DaVinci

[Chris Kenny]

I think what's scarier is the fact that Blackmagic has never had any Linux products and has never shown any inclination to support the Linux OS. They have always been a Mac-centric, Windows-second company. I think the jury is still very much out as to whether the Linux product is a long term commitment, or an attempt to test the viability of that market for what has now become a "low end" - at least in terms of price - product, while still trying to retain the high end client base that already has DaVinci products.

There's a natural path forward for them. Keep the Linux version around until five years from now or whenever, when Mac Pro towers can do real-time 4K from a single GPU. Then kill the Linux version.

In fact, sometime in the next 10 years, practically all of this stuff becomes trivial, as far as the hardware is concerned. You'll have consumer laptops that can process 4K more easily than they can work with SD today, and no particular need for internal slots for I/O cards because of things like Light Peak -- and because even consumer graphics cards will routinely have 10-bit output, so you can hook 'em straight up to grading monitors. If you even need specialized grading monitors, in a world where consumer OLED displays will have CRT-class blacks and probably color gamuts so wide they can easily emulate P3 or whatever else you like.

A lot of people don't quite seem to have grasped the consequences of the fact that the video/film production industry is now fully governed by Moore's Law. According to Nvidia "GPU compute is likely to increase its current capabilities by 570x" over the next six years. Hell, if that holds up, I think an iPod Touch will have enough GPU power for real-time 4K grading.

I guess my point is, if your business model is built around certain equipment being expensive... have a transition plan ready. Because there are going to be a lot of announcements over the coming decade in the same vein as this one.

 

[MichaelHalsell]

Good chime in Chris. Technology has become the slippery slope.

 

[Helge Løken]

Full system specs have not been released, but it would not be unreasonable that a high caliber control surface such as the JL Cooper Eclipse would be supported also. You may want to reach out to the distributors mention below if you have a serious interest.

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/davinci/distributors/

Good luck, let us know.

Just watched the BlackMagic presentation on the FCP SuperMeet. They pointed out that they want to work with all panel manufacturers!

 

[jake blackstone]

It also includes real time video I/O. A very good deal, actually, and a great system.

I wonder, if that price includes 2k record and capture I/O. Last time I checked, when I had BaselightHD, Filmlight was charging something like $2k for a separate license to do that.
On a separate note, Resolve includes support for Cinespace. Anybody knows, if it's included in $1k package? I feel strange even asking it...
And now for the last point. Everyone talks about the unbelievable price point of Resolve, but nobody talks about the need to learn to operate another device. I feel pretty comfortable with Baselight and Lustre, less so with Filmmaster and Scratch and now I feel like going back to the future. Last time I touched DaVinci, it was 888 and 2k just came into the scene. How much more grading software do I need to learn? Storm, Speedgrade, Pablo...

 

[shashbugu]

I am Excited but I do know that Resolve is a complete system, its not really a small piece of software like AE or Nuke etc. Its an OS running on an OS. your files etc are saved in its system. its pretty daunting. The interface is ugly and really old looking, like Avids old film composer software from 14 years ago. I hope they revamp that interface because the tools and power of the system is phenomenal, but really if you work with film. Lustre, Scratch and Speed-grade are so much more sexier, than all the others Filmmaster Pogle etc

 

[Tim Whitcomb]

Tim,

I can see how this would bum you out. You are invested in a Quantel Pablo and I'm sure you can only imagine the writing on the wall. I would be bummed out too if I had a Scratch, Pablo or Baselight (new 95k system released at NAB) system... Heck even Speedgrade. It's only a matter of time before all these toolsets are readjusted for mass market pricing. Too many digital cinema cameras are being pushed out.

Actually I am not bummed for myself or studio at all. Color grading is ALL ABOUT THE ARTIST.. and his/her experience ... and about relationships... its rarely about the kit.

Moreover, lets talk about "Kit"a Quantel Pablo is a complete DI system unrivaled in Stereo3D convergent tools, client present/render free finishing (OK, There was one project we jsut did that had 4 4K composite llayers and that took nearly 3 minutes to render ...eh hem...

