As soon as you start photography, you learn image editing and spend some time choosing between photo editors such as Adobe Photoshop. However, going from shooting photos to shooting videos requires you to learn video editing, too. Video editing means managing and synchronizing moving images, audio footage, music, visual and audio effects, and motion graphics. DaVinci Resolve vs Adobe Premiere Pro are two of the professionals’ favorite video editors. Let’s check out their features to see if they are a good match for you.
Note: I advise you to choose video editing software considering your technical skills and experience, artistic workflow, time and budget constraints, and your hardware’s limitations. Use the free trial versions to get a feel for the programs. Check how they work on your computer and how difficult it is for you to learn them. It is important to feel comfortable with the software.
Key Features of DaVinci Resolve
DaVinci Resolve 17 is a Blackmagic Design product and aims to deliver everything you need for video editing in a single program. It provides tools for editing images, adding visual effects and motion graphics, and audio processing. Hollywood professionals recognize the quality of DaVinci Resolve, and the program is used for editing films, TV shows, commercials, and more.
If you are looking to learn even more about this program, check out DaVinci Resolve: An Overview.
Complete Media Management
The first thing you need to do when editing your video footage is organize the materials. Therefore, DaVinci Resolve provides tools for importing and previewing your video files. It supports many file formats and media types, including Blackmagic’s proprietary RAW format. You can create and organize folders with images and video clips (called bins) and then sort those using flags, markers, or metadata.
DaVinci Resolve supports batch processing, saving multiple copies to different destinations, a wide range of output formats, and automatic audio and video synchronizing.
Color Correction Tools
The color correction tools are some of the best features of DaVinci Resolve. It supports a wide color gamut and HDR images. It allows you to balance footage from different sources. So, if the light changes during filming, you can correct the colors from multiple files and create a consistent atmosphere throughout your entire film.
DaVinci Resolve has tools to adjust contrast, brightness, and color levels, remove tints, adjust highlights, midtones, and shadows, modify saturation and hue, and apply selective color adjustments. You can also track and follow objects to ensure your adjustments are consistent over the entire video.
Suppose you don’t want to spend time doing manual color corrections. In that case, you can use the Open FX library that provides color effects, glows and lens flares, vignettes, refinement and beauty tools, image restoration, sharpening, and many more ready-to-use effects.
AI-Based Magic Mask
Speaking of tracking objects and following them throughout the footage, DaVinci Resolve uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to detect and isolate objects automatically. For example, the AI Magic Mask tool creates masks for an entire person or particular features (e.g., faces, eyes, arms, etc.) and tracks them for you. Furthermore, it uses AI to identify objects you want to remove from the scene. These innovations speed up the editing process and ensure your work is consistent.
Montage Tools
Montage can take a lot of time and energy. DaVinci Resolve aims to reduce this time by providing one-click actions, dual timelines, multi-cam editing, and fast scrolling. It also sticks together all the videos in a folder, provides tools for professional and viewer trimming, and lets you make basic color adjustments on the spot.
DaVinci Resolve includes over 100 transitions, effects, and 2D and 3D title templates. You can use its built-in resources without fearing your video will look like somebody else’s. The software even has a boring shots detector that warns you when clips in the timeline are too long.
Customizable Templates for Creating Visual Effects
If you think the built-in visual effects aren’t enough, you should know that DaVinci Resolve includes tools for creating photorealistic visual effects, graphics, and titles. You can start your effects from scratch, import 3D models and scenes, add lighting effects, and create animations. And because you don’t want to redo the same effect over and over again, the program allows you to create and save templates for later use.
Powerful Audio Engine with Support for 2,000 tracks
How many audio tracks do you need? Well, one for the ambient sound, one or more for music, a few for voices, a few for audio effects, and many others for different reasons. Don’t worry — DaVinci Resolve has you covered. Its audio engine supports 2,000 tracks and lets you work with all of them in real-time.
Smart Reframing
Especially when sharing your videos on social media, getting the correct aspect ratio and size is something you have to be aware of. DaVinci Resolve provides intelligent reframing, so you won’t have to manually do each shot. Instead, it automatically reframes the video and exports using the aspect ratio of your choice. Furthermore, the program detects faces and people and repositions them inside the frame.
