DaVinci Resolve Is Now So Good It’s Impossible for Competitors to Ignore

Last week, Blackmagic announced DaVinci Resolve 19, an upgrade to the popular video editing software that added over 100 new features. It’s just the latest example of how the editor has become so reliable and feature-complete that it can’t be ignored, even by direct competitors.

DaVinci Resolve’s growth from a niche color grading software to widely popular full-fledged video editor is one of the most impressive success stories in the photo and video in recent memory. Not only is it powerful and fast, but it’s also feature-rich and supported natively on more platforms than either Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere Pro. While the former is only on Apple devices (by design), the latter still relies on emulation for support for Windows ARM and isn’t supported officially on Linux at all. Resolve, by comparison, is already available on Apple Macs, Windows, Linux, and Windows ARM — natively.

Resolve also has the most robust mobile solution of the three, with full support for back-and-forth editing and with feature parity on iPad, an endeavor it launched in 2022. Final Cut is getting closer to feature parity with its most recent update, but it doesn’t yet allow for editors to send edits back and forth between iPadOS and MacOS. Adobe’s mobile strategy is lagging significantly behind (it’s the only major NLE — nonlinear editor — that doesn’t have a full-featured mobile partner app) after Premiere Clip was killed off and Rush appears destined for the same fate as it hasn’t seen a meaningful update in years.

“We are incredibly proud of how far DaVinci Resolve has come. When Blackmagic Design acquired DaVinci, it cost $200,000 for a one GPU-based system and more than $800,000 for a 16 GPU top-of-the-line system. Now there is a free version equipped with 95 percent of the features found in the Studio version,” Bob Caniglia, Director of Sales Operations, North America at Blackmagic Design, tells PetaPixel over email.

“It’s also grown incredibly as an application, from grading to now editing, Fusion VFX, Fairlight audio, and more. It’s had AI tools with the DaVinci Neural Engine since 2019, and it’s had a staggering number of workflows built around it, from the numerous hardware panels to its collaboration features and Blackmagic Cloud to the workflows with our switchers, network storage, cameras and more. Most importantly, however, we’re proud of the range of users, from students, content creators, and hobbyists trying out editing for the first time, to Hollywood blockbusters and Oscar-winning films and everyone in between. We’re proud to be able to empower any end user with a free and professional tool.”

The cherry on top of Resolve’s popularity is its price: it’s free. While there is a paid version called DaVinci Resolve Studio, most editors don’t need the features it offers: the paid version adds support for multiple GPUs, cinema 4K output, motion blur effects, temporal and spatial noise reduction, multiple AI-based tools, HDR tools, camera tracker, voice isolation, multiple Resolve FX, 3D stereoscopic tools, and remote rendering. If an editor does need any of these tools, it’s not a very big investment: just a $295 one-time fee. That price includes all future updates, too, so it’s not treated like other perpetual software investments that require re-purchasing with each new version.

For comparison purposes, Final Cut Pro costs $299 (plus $50 a year for the iPad version) and Premiere is only available as a subscription either as a standalone app for $35 a month (that’s paid monthly and not part of an annual commitment) or as part of the $90 per month all apps plan (again, that’s the price with no annual commitment). With an annual commitment, Premiere Pro costs $264 by itself, paid upfront. No plan includes just it, After Effects, and Audition nor is it included in the $240 per year Photography plan.

It shouldn’t be forgotten that Studio’s price is so approachable because Blackmagic chose to lower it from $995 in version 14 back in 2017.

“DaVinci Resolve was a robust color grading platform when Blackmagic Design acquired it in 2009, backed by a team of incredible engineers, and we continue to have a very talented team of people working continuously to add new features and updates as we release new versions. Just because an application is free or affordable doesn’t mean it should lack quality, and empowering the end user at every level is at the core of Blackmagic Design. As such, we are dedicated to our products, and because DaVinci Resolve also works with so many different product lines, both internally at Blackmagic Design and externally with other vendors, there is an incredibly deep pool of resources available to it,” Caniglia adds.

Obviously, Blackmagic is thrilled with DaVinci’s success.

“We are grateful for its popularity as the more people who use it, the more feedback we receive on it, and the more we can improve it,” Caniglia says. “This is why we find tradeshows so useful as we get to speak with end users firsthand, understand their workflows, listen to their successes and pain points, and gather important insights. Our Forum is another great resource for both us and our end users in this regard.”

Resolve Can’t Be Ignored

Resolve’s explosive growth in popularity has not gone unnoticed, yet both of its major competitors approach its existence differently. On one side, what it does so well — being an excellent all-in-one editing solution — is in Adobe’s plans for Premiere Pro’s future. On the other side, Apple works directly with Blackmagic to make sure the pipeline between Final Cut and Resolve is clean and with as few barriers as possible.

“No doubt DaVinci Resolve is a great piece of software and we are taking the competition very, very seriously. We welcome any competition in the industry that forces us all to be better. In the end, competition is good for the customer,” Francis Crossman, Principal Product Manager at Adobe Premiere Pro, tells PetaPixel.

One major complaint from users over the past few years has been crashes; Premiere Pro became mired in a public perception that it was — and still is — crash-prone. Adobe has focused its efforts heavily here over the past few years.

