11 ms·

I don't work in the professional media field, but isn't this ridiculously inexpensive for something that seems to be aimed at content studios, TV stations, etc

I don't work in the professional media field, but isn't this ridiculously inexpensive for something that seems to be aimed at content studios, TV stations, etc (judging by the hardware compatibility focus and dedicated keyboards)? I was expecting these pro products to be on the order of the tens of thousands USD. I've paid this much for a hobby DAW.

capableweb 5y ago
Yes, DaVinci is ridiculously cheap, because the software is not how they earn their money, it's via their hardware. If you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the submission page, you'll notice a bunch of hardware for controlling DaVinci and its modules. It ranges from $400 to $50,00 and they have even more expensive hardware as well. This is where they get most of their profits from, and where the larger companies really spend the money on when it comes to buying from BMD.
- NikolaNovak 5y ago
  Which feels like such a rare business model in this year 2022. Everybody wants to lock you into lucrative recurring software subscription, even for software that should be one and done.
  - AussieWog93 5y ago
    >Everybody wants to lock you into lucrative recurring software subscription Everybody except Grant Petty. I've definitely heard stories about an expletive-filled rant when Adobe discontinued their "buy once, own forever" products. Both him and Doug (the other main co-founder) genuinely care more about making good-quality, affordable products than being worth an extra few hundred million.
  - roguas 5y ago
    Well, they took somehwat adobe route minus piracy. Pre davinci situation means: FCPX or Adobe Premiere. How do you get your product in? Easy, release product for free so small time creators, experimenters get familiar. Those people go to work for professional studio, they request davinci since they know it better. Then company further optimizes by buying expensive intergrated hardware to better streamline production... Its brilliant to see this nonobvious market oppportunity. Further you get extra street creds, as yt people will love your product just for the fact its so accessible (free).
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  > Yes, DaVinci is ridiculously cheap, because the software is not how they earn their money, it's via their hardware. DaVinci is ridiculously cheap because the entire company is owned by three guys, at least one of whom has a personal, burning disgust for the way that the television industry (in particular, the Australian television industry) used to be run back in the day. I distinctly remember getting a bizarre company-wide memo at one point, directly from the CEO, where a particular product launch (I think it might have been the Pocket 4K) would assist in democratizing TV production to the point where no company could force the nation to watch Hee-Haw again. He's genuinely on a mission from God to break up the monopoly in TV production, and profit comes second to that goal.
  - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
    You just convinced me to spend some money with them.
  - gizajob 5y ago
    Also a great place to work too. Former member of the Decklink team here. Grant seems to genuinely care about the well-being of his staff, as much as a busy man in his position can. Great benefits like mixers with food and drink on a Friday to get to know other people in the company, and free food and coffee daily. Also enjoyed the rather "flat" organisational structures of managers and engineers. I'm sure in my team, if I recall correctly, the "team-leader" was regularly rotated amongst the engineers as just another role to be done, not some excuse for egoistic power-tripping. Almost like a chore that someone had to do. I think their organisation reflects in the quality/affordability of their products, as being engineer led.
    - AussieWog93 5y ago
      >Also a great place to work too. 100% man. I left two years ago due to some major life changes I didn't know how to handle, but still get nostalgic about the place to this day. It's not just the perks, but the culture too - both in terms of striving to improve as professionals and the laid-back, larrikin attitude towards just about everything else. I run my own business now, but my long-term goal is to be able to create the same environment and provide the same opportunities that Blackmagic gave me. >coffee daily You're really underselling Bing there, mate. ;)
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
traceroute66 5y ago
>I don't work in the professional media field, but isn't this ridiculously inexpensive for something that seems to be aimed at content studios, TV stations, etc If you think Resolve is ridiculously inexpensive, Adobe Creative Cloud is actually rip-your-arm-off-where-do-I-sign inexpensive. Just think about it. For a business expense that is essentially pittance a month, you get: - Adobe Premiere (arguably one of the best, if not *THE* best video editor) - Adobe After Effects (as above, but motion graphics and visual effects) - Adobe Audition (as above, but audio) - Adobe Media Encoder - Plus old friends Photoshop, Illustrator etc. There are pro products out there for "tens of thousands of USD", but the cheaper end of the market is really giving them a run for their money (at least for your average use-case).
- ttoinou 5y ago
  600 USD per year is expensive
  - traceroute66 5y ago
    > 600 USD per year is expensive No. Its not. With the greatest of respect, have you ever run a business? I could list many reasons why 600USD is cheap, but I'll leave it with the easiest one to understand, the old adage "time is money". 1. How much are you paying those video editors using the Adobe suite that you're paying 600 USD each a year for ? 2. How many projects are those video editors working on ? 3. What is the profit margin on those projects ? I would suggest the typical answer to the above is "a lot", "a lot", "thin enough so that they need to complete a reasonable amount of projects to remain profitable". As for $other_reasons, let's see .... IT equipment, Video/Lighting Equipment, office space, cost of customer acquisition (vs keeping them happy via prompt completion on time) .... the list goes on. The 600USD will be at the lower-end of all the other expenses. 600USD a year is cheap compared to what it is saving your business in time and money, and the efficiencies it brings.
    - aceazzameen 5y ago
      Sure, it's cheap for a business, but very expensive for an individual.
McDyver 5y ago
It is! And you can also get the speed editor + resolve for the same price. Kind of "do you want a free speed editor with that?" :)
omershapira 5y ago
Broadcast system economics are fascinating: • Selling to the pro field (50+ person studios) is a meager few billion dollar market, but highly demanding in terms of features. In Israel (where I worked in TV a decade ago), there are likely under 1000 'pro' edit stations, for almost 9M population [1]. • Selling to the general public is a much larger chunk, but you're competing against iPhone apps (previously against multimedia software, which is geriatric by now). That's why the prosumer market is that lucrative: Same software as pro, with some flags to limit features. For every professional who can shell $5k (/year, which is new), there are 50 hobbyists willing to pay $250. Triple the income stream with marketing as the sole expense. But not all companies have access to broadcast markets. For example, Adobe never got Premiere into newsrooms, but did make money off After Effects and Photoshop in design departments there. So Adobe changed their licensing structure to account for a different consumer:prosumer ratio by creating a "bundle" license paid monthly. Studios paid less (licenses for AE used to be single payment, and a lot) and consumers paid more. Avid made money primarily from broadcast & film, so their flagship products factor that in their licensing, so their prosumer ratios are tilted towards their primary market (more expensive prosumer products). I wonder how many studios switched to Blackmagic software. Davinci and Fusion (their compositing software) don't have a lot of success stories nowadays, but the feature list (multicam! high end grading! scripting! compositing!) is objectively more focused towards serving studios than Adobe's. I hope the adoption story looks a lot different this decade. [1] I don't have official numbers, but a post house owns 5-50 Avid licenses, there's about 15 of them, plus universities, schools, military + corporate offices. That's still about 1 broadcast license per 10K population.
cronix 5y ago
It originally cost $800,000. You're getting that for $300, plus a lifetime of free upgrades. > Before this change, the pre-built versions of Resolve had been the only available options, selling for between $200,000 and $800,000, which was common industry practice at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DaVinci_Resolve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DaVinci_Resolve

