I switched from Premiere Pro to Davinci Resolve... Here's how it went

look guys if you would have told me that a year ago i would eventually end up switching from adobe premiere pro a program that i literally have over a decade's worth of experience in to da vinci resolve i just straight up wouldn't have believed you like no joke ten plus years inside of premiere it's a program that i became so familiar with so second nature you know and it allowed me to create and piece together some of my best and most important pieces of work like even to this day but honestly it got to a point that the problems and dilemmas i was facing inside of premiere just simply outgrew my need to stick with what i know best and yeah i know over the last couple of years they've made some huge improvements with the overall performance of the program stability but for me it's just starting to feel outdated i mean i cannot be the only one who is so tired of premiere crashing at the worst possible time this has all led up to me needing to make a change for the sake of my personal work but also my professional work so enter davinci resolve when you first hear about this program much like i did you think of it mainly for its coloring suite it's you know the industry standard what everybody is using for professional colorist work it's what tv shows and hollywood movies are graded inside of but not a lot of people think about it much for its editing capabilities or really even consider it as like a replacement for a program like premiere pro or final cut in fact the biggest question i've been receiving from you guys as of lately as i've kind of made it public that i've switched to resolve is do i still edit inside of premiere but then send my project over to davinci specifically for color grading and the answer to that of course is no i have now 100 switched over to davinci resolve for all of my work both youtube work as well as my freelance work da vinci over the years has been continuously making major improvements in all areas of the program they're continually getting better with hardware optimization and rendering performance not to mention the fact that it's free at least for the basic version and then a one-time payment of around 300 for the studio version compare that to the i think it's like 20 something dollars a month for premiere pro which could end up being more something like 50 a month if you want all of the adobe suite but nonetheless the price and the overall cost savings is a huge factor here when i debated making the switch it started to become a question of whether or not it was going to be worth it to take the time to relearn a completely different program like pretty much completely overhaul my entire workflow rather than just stay inside a premiere and keep dealing with the small setbacks i was experiencing but um obviously i did it and truthfully i wish i would have done it a lot sooner before we dive into this too much further i want to give a quick disclaimer this is not going to be like a apples to apples comparison of the two programs and like showing the features side by side what resolve can do what premiere can't et cetera but more of a real world analysis on my transition as a veteran premiere pro user to davinci resolve and if it's something i would recommend to someone like you if you're looking to do the same so first things first let's talk about probably the most important thing the thing that you guys are most concerned about and it's the workflow [Music] like has my workflow changed has it improved like how hard was it to get back up to speed you know like the fundamentals of video editing at first resolve was a very very foreign feeling workspace while there's certain similarities and the layout and the overall feel of the programs i only felt comfortable editing small like personal for fun projects and you know maybe sequences with like super minimal complexity like really only the basics like right off the bat i wouldn't even have considered to try and edit a client project or something like that keyboard shortcuts as they come for me at least were all over the place it felt really awkward but luckily they're completely customizable so you can basically match your identical keyboard shortcuts that you would have in a program whatever you're coming from whether it be final cut or premiere and as i started diving into things and getting a little more consistent with it my workflow really did slow down pretty severely like i would say it took me probably twice as long to get through a project but after maybe two or three weeks of consistent practice you know both personal projects as well as client projects along with taking some time to dedicate to watching a lot of youtube videos from channels like qazi gerald undone or color grading central i felt like i was able to get just about up to speed with where i was inside of premiere at least with regards to the basics like importing footage sorting cutting you know the simple stuff the main difference here in my workflow was that if i had to create some sort of a complex edit or effect with inside of premiere because of my long-term experience i would generally be able to get myself through that without having to dig around for videos or really even second guess things call it you know maybe like veteran intuition i guess but on the other hand with resolve if i ran into a situation like this it would usually lead to having to dig around through videos for hours on end which would easily double if not triple the time it would take to finish a project now let's talk about the color page this was not only the thing that i was the most excited about when going into resolve but seemingly the thing that a lot of you guys were really curious about when i started talking about it i'll admit it was extremely intimidating in the beginning it's like you go in there and then there's like nodes like what the what the are notes but with some solid time and effort dedicated to watching a ton of videos and just experimenting the whole process began to make pretty good sense and actually started to become really fun the capabilities of this platform are just mind-blowing like it honestly makes working inside of something like luma tree feel like a total joke obviously it's nowhere near as straightforward and certainly not as forgiving but the things you can do in here will completely change your outlook on color grading as a whole color in general has always been