DaVinci Resolve, how good?

[Marc Wielage]

I've got more important things going on, like arranging a system cheap enough and powerful enough to run it properly.

As Peter Chamberlain says above, the published system configs on Blackmagic's website are fairly specific. As long as whatever system you make provides those features and capabilities, the program will run just fine. The real problem is not the hardware nor the software; the problem is getting the years of experience it takes to understand how to solve color-correction problems.

I don't know exactly why BMD has not got resolve up to speed as its competitors, but I'm likely going to have to spend as much extra on the computer to run the free edition of resolve as I would buying a competitor's product, that extra computing power just happens to be useful anyway.

Well, powerful tools need powerful machines to handle them. Look at the system requirements for Baselight, Lustre, Mistika, Nucoda, and Pablo -- none of those can be done on a cheap laptop, either, and those are the primary competitors for Resolve. You need very beefy GPUs, very fast processors, and extremely fast storage in order for all of it to work. And a calibrated monitor and a control surface of some kind. Technically, there are people using Lustre with just a mouse and keyboard, but I think having at least a basic control surface is faster.

 

[jake blackstone]

Well, powerful tools need powerful machines to handle them. Look at the system requirements for Baselight, Lustre, Mistika, Nucoda, and Pablo -- none of those can be done on a cheap laptop, either, and those are the primary competitors for Resolve. You need very beefy GPUs, very fast processors, and extremely fast storage in order for all of it to work. And a calibrated monitor and a control surface of some kind. Technically, there are people using Lustre with just a mouse and keyboard, but I think having at least a basic control surface is faster.

Actually, Nucoda runs very well on just about any hardware, including MacBook Pro with Bootcamp, with almost any GPU. The reason for that is it's designed around incredibly intelligent cache system, that is simply best in it's class. The only caveat, it will not run without cache, but these days SSD drives are quite cheap and fast, so there is no need for super powerful system, just an intelligently designed software.
And BTW, majority of Lustre users at Technicolor, including Steve Scott do not use any kind of panel or a stylus. A mouse is all they use...

 

[jussi rovanpera]

It's funny how Lustre UI looks like a 90's unix software, but is really mouse/tablet friendly, when Resolve has a modern "user friendly" UI, but is slow to use without the big panel.

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Sighh. Thanks Marc. I've got a few primitive control surfaces in storage, but again, I'm not aiming for big things, just descent enough. As I said, I'm looking.at such a beefy system, that I have other uses and want the power on hand. I somehow, somehow doubted that my future PVR system could do it, before you said so.

 

[Dan Kanes]

True story, I've run resolve on a Windows 10 box with 2GB of ram, Atom X5 (quad core) , and the Intel integrated GPU. We are talking like $99 Kangaroo PC.

I was surprised at how fast it ran.

if I was in the market for a basic resolve machine "to try" I would just buy a Dell XPS 15 9550 model (skylake).
Buy online from the Microsoft store with Educational discount. Mine has the 4K screen. If I did it over again I would get the 1080p screen onboard and spend extra money on a 55" LG OLED flat panel for grading. I'd get the biggest ram and biggest ssd you can afford.

This is will give you a "taste for success", along with some decently ready hardware.

If you want MacOS (and dual boot to Linux) go here:

www.tonymacx86.com
www.insanelymac.com

and enjoy the rabbit hole Wayne !

 

[Wayne Morellini]

Blink, blink. But what can you do with it?

 

[Peter Moretti]

It would be helpful, if you used proper nomenclature, when describing what it it that you're looking for. The translation for your description of "source side color correction" is called Remote Grades in Resolve parlance. ...

Come on Jake, the attitude is unnecessary, and I don't deserve it.

FWIW, the term "source side" is used in the Avid world when describing that feature in Avid Symphony's CC toolset. So being that we're talking about a plug-in for Avid, that nomenclature seemed totally appropriate to use.

 

[M.Halsell]

majority of Lustre users at Technicolor, including Steve Scott do not use any kind of panel or a stylus. A mouse is all they use...

Was there something nuanced about the Autodesk control surface or do they simply prefer the simplicity of the mouse? Also, this question is for Sir Blackstone. - Within you industry, what are the top 3-5 grading tools being used and/also in terms of percentage of adoption? In Nucoda, are the noise reduction and grain tools vastly superior against lower cost products or plugins? And are render times excessive for the noise tool?

