Open question to BM: How would you feel if you just bought Resolve?

[Shane Betts]

Passive attitude is the one that sits and complains about a situation, rather than proactively seeking a mutually beneficial solution. Adapting, changing, and evolving require work. Real, active work that accepts and overcomes challenges. Passivity says "If (someone else) doesn't do (some thing), I ______." Sound familiar? Now go contribute to your own destiny, there's no reason for fuss about this stuff.

Nicely said Paul. Exactly.

Rob, I mean you no ill but, what Paul said.

 

[Rob Ruffo]

And I don't think that these points are insignificant either. There are repercussions not only to post houses but also people who work as developers and engineers. FWIU, the majority of Red Giant (makes Magic Bullet and Colorista) coding is now done in Asia. I believe Avid has also outsourced a lot of its development and has essentially stopped designing new hardware b/c it's just too darn expensive to design and make domestically.

Avid may have won a Pyhrric victory against FCP, as it cost them over $200 million in cash on hand, the company is still not turning a profit and they have laid off a lot of workers... most recently our own Michael Phillips.

If people think free doesn't have real some costs associated with it, they are drinking Kool-Aid. Do these costs outweigh the benefits, perhaps not, but they can't be brushed aside either--or made to seem like they don't exist.


Peace to all .

Exactly. And exactly why I am upset and started this thread. If you treat software buyers like idiots and chumps, there will be none as people will feel justified in piracy, , and more jobs will be lost.

To Paul: Someone like me who stirs the pot and brings up what nobody else much mentions has a purpose in society. I told banking friends that maybe lending McMansion buying cash to janitors was not such a good idea in 2008 and... Of course they all yelled at me at the time and told me I didn't get "the new way of doing business", that I had to adapt, that I too should buy some McMansions as investments or be left behind...

OK, now back to my deadline....

 

[Justin Barham]

As an aside to this whole debate, when you guys sell your BM hardware, can you let us know? Thanks!

(fyi, I'm not a colorist, aspiring or otherwise, so no threat there).

 

[Rob Ruffo]

As an aside to this whole debate, when you guys sell your BM hardware, can you let us know? Thanks!

(fyi, I'm not a colorist, aspiring or otherwise, so no threat there).

I'm not a colorist either - I am a DP/director learning more about color, with lots of colorist friends. I don't see other other DPs and directors as threats, I see them as respected colleagues. I only see as threats those who undermine all of our gear investments, and discourage tech innovation, through ludicrous devaluation.

 

[Marc Wielage]

We can say it's all about the art, but the reality is if producers have copies of DaVinci on their desktops for free, they are going to try and get their daughters to do it. This will not kill the high-end jobs, but it will reduce the total number of paying jobs by wiping out a huge chunk of the middle to low end, which will bring down even high-end rates, with so many colorists out of work, to the point where making a living at grading will become impossible for all but a select few.

Buying Final Cut Pro for $500 doesn't instantly make the client's daughter an editor. Buying Pro Tools Native won't make them a mixer, either.

The generally-accepted rule of thumb is that you need at least 5000 hours of experience to be an expert at anything (certainly anything as technical or complex as color-correction, editing, or mixing). To me, the free version of Resolve is no different than Apple cutting the price of Color from $5000 to free when they bundled it with FCP -- and there were quite a few people who had paid $5000 for it. Same thing with Shake.

Look at it this way: think of the big-time post houses out there who paid $700,000 for the Linux version of Resolve with the control surface, and then DaVinci went under and was absorbed into Blackmagic. And then Blackmagic cut the price to about 1/5th of that. It wasn't that long ago that the HD-only DaVinci 2K was about $700K, and you can't give those away today. And I can think of four or five companies that spent millions of dollars on them.

It's easy to say that the software does the work, but in reality, it's all about the person who does the job. Nothing can beat experience and knowledge. I also think that Blackmagic's control surface for Resolve makes a huge difference in terms of speed and efficiency. I suspect the real reason why they cut the price was mainly as a preemptive strike against rivals like Speedgrade (now owned by Adobe), not to hurt existing users. Strictly my theory. I like and use Blackmagic's products, but have no connection to them at all except as a user.

 

[jake blackstone]

I suspect the real reason why they cut the price was mainly as a preemptive strike against rivals like Scratch (now owned by Adobe),

I'm sure this news will be a big surprise to unsuspecting Assimilate, that now they are own by Adobe

 

[Marc Wielage]

Whoops! Make that Speedgrade now owned by Adobe -- my bad.

 

[Thomas Mathai]

I am not a foreign aid worker. I work in THIS business, and I try to speak out on behalf of my sisters and brothers in this business. There are many non-obvious motivations here n my part, including thanking Red for NOT being that way, and maybe not joining the herd in the current group think where everything should be as cheap as possible, non-obvious consequences be damned. Buying gear and software has to remain a good investment or else no one will do so anymore, and tech innovation will stop. I really don't want that to happen. It's not about my puny $1000, it's about stopping that from happening. I would gladly throw another $10 000 down the tubes to stop that from happening.

Red has put fire under the asses of other camera makers, and that's a great thing, but they didn't come out and try to destroy the entire high-end camera business as a viable business model. A healthy amount of fire is not a scorched earth amount - there's a difference. There is also a HUGE perceptual difference to clients between $1000 and free. If you don't understand that difference in markets like ads and high-end music video in major production cities then you simply do not have experience in that world. This is fine, but don't claim to know what it's like to work in that world, and many BM users do work in that world.

I speak up, also, because I find FinalCut X to be a horrible indication of a possible future, a future where there would be no high-end, nothing for those struggling at the bottom to hope for, just poverty and prosumer crap all around. I'm not a Marxist. I think everyone needs a top echelon to hope for, whether they reach it or not.