Why You Should Use DaVinci Resolve
You should use DaVinci Resolve if you already have video editing experience and want to get to the next level fast. The program is flexible and powerful but can also be quite difficult to learn if you are not technically minded. At the same time, it provides semi-automatic tools that help you along the way if you don’t need to use the program’s most complex features.
It is also a good choice for speedy videographers looking to produce high-quality short movies. DaVinci Resolve seems to work very well for creating YouTube videos, cooking demonstrations, interviews, and commercials. It’s fast and efficient and allows you to focus on creativity instead of post-processing.
Nevertheless, DaVinci Resolve includes all the tools a professional editor needs and delivers high image quality and sound. In addition, it gives you full control over the editing process and some great color correction tools. If you are already using the Blackmagic Video Assist, it means you are familiar with the Blackmagic RAW format and using their video editing software is the natural next step. In addition, it is mostly free with only a few features requiring a paid upgrade — like multi-user projects and some of the more advanced effects and filters.
Key Features of Premiere Pro
Adobe Premiere Pro is a reference in editing software. It is so popular that it is part of university curricula worldwide. So if you add Premiere Pro skills to your CV, people will take you seriously as a video editor. But is it the right video editor for you?
And if you’re looking for a comparison between Final Cut Pro vs. Premiere, we also have you covered.
Media Management
Like DaVinci Resolve, it also features a media manager with bins and labels for organizing your clips and has support for Adobe Creative Cloud Libraries as well for sharing assets.
The Lumetri Color Workspace
Premiere Pro gathers all color correction tools into the Lumetri workspace. You’ll find both one-click adjustments and refined controls such as white balance, tone, contrast, exposure, highlights and shadows, color balance, hue and saturation curves, and more.
The program allows you to fix the color of a sequence and then apply the same changes to other shots to save you time.
Lumetri Looks for Quick Editing
For even faster editing, Premiere Pro includes presets that change the entire mood of your video footage in seconds. You can change the intensity of the preset, modify its parameters (e.g., hue, saturation, vibrance, sharpness, tint balance, etc.), or create your own presets and save them for later use.
Speech to Text
This feature allows you to transform speech into subtitles or captions. You can check the results and merge or split segments to make them look good on the screen. Also, you get to stylish the text by changing its font size, color, or position.
Remix – the Intelligent Song Retimer
Premiere Pro uses AI-powered algorithms too, and one of their roles is to retime songs to a specified duration. Remix helps you match the duration of the music with the length of the video. It analyzes the song and creates arrangements that match the new duration. Although it is pretty smart and does a great job by itself, you can customize the result and mix the sound as you like.
Customizable Templates for Animated Titles and Graphics
Premiere Pro also includes many tools for creating motion graphics and completing your editing workflow. You can use the built-in effects and transitions or use Premiere’s templates to create your own graphics. It’s up to you how much time you spend working on intros, titles, end credits, and so on.
Integration with Adobe Apps
The main advantage of using an Adobe product is the smooth integration with all other Adobe products. And since Adobe has created the Adobe Creative Cloud, all your work can be easily accessible and safely stored in the same place.
As a result, you can import images, music, videos, and graphics from Adobe Stock, edit photos in Photoshop, create special effects in After Effects, and bring everything together in your movies. Furthermore, there are lots of third-party plugins you can use.
Why You Should Use Premiere Pro
Like Photoshop, Premiere Pro has many fans and rich literature around it. You can find anything from books to videos and discussion forums. With Premiere Pro, you won’t lack study materials or answers to practical questions. So, if you are a beginner and you want well-documented software, an Adobe product is what you need.
The popularity of Premiere Pro has another advantage: it looks good on a CV. If you think about entering the industry and applying for an editing job, having Adobe Premiere skills will help you.
You should also consider Premiere if you are familiar with Photoshop or other Adobe products. To begin with, it’s more cost-efficient. It also speeds your learning process, as software from the same company tends to have the same usability design and philosophy.
Concluding Words
Having a good video editor determines the quality of your films. Whether you are using a professional video camera or a DSLR to record videos, high-quality video and audio footage are not enough. You should be able to add motion graphics, soundtracks, and other elements that embellish your work. Moreover, you should synchronize everything and create a consistent and coherent atmosphere. Like with photography, the story is your priority.