 

[Scott Crawley]

Come on Jake, the attitude is unnecessary, and I don't deserve it.

FWIW, the term "source side" is used in the Avid world when describing that feature in Avid Symphony's CC toolset. So being that we're talking about a plug-in for Avid, that nomenclature seemed totally appropriate to use.

To be fair the OP's question is one that is best directed at Colorists and fortunately for him a couple professional Colorists have answered. It seems prudent to use the language that they understand, no?

Also, while Avid is a prominent editing platform it isn't the only one so Avid specific parlance isn't even one that all Editors will understand much less Colorists. I had no idea what you meant and I have been cutting for quite some time, just not on Avid.

You seem nice enough Peter but not for nothing, Resolve is what Wayne asked about and Resolve is not a plugin for Avid.

 

[Sean Rawls]

From a DIT perspective I use Resolve everyday to sync audio and render dailies. It is rock solid for this task, so I'm surprised people have had such issues with rendering. In the past, when I've had issues with Resolve, BM support has been very responsive, and it usually boils down to something I'm doing wrong. There are bugs for sure but given all the functionality built in it's a pretty amazing piece of software.

Now as a full time editor....... I only use resolve for short edits on personal projects, I don't think it's ready for a client environment.

 

[jake blackstone]

Was there something nuanced about the Autodesk control surface or do they simply prefer the simplicity of the mouse? Also, this question is for Sir Blackstone. - Within you industry, what are the top 3-5 grading tools being used and/also in terms of percentage of adoption? In Nucoda, are the noise reduction and grain tools vastly superior against lower cost products or plugins? And are render times excessive for the noise tool?

Lustre is the oldest file based color grading software. Despite this fact, it's interface is the testament of a great industrial design. Lustre interface has pretty much survived intact without much changes, unlike other, more current software we all know, that gets the face lift every year. Lustre was originally designed to be operated with a mouse and over the years many users saw no need to use control panels, even though Lustre supports at least three great panels, including one designed by Discreet. Said that, personally I prefer to use a control panel, while operating Lustre- a Tangent CP-100.
As far as color grading software goes, luckily there are still great alternatives to Resolve. My top choice is Baselight with Nucoda close second. Yes, Nucoda's tool set is peerless. Digital Vision (the name of the company) pedigree is legendary and it is based on their extensive work in noise reduction going all the way back to Digital Vision hardware based tools, that were used with telecine. All that invaluable experience resulted in culmination, in my opinion, of the best noise reduction tool today- DVO Clarity. It is fully automated, resulting in no loss of resolution and it can even discern a difference between noise and grain. In other words, Digital Vision managed to do the impossible. So, yes, Digital Vision DVO tools are vastly superior to anything else out there.
Anyway, rather, than writing a long treatise on the choice of grading software, i'd rather invite you to read a couple of Mike Most posts, that still give very clear picture of the current state of grading platforms.
http://mikemost.com/?p=204
http://mikemost.com/?p=208

 

[Peter Moretti]

To be fair the OP's question is one that is best directed at Colorists and fortunately for him a couple professional Colorists have answered. It seems prudent to use the language that they understand, no?

Also, while Avid is a prominent editing platform it isn't the only one so Avid specific parlance isn't even one that all Editors will understand much less Colorists. I had no idea what you meant and I have been cutting for quite some time, just not on Avid.

You seem nice enough Peter but not for nothing, Resolve is what Wayne asked about and Resolve is not a plugin for Avid.

Fair enough, Scott. :boxing_smiley: :cheers2:

 

[M Most]

Was there something nuanced about the Autodesk control surface or do they simply prefer the simplicity of the mouse?

Steve started his career as a Flame/Inferno compositing artist and only later became a colorist. His approach to coloring is very steeped in compositing techniques, to the point that I've often called what he does "color compositing" rather than "color correction" (something he pretty much agrees with, BTW). Because of that background, he is comfortable using the interface tools he has always used with Discreet/Autodesk products. Back in the early days of Flame and Inferno - when they would routinely crash about every 10 minutes - some artists used a mouse and keyboard, while others (most of the ones I know) used a pen and tablet. Steve was of the mouse/keyboard school, and continues that today.

