For all the potshots about AI, this update is huge even if you take away the AI features. They basically added lightroom to this release. There's some polish before you'd want to change your subscription, but its really tempting. It may be the best photo management/editor on linux. Yes, I know about darktable and rawtherapee and I stand by what I said. They also added a ton of motion graphics stuff which from the beta seem to be enough to undercut a lot of basic uses of after effects out. The later two features are in the free release as well!
I made the switch from premier to resolve a few years ago and it feels like such a breath of fresh air. Being able to do the same with Lightroom would be amazing so can't wait to check this out. I've been using the free version and honestly never needed the pro features but I think I'll make the one time purchase today just to support a non-subscription based product of this caliber
That's like saying all fine art would be photography, all film would be CGI, or all music would be synthesized electronica.
That's not how aesthetics seem to work. Artists will make more or less good use of generative AI in their work, and it will probably seep into most media in some way or another, effecting them, but arts mostly don't get replaced and AI doesn't really offer an exception to that history.
There will also be a longer or shorter period of time in which such technology will be abused by artists (because it's new) and at some point it will stabilize.
Aren’t the cameras they are making aimed at professional productions? Those are probably going to replaced last, the first thing will be (or are) TikTok clips shot on smartphones.
I don’t think they’ll see a decline in cinema camera sales due to AI soon.
You are only looking at your own consumption at the moment. There are a lot of problems that still need to be fixed especially with rope artifacting. The 4k most models taunt isn't equivalent to a real 4k image or video as well at the moment you need a quality factor of two to get the equivalent result of a shot image or video. Resolution does not indicate quality.
I really don't understand why people are complaining about the AI features. These all mostly seem like solid quality of life enhancements and CGI-like tweaks.
people complaining about AI features have clearly never wasted hours editing video or lost time and money discovering a technical flaw in a rush shot three days ago. For actual workflows, these tools are lifesavers
It seems to be a oversimplification/misunderstanding of terms.
Artificial intelligence (AI) covers so many different aspects of complex systems and computational logic that it is genuinely really hard to understand and appreciate the depth of the discipline. Not impossible, but not easy.
My manager believes that ChatGPT, Copilot and Claude are the only real 'AI', when in actual, technical, fact they're a subset of AI: large language models.
I use AI regularly: particularly Bayesian networks, and unsupervised and supervised image classification. They make my work infinitely easier and quicker. Algorithm-assisted tools in creative software, like DaVinci, are genuinely helpful and appreciated. Though with LLMs being rammed down our throats at every possible opportunity, I can see why people are getting upset over announcements like this.
LLMs aren't algorithm-assisted tools, they're whole systems designed to generate stuff that is statistically coherent - whether it is actually coherent or not - and is causing real harm[1].
'LLM' doesn't sound as sexy or as marketable as artificial intelligence or 'AI'. Most people glaze over when I try to explain what unsupervised classification is, but if I say "its AI" they ask whether it's based on ChatGPT or Claude... People ask me if I'm an AI sceptic, I'm not. I'm an LLM and BigLLM sceptic.
Remember when "machine learning" was the Tech Sector's buzz-buy phrase of the month? Same thing.
Its frustrating knowing the nuances of AI, only to be be constantly railroaded by BigLLM's deliberate obfuscation and claims that they are the only 'true AI'.
So much respect for Black Magic. They are absolutely World Class and their business model is extremely generous.
Having said that, for all the AI features, the big one would be setting key frames etc. with an agent, driving the general editing workflow with text,etc. I realize this is non trivial but it's certainly viable for a team of this calibre.
I think if BM added a paid for agent which helped execute their traditional video editing tools (even if it "only" supported a subset) then that's a subscription a lot of people would be willing to pay for, especially as their core tool is so generous.
For people using Resolve, would you recommend someone already quite well-versed in KDenLive to switch, for some non-profit work on cutting together educational content with some animations, some talks etc?
Will it allow me to drastically improve my workflow (save time for some tedious tasks), increase quality of the outputs etc?
Resolve is an incredible tool, and I wish they improved the Linux support especially on AMD. It's the last reason why I have a windows machine, and Win11 made it unbearable to use.
I felt the same when I got Vegas and Sound Forge, but they never got released on any platform other than Windows, so eventually outgrew them. I totally understand what you mean; I use it, but also happy with Blender!
They could remove the word "AI" from each one of those feature titles, and the titles would be just as descriptive without them. At this point, it's just marketing noise, more distracting than informative. Maybe like "cyber" in the 1990s. Would you like some AI tea with your cybercrumpets?
I think they've made lots of great practical choices! 100% in agreement with running local models for these tasks.
My opinion is that, for end users, if you name your feature "AI" to market it, you kind of already failed to read the room. You're writing to VCs while hoping it convinces customers.