Then add single ingest deliverables, Pan and Scan, titles and Graphics, Compositing... nearly UNLIMITED SHAPES and UNLIMITED WINDOWS and so much more and put that in the hands of a master...

We actually affectionately call her... "The CASH MACHINE"

Moreover REV 5.0 coming Summer 2010 is breaking new grounds going 64bit and the new 3D timeline is just plain sick.

Affordable tools for the legions of filmmakers is great, but color grading and DI and finishing is an art as much as a science and its only through YEARS of working on a number of (problem) films that they become masters.

That my friend, is PRICELESS.

 

[M Most]

I guess my point is, if your business model is built around certain equipment being expensive... have a transition plan ready. Because there are going to be a lot of announcements over the coming decade in the same vein as this one.

Business models aren't built around equipment being expensive. They're built around the ability to be profitable. If something costs $1 million, but you can generate $1.5 million with it during its usable lifetime, it's a good investment. If something costs $10 and you can only generate $5 with it, it's a bad investment. The point is that the actual cost of the device is not relevant, its ability to generate revenue over time is. Many here keep quoting the purchase price of these devices as being significant. And that is the case if you're buying it for yourself, with occasional use by others. But if you're a business whose purpose is to provide, maintain, and service these things for a rental audience, it's about value and your particular clientele's demands. The major rental houses are sending Red Ones with MX upgrades out for about $3500 per week. If you were to charge the same rate for an Alexa, it would only take about 18 weeks for it to pay itself off. If one believes there is at least a two year useful lifetime, that can make for a profitable investment if it remains in demand. Right now, the most popular cameras by far for television series - the major high end user of digital cinema cameras right now (the vast majority of studio features are still shot on film unless they're 3D productions) - are the F35, Genesis, and D21. These go for a considerably higher rental rate. So in the market I'm talking about, it's not about price. It's about perceived value, reliability of both the equipment and the vendor supplying it (and by that I mean the rental house), and the product that the user needs. No matter how much value you may think 4K and RAW bring to the table, the major studios have clearly decided that what they really need and currently want are really great HD images with a simple post path. That might not be the case in the somewhat distant future you're referring to, or even two years from now, but it is the case today.

The same is true in post production. If you're dealing with a clientele that expects real time performance, no compromises, effectively unlimited storage capabilities, top talent, and fast turnarounds, something like Apple Color is not going to provide that. A Baselight for $95K might sound like a lot of money to someone who wants to reach into their own pocket and start their own business. But for established players who are doing high end studio work, it's about the long term investment and the ability to do work continually over a long period of time on that equipment. In other words, many clients and many shows are paying for that equipment, not just the owner of it with personal projects. As I said, business models are about profitability, and profitability in the post business comes from providing a level of service, experience, and efficiency that bests your direct competitors. It's not about the purchase price of the equipment, it's about that equipment's ability to do the job day in and day out, with great vendor support, and provide an interactive experience for both the colorist and the client that doesn't let the equipment get in the way. That's why the large facilities are built around things like Baselights, Pablos, Lustres, and (at least up to now) DaVinci 2K's and Resolves. When you're running these things nearly 24 hours a day (which is what you do in the television business, with dailies being handled overnight) you need something a bit more industrial strength. As I said, it's not always about the purchase price.

 

[M Most]

Actually I am not bummed for myself or studio at all. Color grading is ALL ABOUT THE ARTIST.. and his/her experience ... and about relationships... its rarely about the kit. ...
Affordable tools for the legions of filmmakers is great, but color grading and DI and finishing is an art as much as a science and its only through YEARS of working on a number of (problem) films that they become masters.

That my friend, is PRICELESS.

While I don't completely disagree, I've also seen a lot of evidence that the erosion of equipment value directly leads to an erosion in the willingness of clients to pay for the talent in the chair. If one doesn't believe this, one only has to ask a number of editors what they're making now compared to what they made before everybody and their grandmother could have Final Cut Pro. The ability of individuals to make money is directly affected by the willingness of the clients to continue paying them. When the perceived value of the room goes down, that willingness goes down as well. That's not elitism, that's just simple fact, borne out by the general erosion in salaries across the industry over the last 10 years.

