Benjamín Fernández is the director of Digital Sprockets in México City, where since 1994 he has offered post-production, telecine (film-to-tape) and film restoration services. While I’m in México City doing seminars, I visited Digital Sprockets and heard all 6 interesting reasons why Benjamín prefers editing video with DaVinci Resolve than with Final Cut Pro X.

For those unfamiliar, DaVinci Resolve is a program traditionally known for its grading capabilities. Only recently did DaVinci Resolve began to offer editing capabilities too. The following is my interpretation of what Benjamín explained to me in Castilian. He has approved my interpretation before publication:

1. Unlike FCP X, DaVinci Resolve fortunately does not immediately attempt to adjust and “enhance” the raw assets Benjamín brings in. Benjamín is aware that these functions can be shut off or reversed in FCP X, but in his experience, some of the “enhancements” are both damaging and irreversible, as explained in point 2 below.
2. Benjamín says that when he brings in native telecine footage at exactly 24 frames per second with an accompanying 48 kHz audio track of the exact same duration, FCP X somehow manipulates the audio so the audio duration does not match that of the video. (I have not replicated this myself, and Benjamín has only observed this problem specifically when the footage and project are both set to 24p exact and 48 kHz. He has not yet tried this with other framerates.) On the other hand, when using DaVinci Resolve, the audio duration (with the same assets that give him the problem in FCP X) remains the same and therefore the video matches the audio perfectly.
3. With DaVinci Resolve, the Blackmagic hardware is controllable and adjustable directly from the program. On the other hand (see Why does FCP X still deal with pro i/o interfaces haphazardly? from February 20, 2013), as of publication time, to control the Blackmagic (or other) hardware with FCP X, one must do so from the Blackmagic (or other) control panel and then Quit and relaunch FCP X (unlike prior versions of FCP), FCP X still does not control the hardware directly. Such hardware is used with either of these programs to do proper external video monitoring of the final product and in some cases to capture, as covered in more detail in point 4 ahead.
4. With DaVinci Resolve, it is still possible to capture directly from videotape via hardware and control the deck. At publication time of this article, FCP X can only capture from tape from Firewire-based formats (like consumer DV25, JVC’s ProDV, Panasonic’s DVCPRO25, DVCPRO50, DVCPRO HD, Sony’s DVCAM, and HDV from both JVC and Sony), not from those formats which need to connect via SDI, HD-SDI, etc. connected via a card or Thunderbolt device.
5. Since Benjamín plans to grade anyway, he sees no reason to complicate things by using two independent programs when DaVinci Resolve does everything he needs with one tool: capture, edit, and grade.
6. DaVinci Resolve Lite is free, while FCP X costs US$299.

For more information about Digital Sprockets in México City, visit its website.

Stand by for my upcoming DaVinci Resolve articles

Soon I’ll be publishing:

How to read DaVinci Resolve’s unusual waveform monitor

and

How to handle dual mono with DaVinci Resolve.

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My latest book (paperback + ebook)

My most recent book is available in two languages, and in paperback as well as an ebook. The ebook format is Kindle, but even if you don’t have a Kindle device, you can read Kindle books on many other devices using a free Kindle app. That includes iPad, Android tablets, Mac computers, and Windows computers. Although generally speaking, Kindle books are readable on smartphones like Androids and iPhones, I don’t recommend it for this particular book since it contains both color photos and color comparison charts. The ebook is also DRM-free.

In English:

In English, it is currently available in the following Amazon stores, depending upon your region:

• Amazon.com, for the US and other countries in the Americas that don’t currently have their own Amazon store, or anywhere if you simply prefer it
• Amazon.br for Brazil
• Amazon.ca for Canada
• Amazon.de for Germany
• Amazon.es for Spain pero a lo mejor lo preferirás en castellano, a continuación)
• Amazon.fr for France
• Amazon.in for India
• Amazon.it for Italy
• Amazon.co.jp for Japan
• Amazon.com.mx for México
• Amazon.co.uk for the United Kingdom

Or in your favorite bookstore by requesting ISBN–10: 1456310232 or ISBN–13: 978–1456310233.

En castellano:

En castellano, está disponible actualmente en las siguientes tiendas Amazon, según tu región:

• Amazon.com para EE.UU. y todas las Américas donde no existe ninguna tienda particular… o en cualquier parte si simplemente lo prefieres
• Amazon.com.br para Brasil
• Amazon.co.jp para Japón
• Amazon.de para Alemania
• Amazon.es para España
• Amazon.fr (Francia)
• Amazon.in para India
• Amazon.it para Italia
• Amazon.com.mx para México
• Amazon.co.uk para el Reino Unido

o en tu librería preferida al solicitar el ISBN–10: 1492783390 ó el ISBN–13: 978–1492783398.

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No manufacturer is specifically paying Allan Tépper or TecnoTur LLC to write this article or the mentioned books. Some of the other manufacturers listed above have contracted Tépper and/or TecnoTur LLC to carry out consulting and/or translations/localizations/transcreations. Many of the manufacturers listed above have sent Allan Tépper review units. So far, none of the manufacturers listed above is/are sponsors of the TecnoTur programs, although they are welcome to do so, and some are, may be (or may have been) sponsors of ProVideo Coalition magazine. Some links to third parties listed in this article and/or on this web page may indirectly benefit TecnoTur LLC via affiliate programs.

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