Premiere Pro vs Davinci Resolve - Am I Switching???

so um there's something i need to come clean about what's up guys landon here from the full-time filmmaker team and if you follow us on instagram you might have seen this post landon btw has edited in premiere pro for over five years but he's now made the switch to davinci resolve here's the deal kind of i kind of made the switch now it's no secret that premiere pro has been falling short for a lot of video creators lately and we've been bombarded by our students saying that they're switching and they would love to see some tutorials specifically about davinci resolve and of course we listen to them because we care about our students and our jobs revolve around creating content for them as well as you our youtube audience and making sure that you're happy so finally i said all right i'm going to learn davinci resolve see what all the hype is about and everyone cheered and they were so happy and then after i downloaded it i realized this was going to be a lot harder than i thought but over the last several months i've been working in resolve a ton and i've consulted with some of the best and most knowledgeable resolve users that i know in order to create our newest mini course the davinci resolve editing workflow so in this video i wanted to take premiere pro and davinci resolve and put them head to head in 10 different categories to see which program i think is better and full transparency i actually use both programs depending on what i'm doing so i honestly have no loyalty towards either of them i'm just here to break it down for you i really don't care which one you end up choosing as long as it works for you we also have mini courses for both premiere pro and davinci resolve so again as long as you pick one we'll still benefit the first category that we'll be comparing between these two programs is price now if you were to buy only premiere pro on adobe's subscription platform you'd be paying a little bit more than 250 dollars a year and if you wanted the full suite of adobe programs like after effects photoshop lightroom and so on it'd come out to be a bit over 630 dollars a year but if you're a high school or college student or if you're enrolled in full-time filmmaker you can actually snag the student discount which slices that price by about 400 so you're looking at about 240 a year blackmagic on the other hand actually gives their editing software away for free and it's still jam-packed with awesome features and the essentials you really need to get editing plus you can upgrade to the studio version of davinci resolve and unlock accelerated hardware decoding higher resolution and frame rates the davinci neural engine and several more advanced features for a flat rate of 295 dollars so no monthly payments it's also free if you purchase a black magic cinema camera or certain black magic equipment so it's clear that davinci resolve is the most affordable option between the two i mean you can't really beat free unless they paid you that'd be nice and even though the studio version does cost 295 dollars it's still going to end up being cheaper than premiere pro in the long run as long as you plan on using it for at least a year so it's pretty obvious that davinci resolve wins the price category our second category is ease of use now honestly both programs are kind of intimidating in their own way it definitely took me a few months before i really felt like i could open up premiere pro and do anything i wanted without having to look up a tutorial on youtube so i'd say premiere has a medium difficulty level for beginners resolve on the other hand was actually a bit overwhelming which really surprised me i figured because i'd been editing in premiere pro for several years that i could pretty easily make the transition to resolve but there was one big problem i think the reason that premiere pro was a bit easier to grasp is because it uses traditional layers like photoshop or after effects and pretty much every other editing program but with resolve it still uses layers for normal video editing but when you jump into the fusion page or into the color page you're no longer working with layers you're working with nodes and this was a really foreign concept to me at first but eventually it clicked and now it makes perfect sense so for example if i'm making this composition here in premiere i'll grab my video clip and place it on the bottom layer and then i'll grab a plain black layer and place it just above that maybe lower the opacity a bit and then i'll grab my text and put it on the layer above that one and then we're done now this process is second nature to most people it just makes sense to layer things in resolve if i wanted to make that same composition i grab my clip place it on the timeline and then i jump into the fusion page where all of the vfx is done on the left i have my original video clip which is the media in node and on the far right i have the final composition which is the media out node so to add that faded black layer that we had before i grab a background layer and then drag it onto our node tree and this is the same as if i just placed a black layer on top of my video clip in premiere except instead of working from top to bottom with layers we're now working from left to right with notes and then to finish this composition off i'll just add my text layer right here and we're good to go so i think a lot of video editors would agree with me that if you've never dealt with nodes before they're actually really intimidating and a big