 

[Luis Otero]

Assimilate

Assimilate

What would the Assimilate team must be thinking right now? :mad2:

So many people, like our own Sanjin (and you know how this gentlemen can argue and insist), asked so many times to Assimilate to provide something similar to this... It seems that they never thought that a name like DaVinci would be acquired and offer the full software for less than $1K.

Next quake, please. It is one company after the other that are really making great tools to be accessible to the masses.

 

[Sanjin Jukic]

Business models aren't built around equipment being expensive. They're built around the ability to be profitable. If something costs $1 million, but you can generate $1.5 million with it during its usable lifetime, it's a good investment. If something costs $10 and you can only generate $5 with it, it's a bad investment. The point is that the actual cost of the device is not relevant, its ability to generate revenue over time is. Many here keep quoting the purchase price of these devices as being significant. And that is the case if you're buying it for yourself, with occasional use by others. But if you're a business whose purpose is to provide, maintain, and service these things for a rental audience, it's about value and your particular clientele's demands. The major rental houses are sending Red Ones with MX upgrades out for about $3500 per week. If you were to charge the same rate for an Alexa, it would only take about 18 weeks for it to pay itself off. If one believes there is at least a two year useful lifetime, that can make for a profitable investment if it remains in demand. Right now, the most popular cameras by far for television series - the major high end user of digital cinema cameras right now (the vast majority of studio features are still shot on film unless they're 3D productions) - are the F35, Genesis, and D21. These go for a considerably higher rental rate. So in the market I'm talking about, it's not about price. It's about perceived value, reliability of both the equipment and the vendor supplying it (and by that I mean the rental house), and the product that the user needs. No matter how much value you may think 4K and RAW bring to the table, the major studios have clearly decided that what they really need and currently want are really great HD images with a simple post path. That might not be the case in the somewhat distant future you're referring to, or even two years from now, but it is the case today.

The same is true in post production. If you're dealing with a clientele that expects real time performance, no compromises, effectively unlimited storage capabilities, top talent, and fast turnarounds, something like Apple Color is not going to provide that. A Baselight for $95K might sound like a lot of money to someone who wants to reach into their own pocket and start their own business. But for established players who are doing high end studio work, it's about the long term investment and the ability to do work continually over a long period of time on that equipment. In other words, many clients and many shows are paying for that equipment, not just the owner of it with personal projects. As I said, business models are about profitability, and profitability in the post business comes from providing a level of service, experience, and efficiency that bests your direct competitors. It's not about the purchase price of the equipment, it's about that equipment's ability to do the job day in and day out, with great vendor support, and provide an interactive experience for both the colorist and the client that doesn't let the equipment get in the way. That's why the large facilities are built around things like Baselights, Pablos, Lustres, and (at least up to now) DaVinci 2K's and Resolves. When you're running these things nearly 24 hours a day (which is what you do in the television business, with dailies being handled overnight) you need something a bit more industrial strength. As I said, it's not always about the purchase price.

To conclude from this sort of statement is that if for example MMost would work as a consulter in the companies like a RED or Blackmagic he would probably be fired soon just because for those two companies the main credo is to lower a purchase price as much as possible without jeopardizing the image quality made by its products.

 

[lionel2p]

Tom,

I agree 100% with your last post. The real treasure of my small company is the people working in it. Workflow killers and excellent colorists are not walking in every streets, and the long term experience is obviously the key. My Smoke Advanced investment was an excellent one. I made dozen of projects with it and it's rock solid, even for 4k projects. I recently made a 90 minutes RED documentary, ingested in 4k, with lot of compositing, pan and scan, tracking and so on. My purpose is the price, what clients are going to pay in the near future. I was told recently by a nice one "Now Smoke is 20$, I guess your going to change your prices". Bing. Oh, I have my speech ok "People, environement, blabla, blabla" but freelance are pushing more and more. For the moment, you can't replace the experience you were talking about on an end to end project. I have no doubt about the future of post-companies like mine : small, solid with good people. But I'm sure it's going to change the way I invest on those pricey toys. Baselight is now 95$, it will be 25$ in one year or so. Difficult to have the money back in one year, impossible. That's the point.