capableweb 5y ago

Yes, DaVinci is ridiculously cheap, because the software is not how they earn their money, it's via their hardware. If you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the submission page, you'll notice a bunch of hardware for controlling DaVinci and its modules. It ranges from $400 to $50,00 and they have even more expensive hardware as well. This is where they get most of their profits from, and where the larger companies really spend the money on when it comes to buying from BMD.

NikolaNovak 5y ago
Which feels like such a rare business model in this year 2022. Everybody wants to lock you into lucrative recurring software subscription, even for software that should be one and done.
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  >Everybody wants to lock you into lucrative recurring software subscription Everybody except Grant Petty. I've definitely heard stories about an expletive-filled rant when Adobe discontinued their "buy once, own forever" products. Both him and Doug (the other main co-founder) genuinely care more about making good-quality, affordable products than being worth an extra few hundred million.
- roguas 5y ago
  Well, they took somehwat adobe route minus piracy. Pre davinci situation means: FCPX or Adobe Premiere. How do you get your product in? Easy, release product for free so small time creators, experimenters get familiar. Those people go to work for professional studio, they request davinci since they know it better. Then company further optimizes by buying expensive intergrated hardware to better streamline production... Its brilliant to see this nonobvious market oppportunity. Further you get extra street creds, as yt people will love your product just for the fact its so accessible (free).
AussieWog93 5y ago
> Yes, DaVinci is ridiculously cheap, because the software is not how they earn their money, it's via their hardware. DaVinci is ridiculously cheap because the entire company is owned by three guys, at least one of whom has a personal, burning disgust for the way that the television industry (in particular, the Australian television industry) used to be run back in the day. I distinctly remember getting a bizarre company-wide memo at one point, directly from the CEO, where a particular product launch (I think it might have been the Pocket 4K) would assist in democratizing TV production to the point where no company could force the nation to watch Hee-Haw again. He's genuinely on a mission from God to break up the monopoly in TV production, and profit comes second to that goal.
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
  You just convinced me to spend some money with them.
- gizajob 5y ago
  Also a great place to work too. Former member of the Decklink team here. Grant seems to genuinely care about the well-being of his staff, as much as a busy man in his position can. Great benefits like mixers with food and drink on a Friday to get to know other people in the company, and free food and coffee daily. Also enjoyed the rather "flat" organisational structures of managers and engineers. I'm sure in my team, if I recall correctly, the "team-leader" was regularly rotated amongst the engineers as just another role to be done, not some excuse for egoistic power-tripping. Almost like a chore that someone had to do. I think their organisation reflects in the quality/affordability of their products, as being engineer led.
  - AussieWog93 5y ago
    >Also a great place to work too. 100% man. I left two years ago due to some major life changes I didn't know how to handle, but still get nostalgic about the place to this day. It's not just the perks, but the culture too - both in terms of striving to improve as professionals and the laid-back, larrikin attitude towards just about everything else. I run my own business now, but my long-term goal is to be able to create the same environment and provide the same opportunities that Blackmagic gave me. >coffee daily You're really underselling Bing there, mate. ;)

