I asked if anyone knew anything about the editing software, Da Vinci Resolve...Patrick did and he sent in this article about the free Australian editing software program.
Free you may ask...Yes. But what do you get for nothing in the deal? I’ll leave it to Patrick to ‘put you in the picture’ so to speak.
He writes.... “Gerry asked if anyone had used Da Vinci Resolve Editing software. Well, I’ve been using it for the past eighteen months or so, as well as Apple’s Final Cut Pro. Essentially, Da Vinci Resolve is free! Why? I can’t answer that. It is made by Black Magic Design, an Australian company, who have developed a range of Digital cinema cameras and studio suites, which most are wildly beyond the financial reach by the average camcorder owning enthusiast. If you buy a camera, even their affordable ‘pocket’ camera, you get the studio version of the software thrown in.
Resolve is available for both Mac, Windows and Linux platforms. It is important to say that Resolve is no lightweight program. It is a broadcast standard, serious editing suite. It needs a minimum 16 gig of RAM to run as a minimum. 32 gig is recommended. My iMac has 16 gig of RAM and seems to run version 16 happily, but I have not updated to the current version, fearing that it may struggle.
Da Vinci is a working solution for serious editors. It is not a bells and whistles, full of special effects, impress your friends with add ons to enhance the look of your films. It has whole raft of tools from importing media, editing, colour suite, a sophisticated audio suite and finally delivery which is output to file and other sources.
Each of those work processes are selected from a tab at the bottom of the programme. To say that it is easy to use, is an over simplification, if you are familiar with other higher end editing programs, you’ll have head start with Resolve. It is not a question of what will it do, it is a programme which you decide what you want to do and you can find the means of achieving it. However, you can use it for simple editing without using all of its multiple features. There is a tab for ‘cut’ which simply does that, you can trim, top and tail clips and then output it as a file. This is used by news reporters to get their story to the studio quickly. Simply, once you have familiarised yourself with it, you can easily import your media. Then select and trim on the time-line, add titles and then output to file. To start to gets to grips with it, watch Black Magic’s website tutorials. They are excellent and a good way into starting how to use it. Many of the features and ways of editing are common to many programmes. One feature of Resolve is that you can drag and drop clips from your files or media card directly into the bins. If you are stuck with a ‘how do I do that?’. Just type into your search engine ‘How do you do XXX in Resolve’ you get an answer from a fourteen-year old who knows the answers, but may never have really made a film - Good Luck and persevere! I have omitted the function ‘Motion’ as I haven’t yet become familiar with it. - Patrick