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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

I am going to return my copy of DaVinci to B&H as it is now worthless

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M Most said:
If you minimize the profit potential of a particular market segment, it discourages competition because it removes any incentive for competitive companies to continue to do further development. With fewer products, there is less development and less innovation. Fair competition exists when the various players can compete on features and performance in order to grow a user base and make their efforts profitable. It is lessened when one of those competitors unilaterally decides that profit is unimportant.
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OK I see. I was thinking of the competition among colorists and you were speaking of the developers.
 
Scott Crawley said:
Black Magic is taking less of your money. I fail to see why that is a problem.

The value of software is what it enables you to do, not the price tag. DaVinci is more powerful today than it was at $250,000 and now it cost $1000. (We both know it actually costs a lot more, but let's run with it.) That leaves your business with $249,000 more capital to invest in other aspects of your business.

You could hire some very good sales people to go out and pimp your ass for that money. You could add more workstations and hire additional colorists to increase your working capacity... Make up the drop in rates with volume. You could add a lot of luxury into your building to make your clients more comfortable. The list of things you can do with that money is long, so why are you bitching, really? The only thing you have lost is resale value on the workstations you already own, and those frankly should have paid for themselves already if you bought them back when the cost was premium.

I know a car salesman who had complaints like yours several years ago. Car buyers now had easy access to invoice prices via the Internet and wouldn't be gouged. The gold rush was over he thought. The ones who continued to prosper saw the Internet as an opportunity to reach more customers and sell more cars. They found a way to leverage the thing that was troubling them as an asset rather than bitch about it as a hindrance. You could do the same.
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Once again, we are not in any kind of financial trouble - for us $1000 is no big deal, less than a day's work - it's the principle that bugs me. We do not "gouge" anybody, but we do charge for gear rental. If I turn up on set with our camera, it obviously costs more than if I show up with just my nice pants. Otherwise why invest in gear that gives you zero R.O.I.? BM already took my money (if I can't get a refund). Many others also just spent $1000 - and for them $1000 might mean quite a lot in this economy. They were hoping to charge $50 a day extra to get an R.O.I. on this investment (which is fair on a $1000 software investment = other factors like studio and workstations are on top of that, and last but far from least their time) I am pissed off on their behalf as much or more than on mine.

We've had Davinci for just a few weeks now - I've been learning it (I'd previously learned Lustre some years back). Was having Davinci Full for two weeks worth $1000? No, not really. Like Mr. Most, I was talking about developers being driven into the ground, not really colorists, although free software will certainly not help colorists who are not yet "name brands" either - and that's the reality of the market, whether you think it should be so or not.
 
jake blackstone said:
Baselight plugin inside Nuke is a HUGE deal. Forget all that funny LUT business. Open XML inside Nuke and voila, all your R3D would open, perfectly graded, looking exactly the same as in BL and FCP. Do all your magic in Nuke and export XML. Open it in BL and voila, all your grades still intact, just do the final grading pass. And the best part, no rendering and baking in color grades. It is all not just metadata. I think this is a future of the modern pipeline- everything is metadata and no rendering, until the very end.
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Indeed!
 
Bing Bailey said:
I never understood why people put so much stock in money. isn't its value what it does and not what it costs. does it do less than it did last week. is it still not a valuable tool no matter what the cost. prices change all the time. if a tool is great it doesn't matter if it cost one thing one week or another thing the next. its the combination of what you can do with the tool. it doesn't colour correct/grade for you.
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I'm sorry but, if we bought gear with this philosophy we would be bankrupt.
 
I'd say that mid-level color correction will shortly descend into a minimum-wage job.
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At the moment I do some work with Color Finesse in AE and it's not that optimal for color grading, but my clients trust my color vision and my skills in grading so I will get payed anyway.
As always the tools are just tools, color grading is not something anyone can do, just as good cinematography isn't something anyone can do. I do not say I am the best colorist around, no way, but I have worked a lot as a still photographer shooting RAW and working with that, this is the same in some ways and I have been working with films more then still photography so.