 

[Tim Whitcomb]

While I don't completely disagree, I've also seen a lot of evidence that the erosion of equipment value directly leads to an erosion in the willingness of clients to pay for the talent in the chair. If one doesn't believe this, one only has to ask a number of editors what they're making now compared to what they made before everybody and their grandmother could have Final Cut Pro. The ability of individuals to make money is directly affected by the willingness of the clients to continue paying them. When the perceived value of the room goes down, that willingness goes down as well. That's not elitism, that's just simple fact, borne out by the general erosion in salaries across the industry over the last 10 years.

Yeah, definitely agree with you here.

We currently enjoy some market exclusivity that doesnt exist in LA and it also doesnt hurt that the former leading post house closed this year, just as we are about to launch. Timing is everything. We have been cursed by bvuilding delays, but really, its been a blessing.

We also offer some killer FCP Color Suites with Control Surfaces, Ultrascope, RAID, etc... all manned by freelance up and coming colorists ...should clients desire a more affordable route.

I know you also understand that their is a LOT more to a suite or room than software or hardware. Its all the support and monitoring gear that adds up quickly - especially for color critical work.

We just had to spend $20K on an Omnitek XR for 4:4:4 work on a straight to DVD feature that requird 4:4:4 deliverables... and $16K on the most advanced monitor calibration tool, just to win the job.

 

[M Most]

What would the Assimilate team must be thinking right now? :mad2:

So many people, like our own Sanjin (and you know how this gentlemen can argue and insist), asked so many times to Assimilate to provide something similar to this... It seems that they never thought that a name like DaVinci would be acquired and offer the full software for less than $1K.

Next quake, please. It is one company after the other that are really making great tools to be accessible to the masses.

Well, as long as we're discussing business models, consider that Assimilate basically has one product, the Scratch software. Blackmagic has a host of other hardware products. You leverage what you have. If Blackmagic feels they can generate enough revenue from a low end/high end approach for DaVinci to justify continuing the line, that's their business decision. Assimilate is in a very different position with different financial considerations. Larger companies with diverse product lines can afford loss leaders. Companies with fewer products can't. That's simple business logic.

I think people here also tend to vastly overestimate the effective size of the current or potential digital finishing market. Red is the most successful vendor by far for digital cinema cameras, having sold over 6000 units. But even if every one of those users bought a copy a Resolve, that's only $6 million in revenue - nothing to sneeze at, but not really enough to justify a really concentrated R&D effort for years to come, especially without a lot more new sales given that Blackmagic doesn't intend to charge any maintenance fees. There's a cost associated with making anything, including software, that has to be maintained, supported, and improved constantly in order to stay vital. And for every company, there's a cost of doing business. Both of those costs must be met for a company to remain viable. To me, $1000 is a loss leader price that Blackmagic is hoping to partially make up by selling Decklink cards and associated converter boxes to many of those DaVinci purchasers, just like Apple justified the "free" inclusion of Color in their suite by a potential increase in Mac Pro sales. Whether that works only time will tell. But the ability to essentially give things away is very different for different vendors. The price of staying in business differs based on a number of factors, and none of them have anything to do with being nice to the community or "democratization."

 

[Bruce Allen]

While I don't completely disagree, I've also seen a lot of evidence that the erosion of equipment value directly leads to an erosion in the willingness of clients to pay for the talent in the chair.

Hmm, when I started doing 3D, Softimage cost something like $10,000 per CPU. We were using very expensive SGI Indigo2Extremes and sometimes would throw renders on the Onyx Flame system. 3D artists were paid pretty well then.

Guess what? Things are much cheaper now - and 3D artists are still paid well. About the same or better, I'd say.

Also, cheap desktop systems meant that my friends could start their own companies and boutiques and in a few years they were driving around in Porsches and vintage restored black Mercedes gothmobiles.

If one doesn't believe this, one only has to ask a number of editors what they're making now compared to what they made before everybody and their grandmother could have Final Cut Pro.