something that i've strived to improve on in my own work but making this transition has honestly forced me to understand and learn color at a level like way deeper than i ever have an interesting side note i've actually now taken on a handful of freelance colorist projects which is something i never really expected to do in my career but you know hey why not i'm now about seven or eight months into the full switchover from premiere to resolve and i gotta say my workflow feels thorough and efficient and certain aspects of my process even feel easier and less stressful things like organization with footage bins sorting through files handling and dealing with color corrections from shot to shot especially on those longer projects there really isn't anything i feel like i can't accomplish inside of resolve that i could inside of premiere so now that we've kind of got through the nitty-gritty aspects of the transition i wanted to give you guys kind of just a general pros and cons list of some of the things that i love but also some of the things that i kind of miss about premiere stabilization inside of resolve is so so much faster and in my opinion it's better because it has a little bit more controllability and fine tune ability in my mind and so i've been able to get better and more consistent results with the stabilization that makes warp stabilizer feel just just like a joke a little bit more of a general take the ui and the overall layout and feel of the program makes premiere feel like prehistoric like the longer i spend inside of resolve and just getting used to how everything looks and feels and then i look back at premiere or have to like open an old project for a client i'm just like what the what what what is this how how did i use this dynamic zoom is a feature that i really didn't think was going to be that important but has made things really simple it essentially is like a drag and drop version of key framing scale and zoom inside of premiere shot keyframing position scale stuff like that with literally just dragging around boxes it's so much more intuitive it saves so much time i honestly can't even imagine going back to manually keyframing just these simple little edits tracking objects and tracking masks especially for color grades if you've ever done it inside of premiere you don't ever want to do it inside of premiere that's that's the thing the tracking built into resolve is incredible it is so incredibly fast it maps 3d tracking it's very similar to the tracking that's built into after effects so putting a mask with a color grade or something like that like brightening up somebody's face and tracking it all the way throughout the clip it's just the click of a button it's super fast it works perfectly almost every single time the overall file organization and bin structure for how you import footage and how you can organize things it's just way more intuitive it's not quite as customizable in the sense that like premiere pro is very modular in like where you can stick a folder or a bin or where you can put windows with resolve you're a little more locked off to like the default layout but i've never had an issue with it and the way that they organize and sort work so much more efficiently and seamlessly i feel like i'm able to dig through massive projects with hundreds and hundreds of video files like terabytes of data way way way more easily and efficiently it's less stressful all just adding to a more efficient and enjoyable workflow when it comes to dealing with audio the built-in platform fairlight is really nice because it kind of eliminates the need for audition at least for my uses like i've never really had to do a lot in audition but everything that i'm able to do in fairlight it's a pretty full-fledged audio suite and so it really makes things simple another quick thing about audio there's real-time waveforms meaning that if you place some points on an audio track and bring the levels up you'll actually see that waveform on the track like reflect that adjustment which doesn't sound like it's all that important or valuable but it makes balancing audio amongst things and just kind of visually keeping track of audio levels much much more simple power bins are something that i never really understood until recently but essentially they are bins that are global with inside of resolve i can have all of the assets available to me so i don't have to like re-import them into the project every single time that i need to use them they're just available in these global bins so for example i do a lot of sponsored content in my videos and i oftentimes need assets from these different brands on a regular basis to incorporate into my videos whether it's footage or text and titles presets stuff like that like here we have one for canva the sponsor of today's video gotcha if you guys haven't heard me talk about it yet canva is an app that makes graphic design creating things like youtube thumbnails presentations logos collages even things like animated social media posts easier than ever with templates created by professionals you can pretty much do everything in here it's extremely intuitive you can use it on your phone but also on desktop if you're trying to get a little more fancy they have a massive array of templates and assets and stock photos even stock videos to use in your projects over the last few months i've been really enjoying using canva in my own work using it for things like social media you know making like a really cool and engaging swipe up post for my youtube videos canva is free for you guys to get started using but they also offer a pro subscription which totally opens the doors with your ability to create unique content for your audience i mean we're talking millions and millions of assets like way more templates like all the actual really good ones that you want to use and so if any of this sounds interesting to you guys and you want to give it a try canva is going to hook you guys up with a free 45-day pro subscription if you click the link down below it's a pretty impressive platform and truly one of the most simple ways to set your vision into motion a question that popped up a lot from you guys on instagram was do i use the free or the studio version and if so do i actually use those studio features and the answer is yes i do use the studio version and there's quite a bit of things that i use that i feel like i would really want for example like the noise reduction