They pay me based on my knowledge and skill, not my tools, if anything this will be more and more important in the future. Some years from now anyone can do post production at home with calibrated screens and 4K mastering for a technical budget comparable to lunchmoney (well, you get my point) and then it all comes down to your eyes... those have a price.
 
Christoffer Glans said:
They pay me based on my knowledge and skill, not my tools, if anything this will be more and more important in the future. Some years from now anyone can do post production at home with calibrated screens and 4K mastering for a technical budget comparable to lunchmoney (well, you get my point) and then it all comes down to your eyes... those have a price.
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+1 Good post.

If you're only getting paid because you "have something" that other don't... you're probably shouldn't be doing it.

On the bright side... with all this "democratizing" happening... at least things are starting to become more about skill/creativity/talent than just about "owning" things. We're all artists, not just gear owners, right? :wink5:
 
Scott Crawley said:
I understand your concern Rob. Things are bound to get a lot more competitive and rates will take a hit. You are going to have to work harder to get new clients than in the past. However, if you are saying that any unskilled noob with a free piece of software will be able to effectively compete with your work product, then I'm afraid you need to raise your game.
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Have to agree here. And looking at it from another angle, this has always been an issue. Many professional applications have gone the route of free or dirt cheap over the years, and many others have become common acquisitions for those using pirated warez. 99.9% of the people using Resolve Lite or those with pirated versions of Photoshop, MAYA, etc.. are not going to do anything with it. They're not your competition, they're not to worry about. Sure, one or two of them might step up with some talent, but those are rare.

I can totally respect Rob's point of view. The free version of Resolve does everything he needs. On the other hand, how long has he owned the paid version? Did it not pay for itself in that time? I paid $900 for my first seat of Resolve and it paid for itself, and then some, on the first job I used it for. Bought a second seat of Resolve (from another reduser member via ebay) so I could put the dongle on my DIT cart, or have one to take with me. I'm not sure if that one is really worth-while now that the free version does so much. But hey, I've got it, so I'll use it.

All things considered, I just look at this from a different perspective. And that is Resolve is a free tool now that does a lot. The paid version, which has a street price of about $900, gets you some added benefits such as support for 3D/stereo, resolutions of 2K and higher, multiple GPU support, multiple Rocket support. Apparently I didn't realize that the free version supported the Rocket... But if you need those feature, then you pay for it. Rob is right about the noise reduction... It's pretty weak compared to Neat Video or similar solutions.
 
To this entire thread I say, rubbish.

I bill the same rate for a 10 hour day, $600, if you have me on set to shoot a 7D, or an Epic or an Alexa. It doesn't matter if we shoot Master Primes or DSLR lenses with screw on gears, my rate is the same.

Guess what? That's the deal with my coloring services too. I make my money though on my services ... at a measly $60 per hour (my current rate), plus overtime if required for rush work.

My coloring business was built on Color ... which was effectively free with Final Cut.

Speedgrade is going to be free with Adobe CS6. Speed grade kicks ass by the way. Its not Resolve ... but it doesn't need to be either.

Avid has some great coloring tools in their suite which is just $3000 and includes a lot of very flexible tools. Most people don't buy Media Composer Suite as a grading toolset - but it does the job for a lot of productions if the operator has the talent. So again - its grading tools are effectively "free."

Resolve being "free" is a non-issue to my business. Resolve at $1000 just delayed purchases of other BMD gear I desire to own.

$1000 is not the sort of barrier to entry that make rates differ. I mean, I'd price the paid Resolve software only for OS X at $10 per day in my suite.

(The simple math I use, is that the gear should pay off its total ownership cost in 100 days of rental - for most software that's simply the (retail price/100).)

All this bitching over $10/day? Seriously?

Even with the full panel at $20000 ... we are just talking about $200 per day. (The panel requires very little maintenance, and will last as long as a good keyboard. 10+ years)

Even with Resolve at $0 ... the rest of the things you need to make a decent suite (forget a top notch feature grading suite) are really way more expensive. I charge a fair rental for those devices. They usually break-even in their service life, and sometimes they make a profit, but they are not the point.

No one has ever rented my suite because of the cool gear in it. If they want cool gear there are other places in town that completely blow away what I have here - they cost more, but they are worth it if you need the gear. Both facilities are happy to work with me, and I love working with their toys when a client will pay for them.