If they SUCKED then yeah their rate probably did have to go down. Most of the editors I know really weren't affected. I was assisting for a $1000/day editor and she got the same rate whether she used Lightworks, Avid or FCP.

This is like saying that the salaries of painters went down when paints became cheaper. Maybe that was true in the Middle Ages when Ultramarine was a precious resource but not now.

Right now, the cost of the system I use (software and hardware, all plugins, etc) at my workplace is less than a month's wages for me. Actually, that is high since we recently upgraded hardware. My best ratio was when I was art directing a high-end stereoscopic title sequence on a $500 Craigslist PC with a $450 monitor - ok, with about $4000 worth of software and $500 worth of drives. We'd take stuff into the fanciest 3D Pablo suite in Fotokem - and the colorist wouldn't touch a thing. I know that for sure because the one time I wanted him to tweak a shot's color it took me about half an hour of cajoling.

If you're someone who has trained your eye and developed relationships with clients who respect you as a creative collaborator, then this is a golden time.

If you're some button-pushing online monkey then yes, you should be very afraid.

Mike, I now you mean this in good faith. But to be honest, every time you try to tell us folks that we aren't talented enough to use the big iron stuff, you just remind me of when I was a kid trying to get my animation laid off to VHS and some moron with an Amiga and a Video Toaster won't let me use their system.

I realized really early on: many of the people hiding behind their expensive systems are not the friend of the artist.

The friend of the artist is the manufacturer who gives the community affordable professional tools.

That's why I'm on REDUSER.

That's why this DaVinci thing is so frikkin' awesome.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Sanjin Jukic]

Hmm, when I started doing 3D, Softimage cost something like $10,000 per CPU. We were using very expensive SGI Indigo2Extremes and sometimes would throw renders on the Onyx Flame system. 3D artists were paid pretty well then.

Guess what? Things are much cheaper now - and 3D artists are still paid well. About the same or better, I'd say.

Also, cheap desktop systems meant that my friends could start their own companies and boutiques and in a few years they were driving around in Porsches and vintage restored black Mercedes gothmobiles.



If they SUCKED then yeah their rate probably did have to go down. Most of the editors I know really weren't affected. I was assisting for a $1000/day editor and she got the same rate whether she used Lightworks, Avid or FCP.

This is like saying that the salaries of painters went down when paints became cheaper. Maybe that was true in the Middle Ages when Ultramarine was a precious resource but not now.

Right now, the cost of the system I use (software and hardware, all plugins, etc) at my workplace is less than a month's wages for me. Actually, that is high since we recently upgraded hardware. My best ratio was when I was art directing a high-end stereoscopic title sequence on a $500 Craigslist PC with a $450 monitor - ok, with about $4000 worth of software and $500 worth of drives. We'd take stuff into the fanciest 3D Pablo suite in Fotokem - and the colorist wouldn't touch a thing. I know that for sure because the one time I wanted him to tweak a shot's color it took me about half an hour of cajoling.

If you're someone who has trained your eye and developed relationships with clients who respect you as a creative collaborator, then this is a golden time.

If you're some button-pushing online monkey then yes, you should be very afraid.

Mike, I now you mean this in good faith. But to be honest, every time you try to tell us folks that we aren't talented enough to use the big iron stuff, you just remind me of when I was a kid trying to get my animation laid off to VHS and some moron with an Amiga and a Video Toaster won't let me use their system.

I realized really early on: many of the people hiding behind their expensive systems are not the friend of the artist.

The friend of the artist is the manufacturer who gives the community affordable professional tools.

That's why I'm on REDUSER.

That's why this DaVinci thing is so frikkin' awesome.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

Bruce,

you rocks.

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

My Smoke Advanced investment was an excellent one. I made dozen of projects with it and it's rock solid, even for 4k projects.

It all depends to WHEN you bought your Smoke Advanced. It hopefully returned its investment already, or will in the next half a year. By then Smoke on Mac will be so widely spread in the fields that it will bring prices down. Arguing that Smoke Advanced includes Batch won't help to keep prices.