“Adobe focused on bugs, crashes, and stability as well as efficiency in exchange for adding a bunch of new features, which took a few years to complete,” Crossman says. “As a result, crash rate has been cut in half. Export performance of ProRes has improved 4x, too.”

DaVinci Resolve’s ability to be an outstanding all-in-one editor is attributed to its history as a finishing software, Paul Saccone, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Adobe Pro Video, tells PetaPixel.

“Premiere started and has continued to grow as a really full-blown robust editing and trimming solution for long-form, docs, indies, and other projects. Premiere started its life in editorial. Resolve started its life as a color corrector. All these years later, when we talk to customers, there is an overwhelming number of people who gravitate to Premiere for the editorial tools because it works faster and more efficiently,” he says.

“Premiere was not designed to do color and audio to the same level as Resolve. There was a time when an editor would pass their footage to a colorist and then an audio editor, and now with short-form video that has changed to where one person does it all. Resolve was designed as an app to finish something, Premiere was meant to be a video-cutting application where you then pass it to someone else to be finished. We recognize that people want to stay in Premiere to finish what they’re doing and that’s the goal going forward.”

Premiere Pro’s forward-looking development emphasis is, therefore, a direct response to what DaVinci Resolve does well. Saccone believes that Premiere Pro is still the choice for many seasoned editors in specific workflows and that, with the right feature enhancements, it can evolve to be a good all-in-one solution, too.

“It’s not surprising when we see hardcore editors gravitating to Premiere. When you see someone going for a little bit of everything, it’s not surprising to see them going to Resolve. Our goal is to improve the end-to-end tools so that in the future it can be better at being an end-to-end solution,” he says.

“Premiere has the depth of control that pro editors expect and rely on. Everything Everywhere All at Once was cut in Premiere, and they could not have done that movie in Resolve — something that complex. That speaks to the deep integration with After Effects and the other apps in the Adobe ecosystem. It’s not just about Premiere, it’s about the whole creative cloud,” Crossman adds.

Adobe’s annual creativity conference Adobe MAX is coming in October, so if there is word on what to expect for Premiere in the coming year, it will be showcased there.

For its part, Apple’s Final Cut seems to sit somewhere in the middle between Resolve and Premiere, appealing to both the individual creator and high-end user for different reasons. Apple’s finishing tools are strong, too, and in recent years it has been augmenting the editor’s ability to work well in high-end productions as well as for those working on smaller short-form content. PetaPixel‘s YouTube Director Jordan Drake cuts the PetaPixel YouTube channel episodes on Final Cut, for example.

Apple has seen a surge of interest in Final Cut in recent years — more so than in recent memory. It says a lot that the company is doing more marketing around its NLE, too. The appearance of two Final Cut ads on YouTube for the first time isn’t a coincidence.

Additionally and as mentioned, Apple worked hard to ensure that there are as few barriers as possible between Final Cut and DaVinci Resolve so that if editors want to do the cutting in Final Cut but their color grading in Resolve, that is not only possible but is actually an encouraged workflow.

It’s another example of how Resolve has gotten to a point where it’s critically important even for an NLE competitor to work well with it. Apple and Blackmagic have a different relationship with each other than Adobe does, though. Resolve works well on all platforms but Apple is going to win a head-to-head performance fight on Apple Silicon — that’s the advantage of the software and hardware handshake it can take advantage of.

For folks plugged into Apple’s ecosystem, that is going to continue to be a very compelling choice. Adobe doesn’t have that advantage though, but it sounds like the company is preparing to make updates to Premiere that it hopes can win users back.

Resolve Isn’t Slowing Down, But Neither are Premiere Pro or Final Cut

Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve is hitting a perfect balance of price, compatibility, and workflow for most editors right now. Not only can an editor use Resolve on basically every popular platform, but it also works seamlessly with a mobile solution and allows teams to work together in ways no other NLE can touch right now. It also comes packaged with far more tools than most NLEs, such as Fusion and Fairlight.

But perhaps the biggest competitive advantage of Resolve is its price. It’s hard to argue with free, but free and feature-rich is a deadly combination. That is not even mentioning that Resolve is seen as a better color corrector and is the only application that can handle Nikon RAW video files. On that note, it’s considered the best RAW video out there. The result has been that many video editors have moved to Resolve in droves.

Looking at how well-supported and tight its coding is, Blackmagic must be supporting Resolve with a robust team. That is expensive, and it’s a wonder how the company manages to pay for it — it’s hard to believe sales of Resolve are enough given how 95% of the application is free. Blackmagic’s goal may be domination by user adoption, supported by its robust hardware sales — something Adobe can’t do but Apple can. For its part as noted, Apple appears to be taking Final Cut even more seriously than in the past.

All three major video editing platforms have ardent supporters, with good reason. However, there’s no question Resolve’s audience has grown in recent years, taking a larger piece of the pie. It will be interesting to see how Adobe and Apple respond, as they each have ambitious plans for their software. Mobile strategy, in particular, is a space to watch closely.

Image credits: Photos via Blackmagic. Header image created using assets licensed via Depositphotos