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

traceroute66 5y ago

>I don't work in the professional media field, but isn't this ridiculously inexpensive for something that seems to be aimed at content studios, TV stations, etc If you think Resolve is ridiculously inexpensive, Adobe Creative Cloud is actually rip-your-arm-off-where-do-I-sign inexpensive. Just think about it. For a business expense that is essentially pittance a month, you get: - Adobe Premiere (arguably one of the best, if not *THE* best video editor) - Adobe After Effects (as above, but motion graphics and visual effects) - Adobe Audition (as above, but audio) - Adobe Media Encoder - Plus old friends Photoshop, Illustrator etc. There are pro products out there for "tens of thousands of USD", but the cheaper end of the market is really giving them a run for their money (at least for your average use-case).

ttoinou 5y ago
600 USD per year is expensive
- traceroute66 5y ago
  > 600 USD per year is expensive No. Its not. With the greatest of respect, have you ever run a business? I could list many reasons why 600USD is cheap, but I'll leave it with the easiest one to understand, the old adage "time is money". 1. How much are you paying those video editors using the Adobe suite that you're paying 600 USD each a year for ? 2. How many projects are those video editors working on ? 3. What is the profit margin on those projects ? I would suggest the typical answer to the above is "a lot", "a lot", "thin enough so that they need to complete a reasonable amount of projects to remain profitable". As for $other_reasons, let's see .... IT equipment, Video/Lighting Equipment, office space, cost of customer acquisition (vs keeping them happy via prompt completion on time) .... the list goes on. The 600USD will be at the lower-end of all the other expenses. 600USD a year is cheap compared to what it is saving your business in time and money, and the efficiencies it brings.
  - aceazzameen 5y ago
    Sure, it's cheap for a business, but very expensive for an individual.

McDyver 5y ago

It is! And you can also get the speed editor + resolve for the same price. Kind of "do you want a free speed editor with that?" :)

omershapira 5y ago

Broadcast system economics are fascinating: • Selling to the pro field (50+ person studios) is a meager few billion dollar market, but highly demanding in terms of features. In Israel (where I worked in TV a decade ago), there are likely under 1000 'pro' edit stations, for almost 9M population [1]. • Selling to the general public is a much larger chunk, but you're competing against iPhone apps (previously against multimedia software, which is geriatric by now). That's why the prosumer market is that lucrative: Same software as pro, with some flags to limit features. For every professional who can shell $5k (/year, which is new), there are 50 hobbyists willing to pay $250. Triple the income stream with marketing as the sole expense. But not all companies have access to broadcast markets. For example, Adobe never got Premiere into newsrooms, but did make money off After Effects and Photoshop in design departments there. So Adobe changed their licensing structure to account for a different consumer:prosumer ratio by creating a "bundle" license paid monthly. Studios paid less (licenses for AE used to be single payment, and a lot) and consumers paid more. Avid made money primarily from broadcast & film, so their flagship products factor that in their licensing, so their prosumer ratios are tilted towards their primary market (more expensive prosumer products). I wonder how many studios switched to Blackmagic software. Davinci and Fusion (their compositing software) don't have a lot of success stories nowadays, but the feature list (multicam! high end grading! scripting! compositing!) is objectively more focused towards serving studios than Adobe's. I hope the adoption story looks a lot different this decade. [1] I don't have official numbers, but a post house owns 5-50 Avid licenses, there's about 15 of them, plus universities, schools, military + corporate offices. That's still about 1 broadcast license per 10K population.

cronix 5y ago

It originally cost $800,000. You're getting that for $300, plus a lifetime of free upgrades. > Before this change, the pre-built versions of Resolve had been the only available options, selling for between $200,000 and $800,000, which was common industry practice at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DaVinci_Resolve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DaVinci_Resolve