 

[M Most]

i'd rather invite you to read a couple of Mike Most posts, that still give very clear picture of the current state of grading platforms.

Wow, I haven't really thought about those posts for a long time. Your mentioning them just inspired me to go back and read them, and even though they were written way back when dinosaurs roamed the earth (2010, to be exact......) a lot of what I said still holds true. Of course, those articles are in serious need of updating (I might go ahead and do that) but a number of strengths and weaknesses of each of the products I reviewed are still there, at least to some degree. Thanks for mentioning it, I really should do some new blog posts one of these days.......

 

[PatrickFaith]

Steve started his career as a Flame/Inferno compositing artist and only later became a colorist. His approach to coloring is very steeped in compositing techniques, to the point that I've often called what he does "color compositing" rather than "color correction" (something he pretty much agrees with, BTW). Because of that background, he is comfortable using the interface tools he has always used with Discreet/Autodesk products. ...

I really like the idea/mind_set of "color compositing" - I'm going to think that way more often. I've read through your reviews of products and have used them in my purchase decisions.

... mentioning them just inspired me to go back and read them, and even though they were written way back when dinosaurs roamed the earth (2010, to be exact......) a lot of what I said still holds true. Of course, those articles are in serious need of updating (I might go ahead and do that) but a number of strengths and weaknesses of each of the products I reviewed are still there, at least to some degree. Thanks for mentioning it, I really should do some new blog posts one of these days.......

If you are going to do another view at products, I'd like your perspective on deep color compositing. I've been getting deep files a lot recently in deep exr format, they are real nice, but the color compositing steps/workflow have been out of sync from my normal workflow. I often find I need to do a lot of linear color correction in mixing deep files. Also this involves doing reprojection on the deep files through virtual camera's, so have virtual cinematographic color/lighting problems occuring on the reprojection of the deep files (i.e. deep exr is projected onto a mesh/point cloud, then virtual camera is creating a new shot from that). I would appreciateo your perspective on these new reprojection/deep workflows please. Again, thanks much for your blog and the information you've given the community.

 

[M.Halsell]

Ah. I see, thanks.

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

The stuff about relighting the scene etc to look naturally better is more the way to look at in the future. Simply because it will get easier and easier to do, and worth doing when required on lower cost productions as well.

In reality there is no such thing as "relighting the scene". It is just an industry term which is an euphemism for post salvage job.

$3500, I thought you were a $20k+ man. Yes I hesr you, that is what I mean. I would have lityle issue using that 4K 30 inch (was it) 10 bit LG IPS monitor if I had too. But the reality is, it won't grade for rec2020 very well, but a lot of time you don't see that extra gsmut in nature outside the greens (and our iron.oxide deserts). But I'm not happy with rec 2020 either, I want close to full vision for animation, but I'm happy to use rec 2020 anyway.

Rec 2020 is currently irrelevant and unrelated to having a proper grading monitor today.

 

[jussi rovanpera]

You could "relight" CGI stuff that came with a normal map in comp/grade, I think that's where the term comes from.

 

[Marcus Friedlander]

Steve started his career as a Flame/Inferno compositing artist and only later became a colorist. His approach to coloring is very steeped in compositing techniques, to the point that I've often called what he does "color compositing" rather than "color correction" (something he pretty much agrees with, BTW).

Can you elaborate on what you mean by color compositing vs color correcting? Sounds intriguing! Thanks!

 

[M Most]

Can you elaborate on what you mean by color compositing vs color correcting? Sounds intriguing! Thanks!

Most colorists take the approach of coming up with a base grade for the scene, then separating out areas of the shot that need separate treatment, using either keys, area isolations, or both. Steve takes more of a compositing approach, where his first tendency is to separate the areas he wants to treat individually, then grade those, then match them into the background. In other words, he decides on his isolations first, then goes about putting all of those separate pieces together. You need a great artistic eye to succeed with such an approach, and Steve has that. You also need a team of rotoscope artists to get all of those isolations done in the time allowed, something Steve also has. Finally, you need a software platform that allows for a collaborative workflow with simple information and timeline exchange, which Lustre/Flame Premium provides. So while it's an interesting approach, and one that allows for a lot of control, it is not for everyone.