Davinci Resolve Fits My Workflow Better

So yeah, covid didn’t treat my business well. Anyone else? Yeah, thought so. It did, though, give me an opportunity to do something I’ve always wanted to do, but the flow of work I had before kept me from exploring. With very few editing jobs, I quit Adobe Premiere cold turkey.

I didn’t hate Premiere, but I didn’t really love it.

I used it for about 7 years on both a Mac and a PC and got pretty good at it. No real big differences. My editing style is straightforward, simple cuts, dissolves and fades. I used a few After Effects templates in my workflow, but that was so infrequent that I don’t even think it counts.

There are two things I struggled with Premiere…. 1) Crashing when it mattered the most (all moments matter) and 2) The subscription cost.

I could never figure out the crashing, and I was tired of trying new drivers, installing updates, and just trying to manage my computer’s resources in order to get it to not crash. Not fun. My editing workstation was fairly powerful, and I used it almost exclusively as an editing workstation, but Premiere still crumbled at times. Other editing and design apps worked just fine, so go figure. I’m no programmer (I was a while ago), and I know the code is infinitely complicated, but I was paying good money to use this “great” tool.

So that leads me to the subscription cost. I hated paying it. I’m still paying it. My clients insist on sending me InDesign, Photoshop, Acrobat and After Effects assets because it’s just the industry standard. I’ll stop paying soon, though, and somehow get them to export something for me that I can use.

On to Davinci Resolve.

I owned a Blackmagic Ursa Mini Pro 4.6K a while back. If not for the sheer size, the camera puts out a BEAUTIFUL image. I tried using Resolve to edit the footage, but work was constant enough that I didn’t have the time to learn the workflow… and nodes. Fast forward to covid, and I’ve got the time!

I’ll wrap this up quick, but all you need is a solid two days of watching your favorite YouTube Resolve “pro” and you’ll see how easy the workflow can be. I’ve literally cut my editing time down by more than 50%. Now a part of that is because it just hasn’t crashed on me. The workflow (left to right) is sweet and simple, but the way it uses the CPU, GPU, and memory must be better than Premiere. No cringing apprehension every time I see it calculating an effect or transition.

After I learned how effective Resolve can be on my straightforward workflow, I decided to do another covid related thing… I bought a shiny new, blazingly fast editing workstation. I’ll talk about that on the next one, but here’s a quick stat…

My 30s final exports, they’re done in seconds.

Real Reason for an External Monitor

(I occasionally use Google Android’s speech-to-text function. Pardon the mistakes.)

I didn't buy my two Atomos Shinobi monitors for the false color ability, nor the histogram. Hell, they’re not even recorders. I've shot on all sorts of cameras. The large, shoulder mount Blackmagic Ursa Mini Pro with it large’ish screen (which I kinda miss) to the one-handed compact Panasonic Lumix LX100 (which I fricken love for travel).

But, the reason I have the Atomos Shinobi is because clients are impressed by large cameras with all sorts of techie stuff hanging from it. It’s like if you hired a bodyguard, you would hope they have cold, calculating eyes and a physical appearance that says something before they need to say something. Don’t get me wrong… it’s not a superficial reason at all. An external monitor brings a lot of production value with it’s long list of features. But, it does look impressive when you walk into a job with a caged camera, XLR mics, and a bright monitor perched atop it all. Any paying client deserves to see that you’re serious about your work. I’ve never approached a job with hardware I can buy at Best Buy or Costco, and even though it might work, my clients deserve a trained fighter.

I've never had perfect vision, but my reading vision has never had a problem. I've been around a bunch a decades, but the health of my eyes seem to be on the decline. Yeah, it sucks… but at least now I've got a damn good reason to use the Atomos Shinobi monitors I bought a few years ago.

I literally cannot see if I’m in focus. As great as the rear screens are on my Panasonic S1H, S1, and S1R , I need reading glasses to see if the images are sharp. Yes, focus peaking does help but it’s not foolproof. Zooming in on parts of the image also helps, but that takes too much time when you’re in the midst of shooting something that’ll never happen again (which is everything.)

It takes an extra set of batteries and an HDMI cable, but I think my days of occasionally using external monitors are numbered. Or… maybe it’s time for another Blackmagic Ursa? Hmmm…

Event Photography at a Waikiki Hotel

(I occasionally use Google Android’s speech-to-text function. Pardon the mistakes.)

If you haven’t done so yet, get yourself a photo shoot doing event photography at a conference. I do a bunch of these, well I did before COVID, but now they're coming back to Honolulu and Waikiki again.

This was a big client from Japan and I’ve worked with them before. The clients, Seven Eleven Japan and Seven Eleven Hawaii are awesome. Smart and nice people and genuinely interested in getting their shoppers the finest foods. It’s always a joy seeing the same faces and continuing the conversations that happened years ago as if time stood still. I make new friends whenever I shoot these, and I just love this type of work.

It might seem boring to just stand around and capture them doing their thing, but it’s not. It’s so interesting to try and capture their thoughts, their feelings, as they go about what’s normal to them. The interactions between their busy time is priceless… it really is.

Technically, it can be challenging, but my Panasonic S1 and S1R never let me down. I just starting using the Westcott FJ80 shoe-mounted flash and they worked wonderfully. It was an 12-hour shoot in various locations and with changing environmental conditions. Little bit of rain, cold food storage locations, nice stores, and the Halekulani ballroom (crazy lighting conditions). This type of work will keep you on your technical toes. If you don’t know how to manage your cameras exposure settings quickly and accurately, it would be good to practice by using the inside and outside of your home, flipping on and off different lights in different rooms, and just forcing yourself to adjust quickly as you run from room to room.

I can’t wait to shoot with them again and experience my relationship transform from clients to old friends.