For the moment, you can't replace the experience you were talking about on an end to end project. I have no doubt about the future of post-companies like mine : small, solid with good people.

Experience and talent cannot be replaced. The trick of a good post house is to sell your experience and talent and keep the clients happy with punctual deliveries that don't gamma shift, that have a clear sound with a menainful loudness, all the titles are rightly spelled and the version is the latest one, etc... Many post house don't even do that right. It's all about reliability and not much about technical advancement.

But I'm sure it's going to change the way I invest on those pricey toys. Baselight is now 95$, it will be 25$ in one year or so. Difficult to have the money back in one year, impossible.

That is my mantra: in this fast changing times you need the ROI in 1 year, longest 2 years. Then a phase of approx. 1 year will follow that let you earn money with the system, then you have to reinvest. Only hardware such as lenses will keep their value longer. The RedOne is a good example. Without an MX upgrade it's already outdated. With Epic in the market the RedOne is bound to become a doorstopper. An MX upgrade is a must to keep it alive another year or so. According to Red's roadmap that will be August to October this year. The money-earning lifetime of a non-upgraded RedOne was then just about 3 years - when you have been in the lucky early numbers...

Back to Resolve on the Mac. Will it ruin my SpeedGrade investment? No - I bought my SpeedGrade license 3 years ago. The investment is payed back twice, probably even more. Will I pay the annual maintenance fee that is currently twice of the price of a Resolve on the Mac license? Yes. Because it can do all I need plus I know how to use it. No reason for me to change that. Will the battle price of Resolve on the Mac change the price tags of the other contenders? Not in the next months. But in the likely case that Resolve on the Mac eats up market shares that hurt all contenders will reconsider their pricing.

Hans

 

[Chris Kenny]

Business models aren't built around equipment being expensive. They're built around the ability to be profitable. If something costs $1 million, but you can generate $1.5 million with it during its usable lifetime, it's a good investment. If something costs $10 and you can only generate $5 with it, it's a bad investment. The point is that the actual cost of the device is not relevant, its ability to generate revenue over time is.

But there's a specific dynamic in this industry that you're not really engaging with in your response.

If something costs you $1M but you can generate $1.5M with it, it may be a good investment. But when that same thing costs $10,000, you probably can't generate $15,000 with it, because every other shop has one that they're desperately trying to rent out. And when it costs $1,000, there might be essentially no rental market for it at all, because everyone who wants one just buys their own.

Back in the days when a 40 MHz Mac tower with 80 MB of RAM was an $8000 item, places used to rent their "Photoshop workstations" for high hourly rates. You don't see that anymore, because every cheap consumer laptop in the world now runs Photoshop more than well enough for all but a few obscure edge cases.

The same thing is happening, step by step, in the video production industry. How many indie features still get edited in rented edit bays, for instance? The two we've got in post now... we transcoded the footage, set up some Final Cut projects, and sent the editors off to cut on their MacBook Pros. That's possibly weeks of edit bay rental that, 15 years ago, some facility would have gotten. But now, that revenue is just gone.

OK, so one can just invest in different equipment, that does things people can't do on their laptops. Well, yes. For now. But the set of things that can't be done with cheap commodity hardware and software shrinks every year. And sooner or later, the set contains nothing relevant to a typical feature film; people won't see a need to rent time on/with expensive specialty gear to post a feature any more than they do to touch up some photos today.

At that point, everyone who plans to stay in the industry better have migrated to a business based around having some in-demand technical, artistic, or organizational skill, doing in-house content development and production, or something along those lines. And even then, when 13 year olds start teaching themselves color grading on pirated copies of Resolve (the way I bet half the people in their 20s in this forum did with Photoshop in the '90s), you're going to discover there's actually a lot more talent out there than you suspected as well.

 

[Tim Whitcomb]

Hmm, when I started doing 3D, Softimage cost something like $10,000 per CPU. We were using very expensive SGI Indigo2Extremes and sometimes would throw renders on the Onyx Flame system. 3D artists were paid pretty well then.

Guess what? Things are much cheaper now - and 3D artists are still paid well. About the same or better, I'd say.

