Resolve vs Premiere - Is It Worth It To Switch To DAVINCI RESOLVE?
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Resolve vs Premiere - Is It Worth It To Switch To DAVINCI RESOLVE? In this video, Will discusses his experiences with Premiere Pro as well as DaVinci Resolve and what the pros and cons are.
If you've ever thought about making the switch from Premiere Pro or a different editing program like Final Cut over to Da Vinci Resolve, and you were wondering if Da Vinci Resolve is at a point where it makes sense to make that transition, this video is for you. In the last year, specifically, Resolve has come a long way and implemented a ton of new features, so I'm excited to dive into this. First off, I want to say that this video is not sponsored at all in any way. This video is completely based on us using Da Vinci for several years, buying the studio version, and deciding that we think it's a great program. So, in this video, I'm going to compare the Premiere Pro value you get with the subscription versus the free version and studio version of Da Vinci Resolve. If you're new here, we have over 200 videography-related videos, lots of content for you to learn from, and if you want to know any of the equipment or the music we use to make our videos, all links are in the description. Let's jump in.
So, jumping right in, everyone knows that Adobe charges a subscription, meaning you pay a certain amount every single month indefinitely. So, forever, you're going to constantly be renting the video editing or photo or any of the software that Adobe makes. Obviously, that means the longer you use Adobe products, the more you will pay into it, and over like a 10 plus year period, that can really add up. On the other side, Da Vinci has literally a free version, and it is jam-packed with so many features, you can complete an entire edit and never spend a dollar on the Da Vinci Resolve side. Now, if that isn't convincing alone, I don't know what is, but let's dive a little bit deeper. They also have a studio version, which is a one-time fee. This is consistent with what Apple does with Final Cut Pro. You can buy it just for one payment and then own it outright perpetually. That creates a massive incentive to go with that because it just feels like you're getting so much value upfront, knowing that you own it, you'll never have to spend another dollar. They constantly will be updating it and treating you like a loyal customer, and I think that's one of the main reasons people have left Adobe for Resolve or even Final Cut Pro.
And it was tough to switch from Premiere to Resolve, especially for me, because outside of using Premiere, I've always been big with After Effects. I've used it for probably 20 plus years, working professionally in the film industry, doing compositing and, in general, visual effects work. To go from a layered-based system to then try to figure out the node-based system and rework my entire understanding of how to do visual effects was quite a challenge. Um, and I'm sure many other people have made that switch and had to go through that as well, but now that I've done it, I think the node system makes more sense, and my guess is After Effects at some point will sort of implement that in the back end. Because there are things that you can do with the node system, by not having that layer hierarchy, that make it much easier to create things using, you know, Fusion with its node-based system versus After Effects. And even the node-based system in just the general effects workflow of applying LUTs and certain effects in Resolve is still easier than inside Premiere Pro. Whereas in the node system, you can have something right at the top but connect it completely in a different way, so that it actually is filtering or skipping certain effects or skipping certain LUTs, and that creates the possibility of having any setup you want and connect things in any way you wish.
So, now I think is a good time to talk about the value, what you get in Da Vinci Resolve right now as it is, even in the free version. I can't possibly recommend paying hundreds of dollars every single year for Adobe when you can start using Da Vinci Resolve for free, and then when you're ready to move on and have some more professional features, maybe you're starting to get some client work, and at that point, you can pay the one-time fee to get the studio version. It just makes total sense to go that route as opposed to the forever rental service that Adobe offers. When you're with Adobe, and you're paying such a high amount every single month, every single year, year after year, it feels like they don't care about you as a loyal customer, and that they're just this gigantic company in it for money. And then, on top of that, there were major instability issues with Premiere Pro, where you couldn't export videos, it was crashing or freezing up, and people were just sick and tired of not being able to finish their edits. I was one of those people. I had paying clients, I was a busy person doing this type of work, as you know, for my career, and I'd be in the middle of a project, and then for some reason, Premiere Pro would not let me export the video, meaning that I literally could not hit my deadline. And that is a major problem because if you're paying a company to use their software to make a living, you expect that software to work so that you can deliver the project that your client agreed to pay you for.
I don't really know why Adobe cared so little about stability in their program or why they didn't listen to so many of their paying customers, but there were a lot of issues. There were also other very strange things that Adobe did, like they gave support to MKV files since pretty much Premiere started back in the day, and then one year, they decided to just completely drop support of MKV. So, not only could you not import MKV into Premiere Pro, but you couldn't use their media encoder to encode the media to use MKV files in Premiere Pro. The fact that they removed it in the first place, after marketing for like 10 plus years that Premiere is the best because it can work with every file type, and then, I believe, this became the most featured request for them to add it back in, and I think it took them three or four years before they decided to add it back into the program. It's just, none of it made sense, and those are the types of mistakes that I think they were just constantly making that proved to their paying customers that they just don't care about what the customers think. And it got to the point where Ally and I said, "You know what, let's just try Da Vinci Resolve, give it a real shot, edit some videos with it, and see where it's at."
When we first started doing that, it was around Da Vinci Resolve's release of 16. It wasn't quite ready for us to use it in entire projects or at least in client-based projects, but with each new update, there were literally hundreds of changes that they implemented, and it drastically, exponentially got better over time. And there were other little things that the Da Vinci Resolve developers implemented that we really loved, like when you download Da Vinci Resolve for the first time, a box pops up and asks you for feedback on what you'd like to see in Da Vinci Resolve. We thought that was really cool because they are listening to people that actually edit with their software or that have edited in other software and are given Da Vinci, you know, a shot for the first time. Lo and behold, I did fill that out and add about 20 plus line items to that feedback request box, and they implemented quite a few of them. So, it's a good feeling knowing when they're listening to people that use their software and making changes that people want. It's a great feeling, and this is something that I think Adobe countless times just completely ignored.
Then, a few years later, we felt that Da Vinci Resolve was at a place where we could actually complete full edits for clients just as quickly as we could in Premiere Pro. So, we decided to buy the studio version, which was a one-time payment, and that was something that we do not regret. We've had it for a few years now. Do I think Adobe is bad at this point? No, we do have a video production company, and we work with editors that are still using Premiere, so we do have a Creative Cloud account with Adobe, so we are paying for it now. And then, depending on the projects we're working on and what our clients are working with, we do still, from time to time, edit in Premiere Pro and use After Effects. It seems to not be crashing or have instability issues anywhere near as much as it used to, and it is nice to have Photoshop or Illustrator if you need to do any design things or Acrobat Pro if you need to work with PDFs.
So, yeah, that just about sums up why I think switching to Da Vinci Resolve is a smart move. It doesn't matter if you're just starting out or if you're a seasoned professional editor, this is a no-brainer at this point. I think the Da Vinci Resolve team is doing a great job listening to their user base, whereas the Adobe team, I think, has neglected them. They listened a little bit during the instability stages of Premiere over the last few years when people were complaining, but I think, ultimately, they aren't listening enough, and they're focusing way too much on marketing. It's also insanely expensive compared to, you know, the competitor software. So, that's it. If you like this video, give it a thumbs up and subscribe to see more videos from us in the future, and if you want to know any of the equipment or the music we use to make our videos, all links are in the description.
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👉GEAR WE USE TO MAKE OUR VIDEOS:
➜FOR VIDEO EDITING: https://amzn.to/3XSlIHj
➜FOR FILMING: https://amzn.to/3EB8DuZ
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➜ https://bit.ly/2NPCjd7
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