NAB: DaVinci 299$, better audio, and 10x faster

BlackMagic announced yesterday some news about its 'ColourCorrector which wants to be a fullsize NLE'

www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/release/20170424-01

two things strike the fan-boys eye:
• colourful audio-bubbles/lanes
• and the well-known 299 price tag…

…that '10x faster' is a nice marketing-bubble (how do you measure that??) but will be in everybody mouth and mind ("whoo, ten times faster!")

:whistle: :whistle: Wishfull thinking:::
Apple please buy Blackmagic before they take over the world!!

I hope they don´t buy them. Otherwise we would have a lot of people wanting to keep tracks.

Putting Fairlight in for audio processing and mixing was a good move. If you've ever used Fairlight, well, I'll stick with LPX, thank you. I've been playing with it all morning, very clunky, limited DAW inside of your NLE. The screen gets cluttered fast. Nice idea, some folks will go ape over it, but I'm much happier being able to go out to LPX.

Then again, Apple better have something major up their sleeve to release this year.

Not to mention the horrid media management of Resolve to start with.

Fairlight, nice idea, but it ain't no LPS or PT, not by a long shot.

Faster seems good to me, as I once tried to do some grading in Resolve, and the Mac mini that had no problem playing 4k video, or 4 streams of 1080 suddenly turned into a snail that couldn't play back 1 1080 clip smoothly.

I assume that had something to do with the intel graphics card, so more optimization is certainly a good thing, and I'll probably download this when it comes out.

They meant perhaps 10 % faster. That's how it feels. Tested only for an hour, but it didn't crash during that time. Looks safe enough for me to keep it over 12.5 although it's only beta. I use Resolve for CC. Never had any issues with roundtripping. Resolve just substitutes Color (from FCS2) for me.

I had several crashes this morning.

They take what should be a typical, GPU and/or CPU intensive process, and time it in each version on the same hardware. This version they claim does that process 10x faster on the same hardware than the previous version. But that doesn't translate into overall feel or performance. Maybe it exports H.264 file 10x faster, that doesn't mean it imports faster or redraws the UI faster.

One can hope this urges Apple to improve audio in FCPX... Would be nice to have some sort of roles based mixer and to be able to put effects on master outs etc...

And/or better/easier LPX roundtripping...

I'm putting it through its paces now, and it's again improved over the last iteration for editing, but it's definitely beta. Already on a relatively simple project I'm getting more beach balls than there should be, even doing simple things like moving media in and out of bins or clicking on the effects panel. It went into infinite beach ball a few times.

They've added a ton of audio features, but simple things like moving audio by subframe increments on the timeline is very wonky... but switching to the Fairlight mode to do that is perfect. Media organization is still subpar. You still can't have multiple resolutions for timelines in the same project.

Performance does seem to be better, but it's not exactly a barn-burner. Also, I haven't tried it with many layers and effects yet. Blackmagic still seem to want to make enormous changes, so I would be careful with using this as an editor on a real project. Lots of little things can break if you update a project.

Overall, it's typical Blackmagic: great promise, best-in-biz Color (that hasn't really changed and is really mature at this point), but they prioritize adding features rather than really refining what they've got. Stability takes a back seat. Still, there are some features like the keyframing that are a lot better than FCPX's implementation.

DmitriZigany wrote: One can hope this urges Apple to improve audio in FCPX... Would be nice to have some sort of roles based mixer and to be able to put effects on master outs etc...

And/or better/easier LPX roundtripping...

I can tell you a roles based mixer is coming. At the Summit last October someone at Apple slipped up answering a question for me, so yeah, it's coming.

I do a lot of voice over work, record and mix a lot of other voice over talent. Logic's multi-take folders are super fast and easy for this. Same method was used in SoundTrack Pro. FCPX's magnetic timeline work great for mixing different parts of different takes together also (line them up, start chopping out the bad stuff). But Fairlight still uses audio "layering" to achieve this. That's pretty out-dated and clunky. Basically, you have each VO take on a track, one above the other. Turn on Audio Layering and only the top most layer plays. Just like layered video. So you have to mute everything but a single layer, cut out what you want from it, move it to the top, repeat, repeat... Not impressed.

Yeah, it's great to have a psudeo-DAW there in the same app, but it's a dinosaur of a DAW with a clunky interface. I'll stick with round tripping to Logic, thank you.

Also bear in mind it isn't only Apple who will improve FCPX. Most aren't aware that the 10.3 upgrade opened it up to third party developers a LOT. Look at what's come out at NAB due to the 10.3 update and what it gave them. Shot Splitter X, the two new killer apps from Coremelt, FinderCat, Worx4 X and more to come. Third party offerings for FCPX are going to blow us away over 2017, for sure.

Pffffft it's only like 7 or 8 times faster! Not 10! Nice try Blackmagic but I'll be suing you for false advertising. Time to pay the piper and it's gonna be expensive. I'm thinking at least a few 100 grand for each number under 10 it underperforms. Payable to me, of course.

Sorry but I do not understand, for $ 299 you buy the version before solving study? Or the normal version?
thank you

:blink:

FCPX.guru wrote: Also bear in mind it isn't only Apple who will improve FCPX. Most aren't aware that the 10.3 upgrade opened it up to third party developers a LOT. Look at what's come out at NAB due to the 10.3 update and what it gave them. Shot Splitter X, the two new killer apps from Coremelt, FinderCat, Worx4 X and more to come. Third party offerings for FCPX are going to blow us away over 2017, for sure.

Where can I find info about this? There's nothing about them on Coremelt's webpage ... Any news about their denoiser?

I think the company would be a valuable asset to Apple as it would gain considerable hardware (cameras/switchers, ETC) and keep resolve as a Standalone for FCP. Even for the hardware division, i would buy the company. The Ursa Mini Pro is a Killer!!!

The two new apps Coremelt showed off at NAB yesterday are in beta now, so you won't see them in the store for a few months. No release date given yet.

I'm not sure Apple wants to go into the camera and broadcast hardware business. In fact, it wouldn't fit Apple at all.

More info here.
www.finalcutprox.guru/blogs-main/product...586a390b83bc-21.html

Do you know if Chromatic will be in addition to or replace Coremelts denoiser plug-in?

FCPX.guru wrote: More info here.
www.finalcutprox.guru/blogs-main/product...586a390b83bc-21.html

THANKS for the overview, Ben!

yep, Chromatic is described like an 'extended' version to the tracked-NR Roger demoed last year in Amsterdam …



(watch @17m29s)

That de-noise is in works, some tricky coding. It is still coming. What is planned to be in Chromatic is a much more simplified tool.