DaVinci Resolve vs Premiere Pro: Why editors switch to DaVinci?

The current agenda of the motion design community becomes clear - more people switch to DaVinci Resolve, leaving their Adobe subscriptions behind. But why does it happen?

In this article, we’ll go through the main reasons why editors switch to DaVinci Resolve from Premiere Pro and what exactly Blackmagic Design can suggest to their new editors.  

Features

For the wider experience, we asked our clients about the reason they switched to DaVinci Resolve. This is one of the answers we received: “Premiere Pro can’t fulfill all my today’s needs”.

The more we work with DaVinci Resolve, the better we see that the“Resolve” part is completely justified. While Premiere Pro is mostly centered on video editing, DaVinci contains all-in-one features, including color correction, sound editing, special effects and many other.

Let’s break it into the main features DaVinci Resolve can suggest, while Premiere Pro keeps staying behind.

Video Editing

Unlike Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve has features that allow animating footage without using keyframes. One of them is Dynamic Zoom, which allows to quickly create a Zoom In/Out animation without the keyframes.

If you’re using the same type of assets all the time, like intro, particular sound fx or template, DaVinci Resolve has an advantage here too. You can upload your regular assets to the Power Bin and they will be always available in your Media Library, without the urge to import them again and again.

Blackmagic Design has also considered the rendering part - unlike Premiere Pro, you can render several clips at the same time, which was incredibly needed.

You can also render several clips at once in Premiere Pro, but you’ll only be able to do that with Media Encoder.

Speaking of other timesaving features, DaVinci can analyze the footage and automatically cut it into the scenes via Detect Scene Cuts feature, which is not available in Premiere Pro. Additionally, you can export such separated footage as Individual Clips without placing In/Out points for each clip while exporting.  

Color Correction

Color Correction is known to be the strongest part of DaVinci Resolve.

Many editors did not consider color grading to be easy, so Blackmagic Design created a complete system of color editing tools, united into Color Tab.

Specifically, the reason of DaVinci Resolve’s color correction usability and convenience is Nodes.

After you gain a basic understanding of how the Nodes work, you’ll be able to quickly color grade your footage. Additionally, you won’t be obliged to create complex Node combinations - applying 2-3 basic Nodes may give you a nicely-looking result.

Other important features to mention would be the Tracker and the Magic Mask - you can select a particular area of your image and correct it’s color separately from other parts.

Premiere Pro also allows color correction via Lumetri Color tab, but unfortunately, these features are limited in comparison to DaVinci Resolve.  

Sound Editing

Sound editing in Premiere Pro is available but limited to the basic options, while sound editing in DaVinci Resolve is fully included in the Fairlight.

Fairlight is a tab inside of DaVinci Resolve which allows you to work specifically with audio clips. Here you get the whole separated workflow, including Audio Pool, Controllers, Index and other tools.

Just like the assets, you may reach your regular audio clips via Power Bins.  

Special Effects

A manual bunch of transitions, titles and animations in DaVinci Resolve also appears to be wider than in Premiere Pro. But the best part here is definitely the Fusion.

Fusion tab allows you to work with transitions and effects without creating a bunch of layers - it’s also operated by Nodes.  

It all adds up to the usability of DaVinci Resolve, which we’ll mention below.

Usability

Some editors mention the issues they faced in Premiere Pro all the time - software crashes, gives random bugs, is complicated to learn, etc. When they switched to DaVinci Resolve, they found out it was easy to start editing and the errors they experienced in Premiere Pro are not bumping out in DaVinci Resolve. 

Apart from reliability, there are other tasks DaVinci Resolve may perform better.  

Interface

While Premiere Pro has all editing sections in one workflow and you can hide/reveal them.DaVinci is separated into 7 sections: Media Tab, Cut Tab, Edit Tab, Fusion, Color Tab, Fairlight and Deliver Page - all these sections allow you to gradually focus on 1 task at a time and contain the full set of features for each task:

Many of us got used to the Premiere Pro interface, but objectively DaVinci Resolve’s interface is more intuitive and user-friendly.

