Resolve 18

For those interested in what's happening on the Resolve front:
digitalfilms.wordpress.com/2022/09/01/wi...8-get-you-to-switch/

I bought Resolve online and thought they'd mail (yes, mail) me a code, but no. Instead they mailed me a USB dongle and a Speed Editor peripheral. Cool. Anyway I think that USB dongle will let me work with Resolve Studio on any computer, not tied to the Mac App store, thankfully.

Anyway the comments in your article about the output of Fusion being darker here vs there brings up something that's always bothered me. Which one do you believe? The dark one? The bright one? Hell, the same video clip inported into a Final Cut Pro project will look darker in Resolve than it does in Final Cut Pro. Which one to believe? It's all so frustrating.

Interesting. I thought they had completely done away with dongles in favor of an activation code that could be deactivated and then activated on a different machine. Did you know you were buying the Speed Editor? That bundle is $100 more. When you purchase Resolve through the website and not through Apple, then yes, the dongle (or code) will work on any computer - Mac or PC.

Regarding the image, Resolve uses a very complex color space scheme and depending on how your color management setting are, it can be completely accurate or wildly off-base. Resolve is by far the easiest application to screw things up in.

Assuming that your color management settings are correct, then the only correct image from any application is the one you see output to an external reference display using Blackmagic or AJA I/o hardware (AJA doesn't work with Resolve). Unfortunately no image on a computer screen is ever going to be 100% correct, mainly because of the different color management methods.

It was at about a year ago I think, but it was Resolve 17 and it may have been from Amazon? It did not indicate the Speed Editor was included at all. The price was $300, same as Final Cut Pro.

I really need to get a better reference monitor. Are there any that are in the ballpark that are sub-$10k?

It could have been some sort of promotion at that time. Right now Blackmagic lists it on their site at $395 for the Speed Editor keyboard and that includes Resolve Studio. But individual resellers might have some leeway in their own pricing.

As far as displays, it depends on where you deliver to - broadcast TV, web-only, both, other. If broadcast, then you need to get Thunderbolt i/o hardware (UltraStudio) and a video monitor. I use both TV Logic and Flanders Scientific. Plus a large Panasonic flat panel. LG OLEDs are a good option today. Barring that, you could go with an advanced computer display (especially if you mainly deliver to the web), including Apple Studio Display, LG OLED, HP Dreamcolor, Asus ProArt, Eizo, etc.

Remember that anything you view on a Mac through QuickTime is going to have some gamma differences with TV as well as some PCs.

Digging around through my junk drawer it looks like I already have a BlackMagic Ultra Studio Mini Monitor. It has an old Thunder Bolt 2 port. I remember testing it out because I needed something to deliver 5.1 audio via HDMI for monitoring, but I ended up using the HDMI port on the back of my Mac at the time as it also did the same, and it was more convenient.

These days I mainly deliver to Youtube, though sometimes I deliver to Blu-ray and sometimes DCP. No over the air stuff. The problem with Youtube is that it's different in Firefox compared to Chrome compared to Safari. Quicktime seems pretty close to Final Cut Pro to me.

I have an LG C8 and a C1.

Generally, FCP and QT will match because they are using the same color sync technology. I wrote up a bit about color and displays here:

digitalfilms.wordpress.com/2021/03/07/trusting-apple-displays/