I just can’t continue to support Hitfilm. I originally invested in learning this product because not only was the software nice, but the ecosystem around it was really cool and welcoming when I was just learning how to stitch two clips together. Since being bought by Artlist, the forums have now literally disappeared, and the absolutely fantastic YouTube channel has been dead for months. The new overlords really don’t seem to care about this product, so I’m going to jump ship now before it gets ugly, and certainly before I send them any more money.
So whose ship do I climb onto? Who will pull me on board, sad and soggy and already comfortable with a different product, and wrap me in a warm blanket of usability and utility? I’m just a hobbyist, working with a variety of sources up to 4K or 240FPS, but I like the power of these more professional editors as it encourages me to learn more. If there’s a button there, I wanna push it!
Davinci Resolve seems to be pretty popular and seems like a great value (I’d probably get the paid version once I’m comfortable with it). Adobe is of course a household name, but it seems quite expensive. Final Cut probably won’t work too well on my 2015 Air, so it’s…well…cut. PowerDirector looks pretty nice, but I’ve never heard of it before and it’s Windows only, though that’s probably fine.
Are there any others that someone would recommend as a good lateral move, or even upgrade from Hitfilm? What do you folks use, either personally or professionally?
Just a personal opinion, and take this from someone who is currently subscribed to Adobe CC (the full beans). Adobe CC is basically a subscription virus. You can turn off auto update downloads and notifications, but it still manages to notify you of an update which is ready to install. And if you decide to sell an old laptop (Windows, at least), don’t imagine you can just “uninstall” Adobe CC all willy-nilly. You have to log in, download the latest dashboard and download all the latest app updates before it will give you the option to uninstall anything. I guess there is now a “removal tool” available from Adobe, but that’s yet more stuff you have to download, install and run, just to uninstall Adobe CC! But I didn’t have access to that tool the two times I needed to uninstall it. And one computer was a desktop with no Wi-Fi. I had to find an ethernet cable long enough to reach the table where I’d temporarily set up my old tower to prepare it to give to a neighbor and then spend ages logging in and updating Adobe just so I could uninstall it. Edit: And it’s expensive. Unfortunately, they have a lot of apps that are just top of the game. But I’m still teetering on the edge of cancelling my subscription.
I haven’t used Adobe Premier much at all. It’s fine, but I prefer Davinci Resolve, though I’m sure that’s because I’ve used it FAR more. As Morpheus636 alluded to above, I’ve seen lots of complaints about bugs and crashes with Adobe Premier. Granted, the people keep using it, so that says something about how good it is, otherwise. I will say that in the years I’ve spend using Davinci Resolve (like you, not a super hardcore user, but I edit a reasonable number of videos), I’ve probably only had two or three total crashes across multiple versions and updates.
I used to use Power Director. It was pretty good back when I used it. I don’t doubt that they’ve fixed some of the quirks, but it did have some. For instance, barely audible clicks between EVERY cut if you didn’t blend the audio for a couple frames. Still, I really liked it. I only switched because I needed to be able to edit Blackmagic Raw at the time. But I did like Power Director. Unfortunately, I think they’ve gone to a subscription model like Adobe.
I currently use Davinci Resolve on an M1 Mac with no issues. When I first started it (years ago) the encoding engine was poor quality unless I used nVidia hardware encoding. Which was okay for me, as I was using a desktop with nVidia GPU at the time (AMD CPU). But I couldn’t imagine having to live with the build-in, Blackmagic encoding at that time. It looked pretty bad, regardless of settings. But I don’t find that to be the case any more. I’m sure there are still be benefits to using nVidia GPUs, but I now primarily use it on an M1 Mac and it works great.
Generally, you are completely correct. Okay, that is probably always correct, lol. But both of these were to acquaintances and I was leaving certain things on there for them, rather than re-doing it all.
Looks like it, though it’s much cheaper, actually looks like a pretty good value. It also seems to have a couple NVIDIA-dependent features (per the requirements) which I probably won’t miss, but I’ll still have to consider that.
I do have an allergy to overly invasive software though. Adobe has been an offender before, and your experience sounds pretty grating to me. I don’t agree with most programs having auto-update services running from startup, and I’d certainly be looking into aggressively disabling that if that’s the case.