And that's the central point ... I am the talent people want to hire (or not). Not Resolve, Color, Speedgrade or Baselight.

So, quit yer bitchin.

So ... Black Magic has lowered the cost to you of being in business - if you never need 4K or multiple GPU's/Rockets. You should thank them
 
Free resolve is about volume selling hardware. It's that simple.

How many places NEED a dedicated color correction suite, kitted up to run jobs through at high dollar with daily bookings?

How many ex FCP users doing web work and some broadcast work, in a field that is constantly converging, want to be able to monitor and grade well for TV Screens, and have had to drop Color as an option because FCP was EOL'd. Lots.

How many of those had Matrox boxes or AJA cards. How many, especially know with Avid's open I/O infrastructure, will be looking much more seriously at Black Magic cards.

I don't know the answer to that - hopefully BMD does, but the only logical answer is that they are looking at moving a lot of cards in the HD realm, as they probably see editing going the way of desktop publishing and that for their lower end market to grow it needs to get cheaper and broader.

Even someone who uses the video I/O of their edit suite every day, and maybe goes into a full scale grading solution four or five times a year, will now seriously consider going the Black Magic route over previous vendors they were happy with when kitting out a new suite. Someone looking for more power from FCP-X, especially when video I/O for that becomes common place, will be looking at Black Magic first and foremost because of free resolve, even though they may then never actually use Resolve, they are still probably 10 times more likely to get BMD card over AJA because they won't have a prior experience with any output card manufacturer, but one will offer Resolve free, another won't.

Yes, they probably have burnt a few early adopters, but their main business is hardware, so building that relationship is a smart one - would I be offering customers who had brought software Resolve since the first iteration of Resolve Lite came out some sort of rebate? Absolutely, that would be a good thing to do.

Just as RED gives away Redcine-X away free to support hardware that NEEDS that software solution to work to it's full potential properly, so I can also see BMD giving away Resolve for free to allow their various HD Hardware cards to work to their full potential, for those customers whose needs are more basic than a standard grading suite.

Loss-leaders aren't always smart business, but sometimes they are. I can't fault BMD for doing things DIFFERENTLY given the economy and the march of technology, but hopefully they will also be good to customers who brought their software, as well as their hardware.
 
Rob Ruffo said:
Like Mr. Most, I was talking about developers being driven into the ground, not really colorists, although free software will certainly not help colorists who are not yet "name brands" either - and that's the reality of the market, whether you think it should be so or not.
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I think that Black Magic has a plan for how they are going to pay their developers. Let them handle their business, I don't think you have the right information to run it for them.

As far as what a colorist can or can't do in this market ... its like anything else. Either you learn your craft so you can stand out, or you don't and then you should move on.
 
Bryce O said:
+1 Good post.

If you're only getting paid because you "have something" that other don't... you're probably shouldn't be doing it.

On the bright side... with all this "democratizing" happening... at least things are starting to become more about skill/creativity/talent than just about "owning" things. We're all artists, not just gear owners, right? :wink5:
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Again with the "we're artists" mantra. Of course we are (at least I hope so.) But we are also gear owners and that side is just a business that needs to make money in and of itself. Otherwise no one will buy gear anymore, and no one will have an incentive to develop new tools for us. I was honest and bought a legit copy of Resolve 2 weeks ago rather than pirating - and what is my reward for that except feeling burned and owning extra features that have no meaning in my market?
 
jake blackstone said:
I re-read your post twice and I'm still n ot sure on your point. Are you under an impression, that Resolve Lite is still limited in the number of nodes? It is not and it is perfectly capable of doing everything Scratch can do, up to HD, for free at that:-)
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Hello Jake

I was under the impression that resolve light could only due two nodes per clip, you are right just read the specs my fault. I see that the limitation is upto HD.

Each software that is put out by whatever company is great and can do most of if not all of everything you require. For us Assimilate was a clear choice.
 
Craig Parkes said:
Free resolve is about volume selling hardware. It's that simple.

How many places NEED a dedicated color correction suite, kitted up to run jobs through at high dollar with daily bookings?