and motion blur effects are insanely insanely helpful if you've ever had to de-noise footage inside of premiere you know that you usually need a third-party plug-in something like neat video or magic bullet denoiser both of which cost a decent amount of money and so in my mind could you get away with using the free version of davinci 100 but i do think that there is great features included in the studio version and considering it's just a one-time payment i think it's totally worth it so that was a lot of good things that i like about resolve and honestly i can keep going on this for a while but let's talk about some of the more negative things or the things that i miss about premiere keyframing and speed ramping is not quite the most intuitive inside of resolve at least for me speed ramping i think for a lot of people is something that's kind of confusing in a lot of ways because like when you start dragging around the speeds and adding points and markers the clip expands and shrinks and it just gets kind of messy and i really feel like the way resolve sort of goes about this process is even a little bit more confusing to try and understand especially if you're an inexperienced editor nonetheless i've still been able to handle most of the things i need to do but it does feel like a little bit of an inconvenience every single time i do have to do it so if key framing and speed ramping is something you do a lot in your work not to say that you can't do it inside of resolve but it might take a little bit more time and effort to get back up to speed with where you are at inside of premiere another huge question about after effects and the adobe dynamic link between premiere and after effects i really don't use after effects all that much and so i might not be the best person to ask this question but a lot of people ask like can you do the same things inside of fusion that you can do inside of after effects and i think the general answer is like yes but with a pretty big asterisk it's a pretty full-fudged vfx and compositing suite but i think for a lot of people especially if you're like a heavy after effects user you're gonna wanna stick inside of that platform and so like i said for me because i'm not really a frequent user of it i'm perfectly happy with everything that i can do just within sight of resolve and fusion another pretty important factor here is with regards to collaboration if you're somebody who does remote editing or freelance editing and you're frequently working on projects with other editors and you're needing to send over project files then the unfortunate downside is that not a lot of people work inside of resolve at least nowhere near as many people working inside of premiere and so for that matter yeah you just kind of need to assess it from your own situation make sure that if you do make a switch you're either working with other people who are going to be inside of resolve as well there is a way to share timelines and share projects sort of between the two programs with xmls but in my experience i actually recently took on a huge documentary edit with a client and we had to kind of go back and forth and premiere and resolve and uh it wasn't the most seamless process there was quite a bit of like just breaking that happened with a lot of the files and relinking footage was kind of tedious so keep that in mind i think as time goes on it'll definitely start to become more common that you'll see editors working inside of resolve but definitely something to keep in mind and lastly on that same note the support and like overall information and tutorials available currently for resolve is good but definitely nowhere near the amount of stuff that's available and out there for programs like premiere and final cut and so if you're somebody who's trying to learn from scratch not to say that you can't do it with resolve because there's absolutely a ton of great information out there it just might not be quite as accessible and you might not be able to find every single tutorial you're looking for in the same way that you probably would with premiere so yeah that was a lot to unpack let's go ahead and kind of pull back a little bit and kind of get back to the root of the conversation do i recommend making the switch if you're coming from a program like premiere or final cut absolutely though a lot of people initially really question whether or not it's a viable replacement to one of those programs in my mind in my experience so far it is absolutely a full-on replacement not to mention the fact that it's the industry standard color grading suite the performance and stability and continued support from blackmagic it's really impressive what they've been able to do with this program and uh yeah i gotta be honest i really wish i would have considered doing this a lot sooner while it's going to take some time to learn a new platform if you're currently unhappy with what you're working with right now then i think it's definitely going to be worth it especially in the long run guys an important piece to consider is if you're trying to take this whole video editing thing seriously like especially if you're trying to work with clients and make money at this time and efficiency really are money but even more importantly than money is how well your editing program allows you to get your vision out into the world when there's a disconnect whether it's crashing or rendering speeds it can cause a huge breakdown in your ability to fluidly get your ideas on screen it can lead to a lot of frustration and a lack of motivation it's difficult to imagine but the smallest things like occasional crashing and other small little annoyances can really start to affect your desire to edit at all so if you guys are in a boat where maybe i was i highly recommend giving it a try i uh i think you will not be disappointed

Channel: Ryan Kao

Views: 235,776

Rating: 4.9613557 out of 5

Keywords: ryan kao, cinematic sequence, ryan kao cinematics, davinci resolve, premiere pro, davinci resolve 17, davinci resolve 16 tutorial for beginners, davinci resolve vs premiere pro, davinci resolve 17 color grading, switching to davinci resolve 16, switching to davinci resolve, switching from premiere pro to davinci resolve, why i switched to davinci resolve, premiere pro vs davinci resolve, I switched from Premiere Pro to Davinci Resolve... Here's how it went

Id: 5Tm0bNj_6Wg

Length: 17min 23sec (1043 seconds)

Published: Sat May 01 2021