Shortcuts

Incredibly how Blackmagic Design thought of this thing - many of us are used to the particular Premiere Pro and After Effects shortcuts, required for the editing process. 

Switching from another software to DaVinci Resolve may be complicated due to the editing habits, so they added the ability to automatically set shortcuts from Premiere Pro and other editing software via Keyboard Customization.

Some of the manual shortcuts in DaVinci Resolve are not totally convenient - using most of them will require both hands on your keyboard. But you can quickly customize the shortcuts due to your preference.

Additionally, you can check our guide about main mistakes beginners make in DaVinci Resolve.

Speed

DaVinci Resolve claims to be faster in many aspects - faster workflow, faster render, faster result.

Why DaVinci Resolve is faster? Blackmagic says it’s specifically optimized for GPU acceleration, so the tasks like color grading, playback and rendering are performed faster. Another reason is efficient media management - DaVinci Resolve is designed to process a lot of media at the same time, so it can handle huge projects.  

Upgrades

Upgrading is clearly the best way to see if the company listens to its audience and is oriented on improving someone’s life.

Like Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve updates every year, but sometimes even twice a year with massive changes. Returning to our client’s reply, Premiere Pro starts to lose this race not only because of its rare updates but simply because of its content. 

Blackmagic seems to give exactly what editors ask for - in the last DaVinci Resolve update they’ve added vertical and square aspect ratios for Tik Tok and Instagram creatives, compatibility with tablet, new AI engine and other useful upgrades.

iPad Support

Also, as an additional plus, we can add that Blackmagic has a convenient version of DaVinci Resolve for iPad, with quite large possibilities, such as the use of custom fonts and templates.

Payment

Of course, the main reason editors switch from Premiere Pro to DaVinci Resolve is the price. Working with Adobe Suite is less flexible because of the monthly payment either for the Suite or for each separate software. 

Adobe Premiere Pro cost: $33.99 per month

Adobe Creative Suite cost: $79.99 per month

DaVinci Resolve cost: You can use the limited version of DaVinci Resolve absolutely free, with no time limit.

The free version includes most of what you need to create professional level videos. Sometimes the free version will show rare messages about effects and features that are only available in the paid version. DaVinci Resolve Studioincludes professional and commercial additional effects and features for example: DaVinci Neural Engine, noise reduction, stereoscopic 3D, film grain, optical blur and more.

DaVinci Resolve Studio costs $295 single payment (* and you can download DaVinci Resolve for free if you purchase one of Blackmagic’s cameras)

Eventually, this difference is huge. The particular audience of people using video editing software is built from freelancers, motion designers, graphic designers and those who just started learning video editing. 

Most of these creatives can’t allow themself to pay a monthly fee. Obviously, the beginners might not have the costs to pay, graphic designers need video editing suites occasionally, while freelancers depend on the number of clients they work with - some months you simply won’t work, but will still need to pay the subscription.

We believe Adobe will be a great solution for studios, who can allow the Suite for the whole team of designers. Still, recently one of the studios that use our templates has also informed us they moved to Blackmagic Design.  

Conclusion

Taking all that to account, Adobe should seriously reconsider its policy and future updates. We would definitely love to have some of DaVinci’s features in Premiere Pro!

From our own perspective, we see how many of our clients change their Adobe subscriptions to DaVinci Resolve purchases and are satisfied with their choice.

It’s safe to say that Adobe gave us years of creativity and possibilities, but will it stand up to its competitors? Both Adobe and Blackmagic Design have a lot to offer, but the cost of Adobe subscription, rare updates, and the lack of some vital features are the reasons why editors switch to DaVinci Resolve and will most likely continue to do so in the future.

Would you rather stay with Premiere Pro or switch to DaVinci Resolve?