How many ex FCP users doing web work and some broadcast work, in a field that is constantly converging, want to be able to monitor and grade well for TV Screens, and have had to drop Color as an option because FCP was EOL'd. Lots.

How many of those had Matrox boxes or AJA cards. How many, especially know with Avid's open I/O infrastructure, will be looking much more seriously at Black Magic cards.

I don't know the answer to that - hopefully BMD does, but the only logical answer is that they are looking at moving a lot of cards in the HD realm, as they probably see editing going the way of desktop publishing and that for their lower end market to grow it needs to get cheaper and broader.

Even someone who uses the video I/O of their edit suite every day, and maybe goes into a full scale grading solution four or five times a year, will now seriously consider going the Black Magic route over previous vendors they were happy with when kitting out a new suite. Someone looking for more power from FCP-X, especially when video I/O for that becomes common place, will be looking at Black Magic first and foremost because of free resolve, even though they may then never actually use Resolve, they are still probably 10 times more likely to get BMD card over AJA because they won't have a prior experience with any output card manufacturer, but one will offer Resolve free, another won't.

Yes, they probably have burnt a few early adopters, but their main business is hardware, so building that relationship is a smart one - would I be offering customers who had brought software Resolve since the first iteration of Resolve Lite came out some sort of rebate? Absolutely, that would be a good thing to do.

Just as RED gives away Redcine-X away free to support hardware that NEEDS that software solution to work to it's full potential properly, so I can also see BMD giving away Resolve for free to allow their various HD Hardware cards to work to their full potential, for those customers whose needs are more basic than a standard grading suite.

Loss-leaders aren't always smart business, but sometimes they are. I can't fault BMD for doing things DIFFERENTLY given the economy and the march of technology, but hopefully they will also be good to customers who brought their software, as well as their hardware.
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The right thing to do would be to offer a full refund for anyone who has purchased Resolve with the last 4 months, or some reasonable time frame. At this stage people who bought it last week one could say were duped.
 
Alexander Ibrahim said:
I think that Black Magic has a plan for how they are going to pay their developers. Let them handle their business, I don't think you have the right information to run it for them.

As far as what a colorist can or can't do in this market ... its like anything else. Either you learn your craft so you can stand out, or you don't and then you should move on.
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It's not THEIR business I am talking about, it's the entire field - they have hurt all their competition in a way that does not represent decent competitive behavior. I can guarantee that somewhere right now, someone just cancelled a development plan for a color correction software because of what they did, or at least reduced the scope.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
Have to agree here. And looking at it from another angle, this has always been an issue. Many professional applications have gone the route of free or dirt cheap over the years, and many others have become common acquisitions for those using pirated warez. 99.9% of the people using Resolve Lite or those with pirated versions of Photoshop, MAYA, etc.. are not going to do anything with it. They're not your competition, they're not to worry about. Sure, one or two of them might step up with some talent, but those are rare.

I can totally respect Rob's point of view. The free version of Resolve does everything he needs. On the other hand, how long has he owned the paid version? Did it not pay for itself in that time? I paid $900 for my first seat of Resolve and it paid for itself, and then some, on the first job I used it for. Bought a second seat of Resolve (from another reduser member via ebay) so I could put the dongle on my DIT cart, or have one to take with me. I'm not sure if that one is really worth-while now that the free version does so much. But hey, I've got it, so I'll use it.

All things considered, I just look at this from a different perspective. And that is Resolve is a free tool now that does a lot. The paid version, which has a street price of about $900, gets you some added benefits such as support for 3D/stereo, resolutions of 2K and higher, multiple GPU support, multiple Rocket support. Apparently I didn't realize that the free version supported the Rocket... But if you need those feature, then you pay for it. Rob is right about the noise reduction... It's pretty weak compared to Neat Video or similar solutions.
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I've only had mien for two weeks - just finishing to learn it so I got $0 back. Like I said $1000 is not much to us, but we are exceptionally fortunate. My problem is the bigger picture. Red has a good philososophy - tools that are reasonable, not dirt cheap. Dirt cheap, as Mr. Most points out, can't help but drive everything down, including our salaries to the point where surviving is impossible for anyone without a trust fund.
 