Weirdly, I don’t have as many issues on Mac. But on PC, even after I specifically chose no notifications from Adobe Cloud and specifically chose not to automatically check for updates, I would still get a notification popping up EVERY time I turned on the computer that there was an update available for Adobe Creative Cloud.
The uninstall issue was mostly frustrating because I had to sign in to uninstall. And apparently the dashboard app was old enough that I had to update it before I could sign in, and once I had updated and signed in, it started automatically updating my individual programs because once the dashboard app had updated, it defaulted to automatically updating the apps. Most of the time, I just use the apps and it’s fine. It’s just times like that where I can’t help but shake my head at how controlling we’ve allowed these software companies to become.
I trained on adobe premiere at school in the early 00s, but after trialing sony vegas, I ditched premiere as fast as possible. Premiere did not support multicpu/multicore (though it claimed it did), was hideously slow at rendering (low single digit fps) and opening the titler was 100% guaranteed to crash the entire program 100% of the time.
Unfortunately, a few years ago sony sold vegas to magix, who ruined it in short order.
I’ve had a great experience with Blender’s VSE recently. It definitely has certain abstractions which don’t make sense for a video editor and only make sense for Blender though.
Low overhead, plays nice with AMD, really good encoding defaults, and free.
See, this is why I need you guys. I look at the Vegas website and it looks like a real good option at first, even second glance. Can you elaborate what went downhill with it? Did it loose functionality, support, something else?
DaVinci is really rising to the top, even if it isn’t optimized for AMD. The one thing that isn’t quite clear to me is the upgrade process. Since there isn’t even a subscription option (wow!), does that mean the one-time Studio price gets you a lifetime of upgrades?
The one thing that Hitfilm seemed to have over the rest is its license allowed for 3 installations, which is ideally what I’d want. My desktop, my FW16, and my wife’s desktop. 2 installations seems to be the standard, so I guess one of these will have to just have the free version, which means I’m gonna need something with a free version…
It does look good! I do think I want something more feature-rich though. I may experiment with it on the side, though. Thanks!
I haven’t actually used their version of vegas, I fled as soon as I heard magix were the new owners. My experience is they’re just a terrible software company.
However, I HAVE used magix software before and its chock full of ads. Even the purchased/licensed versions. I got a bunch of their programs (most of which were programs they had acquired from other companies) from Humble Bundle once and within less than 10 minutes of installing and running one of them I uninstalled it and deleted all the installers. IIRC the functionality was pretty basic and the ads were horribly intrusive, and ads in paid for software is just crossing the line in my opinion.
I purchased the “Studio” version of Davinci Resolve around version 14 or 15 (can’t remember where I started). I am now on version 18 and have never paid another dime. I get notifications of updates when I start the program and can choose to download it or “skip.” When a full new version comes out (like going from 17 to 18), I’ve always been notified and been able to install the update and activate it with the same old key I’ve been using since the beginning. I can’t say this will never change, but it hasn’t across the last handful major version upgrades.
I too used “Sony” Vegas many years ago and liked it back then. But I haven’t tried it since it changed hands.
Honestly, even if Blackmagic came out tomorrow and said that starting with Resolve 19 you will need to buy a new key to gain access to 19 and the next few versions, I wouldn’t be too upset. At least I have the option to keep using the version I have, assuming it still does what I need it to do. Whereas, with a subscription, if I decide to stop giving the company money on a regular basis, I lose access to the software, not just updates.
It turns out, Power Director still does have a “perpetual” license option. It only gives you access to the current version (and I assume, updates to that version, but would not give access to any future version). That’s still a decent option, in my opinion.
I’m not completely against subscription software. I just hate the idea that if I ever stop paying, I don’t just lose access to future updates, I lose ALL access to the software.
As it should be. Hey programs, if I’m not using you, I don’t care if you need an update!
Very much agreed. I’m actually ok with a subscription for video editors since they can seemingly always do something cooler or better so keep the updates coming, but I need the ability to stop paying and keep using what I’ve already paid for. I don’t even really agree with dropping my functionality down to the free tier like Hitfilm will do to me once my current subscription expires next month.
I’m really feeling a lean towards DaVinci right now. A lot to like, not a lot to dislike.
Now that I think about it, towards the end (of my time with it) I think Power Director was giving popups with ads for the new, paid version of the program.