you describe. I don't have anything to gain by lying about it when there are dozens of SCRATCH users that participate on Reduser and would step in and stomp on me if I was misrepresenting. : )

I really disagree on the control panel thing - but I guess we will agree to disagree there. I base my opinion on dozens of users who have Blackboards and Pablo panels in their shops, and also have a full set of Tangent CP-200s. Artists are very particular to different methods. One of ASSIMIALTE's most passionate supporters and a fairly high-level LA-based colorist grades entirely with just the CP200-BK and a mouse. He has had the entire panel suite and decided he didn't like it.

Some guys have stepped to the full CP200 series and have almost instantly loved it because of the complete customizability with SCRATCH - down to the ballistics characteristics of the trackballs. But others have played with them and *hated* them. Artists and artists and everyone prefers something slightly different.

I don't particularly like the way the Roland JC-120 sounds. Never have. It's always sounded too tinny and "abrupt" for my taste. Yet it is a massive standard, especially in the jazz world. Different strokes for different folks.

What truly disappoints me, are all these proclamations of happiness for BM announcement and what they have done. Frankly, I would be mad as hell, cause they just stole your business model and in the process undercut your product line by a wide margin.

You and I have very different perceptions of our business. Look at it this way... ASSIMILATE has been a profitable software company since our first year of operation. And anybody that has been in the software world can tell you that being in the black after year1 with a brand new product is impressive.

When Color first came out - there was an avalanche of doom and gloom and the woe that would bring to our company. The result: our next year was our best ever... because we are *not* just a color correction company, and we continued doing what we do well - selling to our strengths.

Will BM have some kind of impact on us? I'm sure it will. But ASSIMILATE's business is *much* more than just dedicated color correction units.

Knowing about ALL the aspects of our business... and where we are going... I am very confident in our continued success.

Why not come out and say what you're planning to do about it. Are you planning to have any kind of an answer? You have legions of fans and they want some reassurance, that their bet and investment wasn't wrong.

And those legions of fans and customers are, by a very large percentage, not on Reduser.

Instead all you're doing is harping, that it's all vaporware. Resolve on Mac exists and I saw and played with it at NAB. It's as real as Scratch.

Re-read my posts. I have never said vaporware. I have stated the truth - it is a very early alpha of a product that will not ship for a few months, and will take a few months after that to gain a foothold in the market.

It will be "as real as SCRATCH" (or Baselight, FilmMaster, Pablo, or Speedgrade) when it has been a shipping product to paying customers for a period of several years. Until then, it's a pre-alpha v1 product that has not shipped yet. That will change very soon. But as of today, and this conversation - that is what it is.

Lucas

 

[jake blackstone]

Well... it does do the LUTs as you describe. I don't have anything to gain by lying about it when there are dozens of SCRATCH users that participate on Reduser and would step in and stomp on me if I was misrepresenting. : )

I really disagree on the control panel thing - but I guess we will agree to disagree there. I base my opinion on dozens of users who have Blackboards and Pablo panels in their shops, and also have a full set of Tangent CP-200s. Artists are very particular to different methods. One of ASSIMIALTE's most passionate supporters and a fairly high-level LA-based colorist grades entirely with just the CP200-BK and a mouse. He has had the entire panel suite and decided he didn't like it.

Some guys have stepped to the full CP200 series and have almost instantly loved it because of the complete customizability with SCRATCH - down to the ballistics characteristics of the trackballs. But others have played with them and *hated* them. Artists and artists and everyone prefers something slightly different.

I don't particularly like the way the Roland JC-120 sounds. Never have. It's always sounded too tinny and "abrupt" for my taste. Yet it is a massive standard, especially in the jazz world. Different strokes for different folks.



You and I have very different perceptions of our business. Look at it this way... ASSIMILATE has been a profitable software company since our first year of operation. And anybody that has been in the software world can tell you that being in the black after year1 with a brand new product is impressive.

When Color first came out - there was an avalanche of doom and gloom and the woe that would bring to our company. The result: our next year was our best ever... because we are *not* just a color correction company, and we continued doing what we do well - selling to our strengths.

Will BM have some kind of impact on us? I'm sure it will. But ASSIMILATE's business is *much* more than just dedicated color correction units.

Knowing about ALL the aspects of our business... and where we are going... I am very confident in our continued success.




And those legions of fans and customers are, by a very large percentage, not on Reduser.



Re-read my posts. I have never said vaporware. I have stated the truth - it is a very early alpha of a product that will not ship for a few months, and will take a few months after that to gain a foothold in the market.

