Adobe Premiere/AE vs Davinci Resolve (paid)?

[chakalakasp]

I'm an Adobe dude through and through, but I've grown... weary of the monthly fee for using their suite. As a business cost they're reasonable, but stock photography income has been drying up for the past decade and it's harder for me to justify the entire suite any more. I'm thinking of dropping down to just the photography package, which would give me Photoshop and Lightroom (two programs that, right now, have no real competition for what I do), and switching my video flow from AE/Premiere to Davinci Resolve. (I don't use the other programs in the Adobe Suite).

I'm fairly noobish at running Premiere, but it has a similar feel and flow to LR/PS so it's not been too hard to learn. This feels like one of those questions that probably gets beat to death but maybe doesn't hurt to re-ask from time to time: those who've used both, what are your impressions of one verses the other? How hard is the Davinci "nodes" system to learn versus the layers system that Adobe employs? How does the performance compare? Part of what draws me to Davinci (other than the one time price and free updates to new versions) is that is relies more heavily on GPU than CPU, which seems like a plus to me as my editing platform has a GTX3070 installed, which feels underutilized by Premiere.
I plan to get more into video in the future, so whatever platform I pick now I'll probably end up stuck with as I'll get too familiar with it to want to switch. So I'm trying to choose carefully.

 

[brett8883]

I'm an Adobe dude through and through, but I've grown... weary of the monthly fee for using their suite. As a business cost they're reasonable, but stock photography income has been drying up for the past decade and it's harder for me to justify the entire suite any more. I'm thinking of dropping down to just the photography package, which would give me Photoshop and Lightroom (two programs that, right now, have no real competition for what I do), and switching my video flow from AE/Premiere to Davinci Resolve. (I don't use the other programs in the Adobe Suite).

I'm fairly noobish at running Premiere, but it has a similar feel and flow to LR/PS so it's not been too hard to learn. This feels like one of those questions that probably gets beat to death but maybe doesn't hurt to re-ask from time to time: those who've used both, what are your impressions of one verses the other? How hard is the Davinci "nodes" system to learn versus the layers system that Adobe employs? How does the performance compare? Part of what draws me to Davinci (other than the one time price and free updates to new versions) is that is relies more heavily on GPU than CPU, which seems like a plus to me as my editing platform has a GTX3070 installed, which feels underutilized by Premiere.
I plan to get more into video in the future, so whatever platform I pick now I'll probably end up stuck with as I'll get too familiar with it to want to switch. So I'm trying to choose carefully.

I pay for the whole Adobe suite and I still paid for and use Resolve Studio anyway. The color controls and performance are way way better.

Nodes: So first of all Resolve is like Premier and AE all in one. In Resolve AE is called Fusion and it’s a separate page in Resolve while still being part of the same program. Like AE is for Premier you use Fusion when you have some complex vFX or compositing work that needs to be done that the main pages of resolve just can’t handle. This is good because you can quickly switch between the two back and forth but I bring this up because when talking about nodes vs layers I have to separate their use in the main part of Resolve vs the Fusion page.

In the main part of Resolve that is equivalent to Premier, nodes can work the exact same as layers. You can literally think of serial nodes as effect layers. There are other types of nodes for more complex actions but you don’t have to use them and most casual users don’t.

On the other hand, as a long time Adobe user I find nodes in the Fusion part of Resolve, equivalent to AE, to be cumbersome. I understand why it’s a better system and if you wire yourself to think in terms of nodes not layers that it is more efficient to do highly complex compositions but simple things are over complicated. For instance, to draw an line and then have that line move around requires at least 3 separate nodes. A background node, and merge node, and a transform node. The same action only requires one layer in AE.

I never use Premier but for the reason above I still use AE for a lot of the more complex composition work. If you don’t do those kinds of things and just edit video together and color grade you’ll have no problem. Just think of nodes as layers until you are comfortable with it and are ready to more on to more complex tricks with nodes.

 

[Dave Maine]

In addition to the color correction capability (the best in the industry) and special effects capability in fusion, the 2 editing modules in Resolve are as powerful as the editing capabilities of either Premiere or Final Cut Pro on the Mac. There is one additional module within Resolve to be aware of as well. Fairlight is a relatively powerful sound editing and mixing tool that provides a complete production toolset within a single application, all of which can be activated at any point in post production thru a tabbed interface T the bottom of the main window.

 

[MavicAir2Marc]

Resolve runs better on my Mac (8GB M1 Mini) than Premiere, but only slightly. I can add color corrections and some simple things like dynamic zoom in Resolve and it will still play the 4K footage with maybe 1 or 2 dropped frames. Premiere starts to slow down with simple speed changes and color corrections. Not a lot, but more than Resolve. I have both and Premiere is simpler at some things than Resolve but the cut page in Resolve is leaps and bounds easier to use for a quick edit throwing a bunch of stuff in the timeline to get started. I've been using Adobe products for over 25 years (mostly Photoshop) so the familiarity with how the programs are all connected with dynamic links and the similarity in the interface helps. I still have a lot to learn with Resolve but there are features in it that I prefer over Premiere.

 

[CorralesDan]

Not much to add, other than I'm firmly in the Davinci Resolve camp and I have the studio version. It's nice that once paid, that's it and there are constant updates to improve it.

 

[zeusfl]

I use both products. I really like the Resolve 17 studio version. Is fast and the color corrections are easy to use. Also, the audio side is more pro in my opinion.

 

[DaveS]

We use Adobe here at work and I use Resolve in my personal work. I've always had trouble figuring out AE, less so with Nodes in Resolve but I don't try and do really high end graphics work with it, mostly just lower thirds and title screens. I'm equally fast editing on both platforms which tells you something about how similar they are in editing mode. Once I retire, I'll use only Resolve because there's no way I want to pay for Adobe on a retirement income.

 

[Skybuyer]

I'm an Adobe dude through and through, but I've grown... weary of the monthly fee for using their suite.

I'm fairly noobish at running Premiere, but it has a similar feel and flow to LR/PS so it's not been too hard to learn. This feels like one of those questions that probably gets beat to death but maybe doesn't hurt to re-ask from time to time: those who've used both, what are your impressions of one verses the other? How hard is the Davinci "nodes" system to learn versus the layers system that Adobe employs? How does the performance compare? Part of what draws me to Davinci (other than the one time price and free updates to new versions) is that is relies more heavily on GPU than CPU, which seems like a plus to me as my editing platform has a GTX3070 installed, which feels underutilized by Premiere.
I plan to get more into video in the future, so whatever platform I pick now I'll probably end up stuck with as I'll get too familiar with it to want to switch. So I'm trying to choose carefully.

"How hard is the Davinci "nodes" system to learn versus the layers system that Adobe employs? "
Sorry for the delayed answer. I've been totally away from everything for a few weeks.

To answer your question, think of "nodes" as layers. The simplest nodes are serial nodes, layers that simply stack upon one another. They are most simple in the Color Page. The other types of nodes incorporate blending or sometimes there are merged nodes. But again, nothing more than layers. If I may illustrate the difference now between a node and a Photoshop layer, when you add a layer in Photoshop you then select the mode. In Resolve the type of node you select already has the mode built in. But serial nodes are the most common. Like in Photoshop where you moved the layers up or down or use them on specific layers, Resolves nodes are reordered by how you connect them with the in-out points.

So, start in the Color Page and play with serial nodes. One can be designated for a LUT, another for brightness/contrast, a third for color/saturation, etc. Also nodes can be used for other tasks such as noise removal. Honestly, it's not that different from Adobe. Just a slightly different approach for similar, if not identical functions.