Also, cheap desktop systems meant that my friends could start their own companies and boutiques and in a few years they were driving around in Porsches and vintage restored black Mercedes gothmobiles.

If they SUCKED then yeah their rate probably did have to go down. Most of the editors I know really weren't affected. I was assisting for a $1000/day editor and she got the same rate whether she used Lightworks, Avid or FCP.

This is like saying that the salaries of painters went down when paints became cheaper. Maybe that was true in the Middle Ages when Ultramarine was a precious resource but not now.

Right now, the cost of the system I use (software and hardware, all plugins, etc) at my workplace is less than a month's wages for me. Actually, that is high since we recently upgraded hardware. My best ratio was when I was art directing a high-end stereoscopic title sequence on a $500 Craigslist PC with a $450 monitor - ok, with about $4000 worth of software and $500 worth of drives. We'd take stuff into the fanciest 3D Pablo suite in Fotokem - and the colorist wouldn't touch a thing. I know that for sure because the one time I wanted him to tweak a shot's color it took me about half an hour of cajoling.

If you're someone who has trained your eye and developed relationships with clients who respect you as a creative collaborator, then this is a golden time.

If you're some button-pushing online monkey then yes, you should be very afraid.

Mike, I now you mean this in good faith. But to be honest, every time you try to tell us folks that we aren't talented enough to use the big iron stuff, you just remind me of when I was a kid trying to get my animation laid off to VHS and some moron with an Amiga and a Video Toaster won't let me use their system.

I realized really early on: many of the people hiding behind their expensive systems are not the friend of the artist.

The friend of the artist is the manufacturer who gives the community affordable professional tools.

That's why I'm on REDUSER.

That's why this DaVinci thing is so frikkin' awesome.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

Hi Bruce. I seriously LOVE your website. Im so going to steal that

Excellent points and I wholeheartedly agree that talent, in the end, is all that matters, not gear.

But ask Sean Rawls, who does a TON in our Apple Color suite, what system he would rather use for CC. (he is now training on the Pablo)

Of course, it's great that all these tools are getting cheaper and better, but please don't tell me you wouldn't use heavy iron if you had access. HI is worth every penny, like any tool, when used correctly.

I also hope you realize that this DaVinci software on a MAC initiative is clearly designed to entice people to get used to the interface and then, hopefully, will lead to some to pay up for the Heavier and Heavier iron.

This will either be really smart for BM or the final death nell for DaVinci, and then what will that $1000 investment be worth if this sales idea flops?

Time will tell. For now, I am eager to see how this software compares to COLOR.

cheers

 

[Andrae Palmer]

I think it takes way more "talent" to be a 3D artist than to be a colorist... hence the reason why they are still paid well when the toolset is cheap. A colorist price tag to me is most justified by "experience" on Heavy Iron. Now if there is no need for Heavy Iron and everyone can gain experience then we undoubtedly will generally see the rates fall. This is what MMost was referring to. Now taking a look at pro editors... often their toolsets are
way more expensive than an amateur... High end workstations, monitors, RAID, SAN and I/O devices. Of course Bruce is right... a highly networked editor per se will still retain good rates when compared to say a amateur with no credits behind his name or a pro rig.

 

[Barend Onneweer]

What would the Assimilate team must be thinking right now? :mad2:

So many people, like our own Sanjin (and you know how this gentlemen can argue and insist), asked so many times to Assimilate to provide something similar to this... It seems that they never thought that a name like DaVinci would be acquired and offer the full software for less than $1K.

Next quake, please. It is one company after the other that are really making great tools to be accessible to the masses.

One thing you don't take into account is support. Since Apple started giving Color away - how has that been working for you? I know a lot of people make money using Color. But I also hear a lot of complaints about workflow issues and nobody at Apple gives a sh!t.

With thousands of people buying DaVinci for USD 995: who do you think you can call if you've got a problem?

With Assimilate, the lines are really short so I can get real help and real answers very quickly. Sure, the support level is part of the purchase price. Is the added value worth the price difference? With DaVinci at 995 it remains to be seen, but thus far I'm okay where I am.