Blackmagic Design has published eight hours of videos that teach you how to edit a video from start to finish inside DaVinci Resolve 15, not just the color grading part of the process. You can get familiar with their tools for VFX and audio processing as well.
The DaVinci Resolve software is famous for two things: it's free and it is so good for color grading. The one drawback has been you have to go back and fourth between your main non-linear video editor and Resolve, exporting and importing projects. Blackmagic Design decided to expand the functionality of their free software making it an all-in-one application. You probably already know you can do basic cuts there, but you may have never got acquainted with their more advanced tools. Although they have hundreds of pages of training materials, users still find their software somewhat intimidating. And no, that's not because their software manuals are badly written. Just the opposite, they are very elaborate and detailed, but not many people like to follow written instructions today. That is probably why the company released video tutorials covering both basic and advanced topics such as color grading.
If you want to see all the training materials you can check out the PDFs and videos on their official website or just watch the playlist with the courses on Blackmagic Deisgn's YouTube channel.
I will admit to being a Blackmagic fan-boy, love their products and software. I did use Premiere years ago, and when I needed to get back into video again, I found that the Davinci package just works better for me. I will say though that I found that version 15 to have more of a demand on the hardware, probably due to more functionality...?
Can you share what makes it better than Premiere (except for the price).
Generally, getting back into video editing I found that DR was more "intuitive" for me in the use of the application and workflow. This is even after previously using PP years prior, even though I admit I didn't use PP as an everyday working tool at the time. Below are some of the main points of why I decided to go this way, starting with early DaVinci Resolve 14.
-For color grading, DR was already a very well developed product used professionally across many levels. I wanted to work with color grading, so this was an incentive to use one of the most respected applications for this.
-In regards to color grading, the Tangent Elements was the hardware that I wanted to use and DR/Tangent Elements are a natural together.
-I like how DR has setup the "modules" within the application to guide you through the full editing process, especially in ver15 where there is really no need to bounce out of the program to do other process's, at least not for my workflow. The editing workflow is very straight-forward for me, no complications.
-I like the "Node" method of editing. I feel that this is an amazing way to edit and work through the project. Not really much different than the concept of layers, just much more flexible in my opinion.
-The Fairlight Audio module has so much power in what it offers for my level of use, no reason for me to look at other options.
-I always hated the PP way of setting up the project and settings, and even setting up the final delivery. In DR, this has been very intuitive, and I never really have any surprises like I did in PP.
-I am excited to dig into the Fusion module, to learn what the capabilities are here and see how I can implement what appears to have a lot of powerful features.
-I guess the final major consideration was the editing experience with 4K content. In PP, I was having a horrible time getting any kind of workable playback during the editing process. With DR, it was much better, even without working the computer hardware to capitalize on DR's abilities. One of the cool features of DR is that it uses CUDA power from your multiple GPU's (if using the Studio version), so I have the additional horsepower in running the application in editing my 12 bit 4K RAW content. I use an ASUS STRIX GTX 980ti as my main, and a ASUS STRIX GTX 1050ti as only CUDA support, which works amazingly well in my 2012 MAC Pro.
Thanks for sharing that information. The readers will definitely find it helpful.
UGH! You said just about everything I was going to say. As an FCPX, PPro and Resolve user, Resolve can use the GPU far better than Premiere and I noticed that as long as my storage is fast, have 32GB and a fast discrete GPU, I don't really need to rely on proxies but PPro does seem to still stutter with 4K (direct) with the same hardware while Resolve flies. (4-core i7, 32GB and Vega 64)
Thanks for this. We're in the process of switching from Premiere Pro to Resolve, because PP is a slow PITA and we don't want to replace all our computers with Macs.
Check out
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCn5GD-PNXWyonXQO8rH3vPw
https://www.youtube.com/user/CaseyFaris777
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4HXushRwS_9b1JdRFYVgw
Once you get the basics down Resolve just makes so much sense. The fact that you can make adjustments and link them to multiple nodes just makes sense.
Is it the color grading export/import slowing down your workflow or it's the Premiere hardware support (or lack thereof)?
Tony - I thought you guys just built a Premiere Machine?
Be careful with Resolve. I have had many issues since upgrading to the Stuiod version and their customer support is VERY unhelpful.
Im dealing with a lot of h265, 4k footage 10bit footage and Resolve keeps crashing due to issues with memory allocation or issues with integration with the NVIDIA CUDA API. It would basically just crash out randomly. I had to set it to auto save every 1 min just in case. I had less crashes with the Free version which is more CPU centric. Ever since upgrading to the Studio paid version - lots of issues. Yes, the Studio version is optimized for GPU usage and when it works, it flies (rendering, playback etc) but as I said, it tends to crash randomly...
Getting through to support is a nightmare, there is no priority or premium support AFAIK and their SLA is best effort.
Love the software and admire that they share education for free as well. Been Premier user for quite sometime. Premier + AE + Audition was my main workflow.
Recently release my 5th short drone film Element and challenge myself to do everything (almost everything exempt titles) on Davinci Resolve 15 including vfx and sfx. Actually saw all of the free tuts on their site up to date. It was challenging at first and I even seek help with vfx (node philosophy is sometime challenging for a "layer" guy) but menage to finish the project and here is my post-processing workflow time-lapse :) - https://vimeo.com/314695474
The nodes looks the most daunting but between a learning curve and Premiere Slo stuttering and choking all over unless you convert all your 4k footage to 1995s 720 format, it might be worth it. And maybe people switching will wake Adobe up from their sitting back collecting money, while thinking of new bloatware to take our minds off sluggish programs. I'm paying for 2019 but using 2018 because every update is an untested disaster.
Only problem is Davinci doesn't allow 10bit with free version so have to decide if I want to pay $300 to test it. I edit fast so can't be rendering the timeline every single change I make.
Agreed. Blackmagic is showing Adobe how software should really work, fast plays, fast renders, fast CC and grading etc and tabs (edit/cc/sound/vfx) interconnection is awesome. And it's FREE for the most part. I am seriously thinking dropping Adobe and left only PS/AE.
Can't use 10 bit in the free version and $300 is a lot just to test it out.
Video needs to be bit more PC centric. I keep having to convert Mac commands the author presents into the equivalent PC command; it disrupts the thought processes. Perhaps mentioning them both would be much more helpful.