It will be "as real as SCRATCH" (or Baselight, FilmMaster, Pablo, or Speedgrade) when it has been a shipping product to paying customers for a period of several years. Until then, it's a pre-alpha v1 product that has not shipped yet. That will change very soon. But as of today, and this conversation - that is what it is.

Lucas

Thanks Lucas for the response. I'm sure it's not easy to maintain calm in the in the eye of such spirited discussion. I admit, that I have contributed quite a bit to the raising of the temperature. So, I apologize. But please understand, it's nothing personal against you or Assimilate. As you have probably seen, I can be pretty outspoken with any other manufacturers as well, including my faves- Baselight and lustre. It's pretty ironic, but at NAB I'd faulted DVision for NOT offering their systems with third party control surfaces, which is an exact opposite, that i told you Heck, if you'd like to know, I can give you a piece of my mind on any of them, especially Pablo It's just so happen, that you're pretty much the only representative of a color grading manufacturer present here. I wonder, if Quantel even knows, that reduser exists. And I KNOW DaVinci doesn't, as I had asked them. Martin only shows up here once in a while. Sooooo, you're it! I know, that you can't tell us about Assimilate plans for the future, but could you give as a little glimmer, without being too specific for company plans on moving forward. Thanks again for participating in this forum...

 

[shashbugu]

Thanks Lucas for the response. I'm sure it's not easy to maintain calm in the in the eye of such spirited discussion. I admit, that I have contributed quite a bit to the raising of the temperature. So, I apologize. But please understand, it's nothing personal against you or Assimilate. As you have probably seen, I can be pretty outspoken with any other manufacturers as well, including my faves- Baselight and lustre. It's pretty ironic, but at NAB I'd faulted DVision for NOT offering their systems with third party control surfaces, which is an exact opposite, that i told you Heck, if you'd like to know, I can give you a piece of my mind on any of them, especially Pablo It's just so happen, that you're pretty much the only representative of a color grading manufacturer present here. I wonder, if Quantel even knows, that reduser exists. And I KNOW DaVinci doesn't, as I had asked them. Martin only shows up here once in a while. Sooooo, you're it! I know, that you can't tell us about Assimilate plans for the future, but could you give as a little glimmer, without being too specific for company plans on moving forward. Thanks again for participating in this forum...

A system not having certain features its customer base is not demanding, but rather solidifying the ones that make it great makes good sense to me. Assimilate does not make control panels, So? there are tons of panels out there to choose from. You as a colorist should be really scared, one of the powerful parts of a Davinci are its extensive presets. at $995 you can rest assured other colorists will sell lots and lots of presets to what used to be your customer base. with one click Rihanna's producer will find a suitable grade for her next project and save the dough on your services. Lucas can always sell lots and lots of scratch licenses for whatever price he wants.

 

[Lucas Wilson]

Dude chill out. You are a bit too pompous.

Shashbugu,

I appreciate the support, but... Everybody play nice. Spirited discussion is ok. This starts to cross the line.

And Rihanna has bigger problems than finding colorists. Have you seen the crazy sh*t she consistently wears? I buy People Magazine (yes, I read People... wanna make something of it?) just to see what crazy contraption she's wearing in public this week.

It's all good, man. : )

Lucas

 

[shashbugu]

Shashbugu,

I appreciate the support, but... Everybody play nice. Spirited discussion is ok. This starts to cross the line.

And Rihanna has bigger problems than finding colorists. Have you seen the crazy sh*t she consistently wears? I buy People Magazine (yes, I read People... wanna make something of it?) just to see what crazy contraption she's wearing in public this week.

It's all good, man. : )

Lucas

I agree. I apologize Jake, I'll re-edit my comments. I was being sarcastic. And I did cross the line. Sorry. It wont happen Again I promise. And yes Lucas I just happen to know her and her manager Marc Jordan.

 

[M Most]

You as a colorist should be really scared, one of the powerful parts of a Davinci are its extensive presets. at $995 you can rest assured other colorists will sell lots and lots of presets to what used to be your customer base. with one click Rihanna's producer will find a suitable grade for her next project and save the dough on your services.

I hope you meant this in jest, but if you didn't, I would say that being "scared" is a very inappropriate reaction for any professional to new technology. If one has talent and experience, and at least a modicum of confidence, they can and will easily adapt to whatever comes along. It's not the tech, it's the talent, no matter how many presets are packaged with the product.