Alexander Ibrahim said:
I think that Black Magic has a plan for how they are going to pay their developers. Let them handle their business, I don't think you have the right information to run it for them.

As far as what a colorist can or can't do in this market ... its like anything else. Either you learn your craft so you can stand out, or you don't and then you should move on.
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Alexander.
I'm pretty sure you know, that Rob isn't talking about BM developers. You and I already had this very conversion, if you recall, not three days ago, where you proposed, that all developers should work for free, just like Linus:wink5:
 
Alexander Ibrahim said:
To this entire thread I say, rubbish.

I bill the same rate for a 10 hour day, $600, if you have me on set to shoot a 7D, or an Epic or an Alexa. It doesn't matter if we shoot Master Primes or DSLR lenses with screw on gears, my rate is the same.

Guess what? That's the deal with my coloring services too. I make my money though on my services ... at a measly $60 per hour (my current rate), plus overtime if required for rush work.

My coloring business was built on Color ... which was effectively free with Final Cut.

Speedgrade is going to be free with Adobe CS6. Speed grade kicks ass by the way. Its not Resolve ... but it doesn't need to be either.

Avid has some great coloring tools in their suite which is just $3000 and includes a lot of very flexible tools. Most people don't buy Media Composer Suite as a grading toolset - but it does the job for a lot of productions if the operator has the talent. So again - its grading tools are effectively "free."

Resolve being "free" is a non-issue to my business. Resolve at $1000 just delayed purchases of other BMD gear I desire to own.

$1000 is not the sort of barrier to entry that make rates differ. I mean, I'd price the paid Resolve software only for OS X at $10 per day in my suite.

(The simple math I use, is that the gear should pay off its total ownership cost in 100 days of rental - for most software that's simply the (retail price/100).)

All this bitching over $10/day? Seriously?

Even with the full panel at $20000 ... we are just talking about $200 per day. (The panel requires very little maintenance, and will last as long as a good keyboard. 10+ years)

Even with Resolve at $0 ... the rest of the things you need to make a decent suite (forget a top notch feature grading suite) are really way more expensive. I charge a fair rental for those devices. They usually break-even in their service life, and sometimes they make a profit, but they are not the point.

No one has ever rented my suite because of the cool gear in it. If they want cool gear there are other places in town that completely blow away what I have here - they cost more, but they are worth it if you need the gear. Both facilities are happy to work with me, and I love working with their toys when a client will pay for them.

And that's the central point ... I am the talent people want to hire (or not). Not Resolve, Color, Speedgrade or Baselight.

So, quit yer bitchin.

So ... Black Magic has lowered the cost to you of being in business - if you never need 4K or multiple GPU's/Rockets. You should thank them
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100 days is not standard - it's more like 25-35 at most rental houses.

Are you really saying that you show up with an Alexa and charge $600 a day!? No, you charge for the Alexa rental on top of that (your time). Your argument does not hold up. I am talking about people being discouraged from BUYING software. It's not really practical to rent software and/or charge an extra for that rental, as it is a camera.
 
Rob Ruffo said:
I've only had mien for two weeks - just finishing to learn it so I got $0 back. Like I said $1000 is not much to us, but we are exceptionally fortunate. My problem is the bigger picture. Red has a good philososophy - tools that are reasonable, not dirt cheap. Dirt cheap, as Mr. Most points out, can't help but drive everything down, including our salaries to the point where surviving is impossible for anyone without a trust fund.
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That sucks. Did you contact them? Maybe they would do something for you, though I wouldn't pin any hopes on it.

BTW, I didn't mean to suggest that you were gouging anyone... Some car dealers on the other hand are a different story.

Cheers
 
Steve Das said:
They hurt their competition ?...huh..isn't that what they are supposed to do ?
How many companies and devices did Apple put out of business with their phones ?

19 things an iphone replaces
more than 50 things an iphone replaces

leading to...
Things Apple is worth more than...
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The Antidumping Act of 1916 is designed to stop the practice of pricing imports at a price substantially less than the actual market value.
Resolve is "made" abroad, so the law applies. Unfortunately, presently there is no US maker of color grading software:-)
 
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