reason that a lot of people don't fully make the switch to resolve hopefully my little explanation cleared up a few things for you at least i guarantee between the tutorials in our new course and a little bit of determination you'll be able to master resolve just like any other editing program i do want to quickly mention a few things that i think each program does better than the other in the ease of use category davinci has a lot of great intuitive features like when you adjust the audio levels of your clip it's reflected directly on the clip itself premiere pro doesn't do that unfortunately and a lot of features like speed ramping keyframing masking and so on for me are just easier to do in premiere pro since i'm used to those effects working in a certain way so da vinci's method of doing these things are initially not quite as intuitive but i do think you'd be able to get used to them pretty quickly either way premiere pro wins this category for being just a bit more natural to use and similar to ease of use our third category is user interface now both programs are actually fairly similar to each other when it comes to their user interface in each of them you sequentially walk through each step of the editing program from the importing to the sifting the editing the coloring the vfx and so on they're obviously not identical if you look at them side by side but to me there's really not one that stands out from the other so we're going to call this one a draw next up which program is better for basic sifting and editing this one was also kind of a toss-up because the basic editing process between premiere pro and davinci resolve are very similar and for me efficient sifting and editing actually lies in your keyboard shortcuts which you can configure identically in both programs the software that shines just a bit more in this comparison though is davinci resolve there's a dedicated cut page that you can use to quickly sift through your clips i especially love the film strip view which lets you view all of your imported clips as if it's just one continuous piece of footage in my five plus years of editing in premiere pro i still don't feel like i found a crazy efficient way to sift through my footage in that program while with resolve i could tell that it was instantly much faster so based on that resolve wins this category our fifth category is color grading it's obviously no secret that davinci resolve has probably the most advanced color grading capabilities out there it's pretty much every colorist software of choice and it's used by tons of production companies blackmagic has deep roots in color grading and it's only been in recent years that they've really branched out more in order to create an entire suite of editing capabilities so with resolve you have countless tools and interfaces for manipulating color and exposure right at your fingertips this includes primary wheels shot matching curves qualifiers tracking and masking and so on plus there's also blackmagic's physical interfaces like their color panels while premiere pro is fairly limited with their built-in color grading capabilities you get lumetri color which is generally sufficient for most people but many editors would agree that color grading in premiere is definitely still pretty weak so no surprise here davinci resolve wins this category as well up next we have visual effects for this we're talking about motion graphics masking overlays etc this one is actually a bit tough to gauge because both programs are actually very good in their capabilities once again i think premiere is easier to use because compositing there is layer based as opposed to the nodes in davinci resolve premiere has also beefed up their visual effects capabilities in the last couple of years so i can do the majority of my vfx work directly in that program and i can say the same about davinci resolve the main feature though that i really think sets premiere pro apart in this category is dynamic link this means i can seamlessly switch between premiere pro and after effects and have all of my changes perfectly reflected kind of cheating i know because yes that's obviously a separate program but if you end up getting the full suite of adobe programs you'd have access to after effects anyway so both programs perform similarly on their own but with dynamic link i have to give this category to premiere pro our seventh category is team collaboration now for me at least most of the video editors i know are still using premiere pro so if i'm collaborating on a project with someone on the full-time filmmaker team i can just send them a quick imessage with my premiere pro project file and i could still do this with davinci resolve technically like if they were also using resolve i could export out the project file and send it to them in the same way i could also export my project from resolve to a premiere pro xml file so that's basically converting all the clips and layers on my resolve timeline to a premiere pro timeline and those generally work pretty good but it's obviously just not ideal all of that aside though both programs have some sort of a team collaboration feature i don't see one of them being necessarily better than the other they both integrate pretty much the same inside the program so to be fair we're going to call this one a draw next up is third-party integration now because of the popularity and the widespread use of premiere pro there are naturally just a lot more third-party plugins available to download with the adobe exchange marketplace you can