 

[shashbugu]

I was being sarcastic. Jake is very talented you can tell by his reel. The thread is about scratches position in the market with the new announcement of Resolve $995. He is bashing scratch for feature he is not really sure exist in their product and talking about control panels they don't make. If I were in that business I just like Scratch will also sell you better software that takes advantage of the competitions control panel, or standard industry control interfaces like the CP200. He's talking about LUT's that almost are standard stable in the industry cinespace, cincube, kodak kdm etc etc. I am not a colorist I am a director but i I don't for see any other producer, vfx director working in 3D sending their project for finishing or filmout without checking for these basic LUTs. Its that simple. Now it seems we are arguing market placement vs feature set

 

[Gabriele Turchi]

Re-read my posts. I have never said vaporware. I have stated the truth - it is a very early alpha of a product that will not ship for a few months, and will take a few months after that to gain a foothold in the market.

It will be "as real as SCRATCH" (or Baselight, FilmMaster, Pablo, or Speedgrade) when it has been a shipping product to paying customers for a period of several years. Until then, it's a pre-alpha v1 product that has not shipped yet. That will change very soon. But as of today, and this conversation - that is what it is.

Lucas

Lucas...come on,be fare ...We all love Scratch , but you cannot say this....Resolve exist from many years ...they " just "translated to a Mac OS...it's a not a brand new software build it from the ground than need years to work....(same example of smoke on a MAC .... worked very very well right away.....)

 

[shashbugu]

Lucas...come on,be fare ...We all love Scratch , but you cannot say this....Resolve exist from many years ...they " just "translated to a Mac OS...it's a not a brand new software build it from the ground than need years to work....(same example of smoke on a MAC .... worked very very well right away.....)

At $995, even if its not stable out the box, we Rebel Red filmmakers will push BM to weed out the bugs, strength in numbers

 

[Gabriele Turchi]

guy it's Resolve....
not a brand new software from a brand new company that is dealing with color correction for the first time.....might have some little issue (as every software) but i had a session of 30 min and was working great already (9 layers of secondary including matte blur and was realtime (DPX HD)

 

[shashbugu]

guy it's Resolve....
not a brand new software from a brand new company that is dealing with color correction for the first time.....might have some little issue (as every software) but i had a session of 30 min and was working great already (9 layers of secondary including matte blur and was realtime (DPX HD)

that's what I saw in all the demos, I am agreeing with you. I was saying if, just if its buggy. I am very excited about this announcement, I will be signing up for the entry level FXPHD course

 

[Lucas Wilson]

Lucas...come on,be fare ...We all love Scratch , but you cannot say this....Resolve exist from many years ...they " just "translated to a Mac OS...it's a not a brand new software build it from the ground than need years to work....(same example of smoke on a MAC .... worked very very well right away.....)

Sure I can ... I just said it! : )

I said in one of my posts somewhere that Resolve is sort of in a weird in-between place. It is established software, but please... A "translation"??

Porting to a new OS without the dedicated hardware that has made Resolve the powerhouse it has always been ... That is *not* a small thing. There will be a period of "adjustment."

And then there are support issues, upgrade issues, etc, etc.

Guys - I've said in other posts and will say again ... Resolve is a killer tool for color! But what they are doing as a company is not a minor thing. It will take a little time for them to get it right, and for the market to react and adjust.

Lucas

 

[Arttie Puig]

Sure I can ... I just said it! : )

I said in one of my posts somewhere that Resolve is sort of in a weird in-between place. It is established software, but please... A "translation"??

Porting to a new OS without the dedicated hardware that has made Resolve the powerhouse it has always been ... That is *not* a small thing. There will be a period of "adjustment."

And then there are support issues, upgrade issues, etc, etc.

Guys - I've said in other posts and will say again ... Resolve is a killer tool for color! But what they are doing as a company is not a minor thing. It will take a little time for them to get it right, and for the market to react and adjust.

Lucas

So far they had over a year to work on it, and they seem to work fast!
I understand Assimilate won't say anything about what's the next plan of action, not even BM said it will cost $999 when people were asking for it, they kept quiet. And I agree in part to wait until the product is out there, but don't wait too long, people don't like changing systems too often once they're comfortable, and again, we're not talking about Color, it's a DaVinci.
I'm sure there were meetings and there will be at Assimilate regarding their pricing structure. But as far as myself goes, I was seriously considering buying one for my startup, but it's a lot of money I don't know I'm going to recover, specially in this economy where clients don't want to pay. But for sure I'm getting a Resolbe and a Revival.