I'm not whining here. I'm trying to stand up for what I feel to be right.

The true cost of a color grading system is more than $1,000.

It requires fast powerful hardware, reliable and fast storage, control surface, very good monitoring and calibration system, backup system in case of emergencies. I'm sure the colorists here can all add more to this.

Sure you may have the hardware and storage, and think you can work around some of the other requirements, but eventually if you take color grading seriously, you'll realize it's important to do it right, especially if clients are paying for it to be right.

Would you rather have no Resolve instead of free Resolve? BM saw a reason to buy DaVinci, and it's to help them sell more hardware, just like Apple. I find it to be more tragic when products die that should have lived on, like Shake, Commotion, Elastic Reality to name a few.

Look into the history of post, and you'll realize how much has changed, and had to change. Prices have been dropping for a long time. At the same time, it hasn't stopped people from buying hardware or stopped innovation. In fact check out the Adobe Max 2011 videos so you can see what new tech is coming our way in the future.

Price drops happen and you can't change that. At the same time some companies raise prices because they feel it's worth it.

 

[John Tissavary]

Black Magic Design is (mainly) a hardware company. The way I see it, they are selling a $30k set of panels with free, excellent software.

To get maximum (i.e. truly professional) functionality from Resolve, you need the panels. Color grading on a professional level is about a lot of different things, some of which were mentioned in this thread, but one major factor is speed. Without a fully functional set of panels, Resolve is not exactly the fastest & most intuitive interface. True, the Wave or MC Artist panels work with Resolve, but until you've used the dedicated panel set, you've not truly experienced what Resolve is about.

Add to that the $20-40k worth of workstation (3x-4x gpu, 600MB/s + Raid) you really need to be competitive on a broad level, you're talking $70k in just hardware. Now add furniture, professional monitoring, calibration equipment, etc..., and you're easily at $85k. That's a great deal better than it used to be, but the cost of software, in this context, is the least significant.

This is completely ignoring the fact that no matter how much a 'race to the bottom' we may be seeing right now, there is no substitute for competent, talented colorists who can provide a good client experience and finish their project within the creative, time, & budget constraints set forth. There are not a ton of people who can do this consistently, those that can will remain in demand.

Yes, there will always be downward pricing pressure, and during miserable economic times there will be shops that go out of business and talent that goes hungry, but things have a tendency to balance out in the long run. Clients getting lousy work back from colorists will eventually move on, no matter how cheap the crap work was done for. And there are quite a few jobs simply not worth taking, sometimes because the budget is too low, and other times because the people bringing the work are just not worth putting up with.

But let's face it: the industry, as a whole, is changing radically - there's no stopping it. The same disruptive spirit that brought us Illustrator, Photoshop (remember pre-press in the 70s & 80s, anyone?), FCP, Red, Scratch, DaVinci, etc... will continue to wreak havoc on old business models, and those that can 'ride the lightning' will benefit.

 

[Rob Ruffo]

Buying Final Cut Pro for $500 doesn't instantly make the client's daughter an editor. Buying Pro Tools Native won't make them a mixer, either.

The generally-accepted rule of thumb is that you need at least 5000 hours of experience to be an expert at anything (certainly anything as technical or complex as color-correction, editing, or mixing). To me, the free version of Resolve is no different than Apple cutting the price of Color from $5000 to free when they bundled it with FCP -- and there were quite a few people who had paid $5000 for it. Same thing with Shake.

Look at it this way: think of the big-time post houses out there who paid $700,000 for the Linux version of Resolve with the control surface, and then DaVinci went under and was absorbed into Blackmagic. And then Blackmagic cut the price to about 1/5th of that. It wasn't that long ago that the HD-only DaVinci 2K was about $700K, and you can't give those away today. And I can think of four or five companies that spent millions of dollars on them.

It's easy to say that the software does the work, but in reality, it's all about the person who does the job. Nothing can beat experience and knowledge. I also think that Blackmagic's control surface for Resolve makes a huge difference in terms of speed and efficiency. I suspect the real reason why they cut the price was mainly as a preemptive strike against rivals like Speedgrade (now owned by Adobe), not to hurt existing users. Strictly my theory. I like and use Blackmagic's products, but have no connection to them at all except as a user.

OK fine, I couldn't agree more, as I have said many times here. But, again, where;s my incentive to buy anything and support SOFTWARE innovation when the market is so chaotic, without rhyme or reason. Moore's law is one thing, but this is downright lawlessness, and in lawless places no one prospers or builds a business. I don't see why this has become an art vs equipment thread. I never said equipment was more important than the people using it. I agree, you agree, we get that,. Still doesn't justify Resolve flushing the perceived value of their software down to $0, and thus burning anyone who bought it recently (I said RECENTLY - so those saying they bought it last year and paid it off, well that's a different story) and destroying their competitors in a scorched earth, ungentlemanly way. It also still doesn't change the fact that, regardless of how you think producers should think, they DO NOT all agree, and they sign the checks.

 

[M Most]

OK fine, I couldn't agree more, as I have said many times here. But, again, where;s my incentive to buy anything and support SOFTWARE innovation when the market is so chaotic, without rhyme or reason...

I would think having work to do that might require the features of that software product would be a pretty good incentive. But that's just me.....

 

[Rob Ruffo]

I would think having work to do that might require the features of that software product would be a pretty good incentive. But that's just me.....

Of course, but often one job cannot cover expenses (in this case, at $1000 yes, when it was $250K no), so you try to plan for the future. There is also the more frequent situation that you buy something like software to learn it (or to try to). I would not buy software and use it right away on a deadline. Buying software is always a longer range plan.

 

[Martin Weiss]

While I can understand your frustration, this has really not a lot to do with RED and would be a better discussion at a more generic forum.