Name what the feature does, what it gains them. Call it "smart" if you must imply some black box treatment.
Naming AI as the selling point for everything feels a lot like that Android tablet ad circa 2010:
"Your wife will love the new dual core Tegra™ chipset!"
And each is very specific to a use case, not a "general chat prompt for triggering API calls" but things like "ML model to categorize video clips and assigning tags + names, so you can find it faster" and similar.
I'd also get tired if it was "AI ala Microsoft/Google" where the goal is to get you to write forever with a chat bot somewhere else, but these features are very different from that.
Eventually, in moviemaking, generative AI is going to be seen the way CGI is. That is, how people complain about CGI when it's obvious/distracting/noticeable, but the best usages of it won't be noticeable.
Sure, and like CGI, it will change the nature of the media entirely.
Different stories shown with different treatment. With CGI, scenes zoomed out to wider shots and effects swelled even louder over lighting, intimacy, acting, etc.
Old styles didn't disappear or stop evolving entirely, of course, but the center of attention profoundly shifted and the "big" production money went with jt.
Generative AI will likely drive some kind of analogous shift in dominant film aesthetics. I don't know where, but I'm not particularly excited by it myself yet.
Most video is going to be AI in the near future. They see the writing on the wall. Their camera business line is going to sharply decline.
That's like saying all fine art would be photography, all film would be CGI, or all music would be synthesized electronica.
That's not how aesthetics seem to work. Artists will make more or less good use of generative AI in their work, and it will probably seep into most media in some way or another, effecting them, but arts mostly don't get replaced and AI doesn't really offer an exception to that history.
I don’t think they’ll see a decline in cinema camera sales due to AI soon.
Artificial intelligence (AI) covers so many different aspects of complex systems and computational logic that it is genuinely really hard to understand and appreciate the depth of the discipline. Not impossible, but not easy.
My manager believes that ChatGPT, Copilot and Claude are the only real 'AI', when in actual, technical, fact they're a subset of AI: large language models.
I use AI regularly: particularly Bayesian networks, and unsupervised and supervised image classification. They make my work infinitely easier and quicker. Algorithm-assisted tools in creative software, like DaVinci, are genuinely helpful and appreciated. Though with LLMs being rammed down our throats at every possible opportunity, I can see why people are getting upset over announcements like this.
LLMs aren't algorithm-assisted tools, they're whole systems designed to generate stuff that is statistically coherent - whether it is actually coherent or not - and is causing real harm[1].
'LLM' doesn't sound as sexy or as marketable as artificial intelligence or 'AI'. Most people glaze over when I try to explain what unsupervised classification is, but if I say "its AI" they ask whether it's based on ChatGPT or Claude... People ask me if I'm an AI sceptic, I'm not. I'm an LLM and BigLLM sceptic.
Remember when "machine learning" was the Tech Sector's buzz-buy phrase of the month? Same thing.
Its frustrating knowing the nuances of AI, only to be be constantly railroaded by BigLLM's deliberate obfuscation and claims that they are the only 'true AI'.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ykvf3MunGf8
Having said that, for all the AI features, the big one would be setting key frames etc. with an agent, driving the general editing workflow with text,etc. I realize this is non trivial but it's certainly viable for a team of this calibre.
I think if BM added a paid for agent which helped execute their traditional video editing tools (even if it "only" supported a subset) then that's a subscription a lot of people would be willing to pay for, especially as their core tool is so generous.
Will it allow me to drastically improve my workflow (save time for some tedious tasks), increase quality of the outputs etc?
I don't think their use of it is bad at all, I'm just tired.
My opinion is that, for end users, if you name your feature "AI" to market it, you kind of already failed to read the room. You're writing to VCs while hoping it convinces customers.
Name what the feature does, what it gains them. Call it "smart" if you must imply some black box treatment.
Naming AI as the selling point for everything feels a lot like that Android tablet ad circa 2010:
"Your wife will love the new dual core Tegra™ chipset!"
I'd also get tired if it was "AI ala Microsoft/Google" where the goal is to get you to write forever with a chat bot somewhere else, but these features are very different from that.
Different stories shown with different treatment. With CGI, scenes zoomed out to wider shots and effects swelled even louder over lighting, intimacy, acting, etc.
Old styles didn't disappear or stop evolving entirely, of course, but the center of attention profoundly shifted and the "big" production money went with jt.
Generative AI will likely drive some kind of analogous shift in dominant film aesthetics. I don't know where, but I'm not particularly excited by it myself yet.
(Can confirm - I just opened it on my laptop (I had the latest beta installed) and it prompted me to download the release version)
(Darktable doesn't count, it's a scientific software with some wobbly UI).