find hundreds of plugins plus there are just tons of sites like envato and storyblocks where you can get even more plugins for premiere pro the two i've used the most in premiere is synchronize which will analyze all my clips and audio tracks and then perfectly synchronize them just a bit more advanced than the built-in synchronized function that premiere already has also drag zoom pro is a great plug-in i've been using for this entire video actually it makes it so i don't have to manually add keyframes when i want to zoom in on certain parts of my clip so it just makes a great addition to my premiere pro workflow with resolve you can find plugins here and there but because it's not yet as popular as premiere they're just far less and there's also just no dedicated marketplace from blackmagic for users to find and download third-party plug-ins either so that being said premiere pro takes the win in this category our ninth category is reliability i really don't think i need to say much here it's no secret that premiere pro is notorious for crashing pretty frequently pretty sure you've seen all the memes going around about this aspect specifically i personally haven't had huge issues with premiere pro crashing maybe once every couple of months it'll freeze and then shut down but it's never been so frequent that i felt like i needed to switch programs solely for that reason with resolve on the other hand crashes seem to be far less frequent i've had a crash on me just once but that's because i'm also on the beta version right now and blackmagic generally fixes those crashing issues before the official version is released one of the main reasons that resolve actually handles so much better is because the workload is balanced between the cpu and the gpu so neither of them are usually overworked while premiere pro is heavily cpu based so if you don't have a good processor you'll likely have some hangups while editing now all of that being said davinci resolve takes the win in this category for being significantly more reliable and our 10th and final category is product support now if you were to search premiere pro tutorial in google just looking for videos on youtube you'd have more than 6 million results but if you searched davinci resolve tutorial you'd have still a lot but far less results at just over 360 000. this is really just because premiere has been used for a lot longer than davinci resolve it's obviously been the most popular editing program among video creators for the last several years so it's a lot easier to find tutorials to help you out also adobe's customer service is pretty good so you get a lot more product support directly from the company itself while blackmagic generally won't give you priority customer support unless you purchased the paid version of their software which obviously makes sense you can't blame them there so with that being said premiere pro wins this category since resolve doesn't have as many resources but that is exactly why we've created the davinci resolve editing workflow mini course where i dive into resolve and teach you my general workflow so that if you would like to jump into that program you'll be able to do it much faster than i was able to we'll also be getting into more one-off techniques and topics i'll be adding several videos to this course every month so that you can stay sharp and up-to-date on the best editing techniques and yes this course is included inside our full course full-time filmmaker so if you want to get lifetime access to all of our filmmaking training content not just this one plus have access to our private community of over 15 000 filmmakers mentorship from us and other students who have seen success in their filmmaking journey as well as discounts contests live q and a's and so much more hit the link below alright so both programs scored equally in our comparison so to answer the title of this video am i switching um short answer no not completely at least there's still a lot of things that i prefer to use premiere pro for specifically like quick tutorials and videos where i need to use my plugins plus like i mentioned all the people i work with still use premiere pro and with davinci i like using that program when i'm doing more cinematic videos and i need to sift through a lot of different clips and i also need to manipulate my colors and whatnot but just because i use both programs that doesn't mean that you need to be proficient in two separate programs as well that's just what i've been doing over the past few months but i definitely feel like i could just pick one and still make the same level of content like i mentioned at the beginning of this video we have courses for both premiere pro and davinci resolve so it really doesn't matter to us which one you choose we even have a dedicated course specifically on final cut pro if you want to try something completely different but guys that's my comparison that's my conclusion both programs are great in their own ways so just look at all the categories that we've compared figure out which program checks the most boxes for you specifically and chances are that's probably the program that you'll be the happiest with thanks for watching if you're not subscribed already go ahead and do that right now and as always if you have any further questions please let us know

Channel: Parker Walbeck

Views: 396,245

Keywords: blackmagic, davinci resolve, adobe, premiere pro, editing software

Id: lr7WsmNlmm8

Length: 15min 2sec (902 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 15 2020