It seems like everyone has been moving their post workflow to the cloud over the last few years except Resolve. While Resolve has a pretty slick Frame.io integration, it's not the full-fledged robust toolset that some of the competitors have ruled out. It turns out Blackmagic had some solid philosophical reasons for waiting to launch its cloud service, but now it's here, and it looks amazing. Most interestingly, it should be pretty affordable.
On the software end, it announced Resolve 18, which has cloud functionality built right in. There is a new cloud tab in your project management panel, and you can just put projects there and share them with other Resolve users at your will. You can keep editing, while your colorist down the hall or on another continent can just work.
This is assuming you have access to the same media, which most of us are used to now with tools like Dropbox.
Blackmagic Cloud Store
But BMD delivered a one-two punch and also launched another solution, which is by far the coolest thing dropped today—the "Blackmagic Cloud Store," which doesn't look like much at first glance but offers some incredible features.
It doesn't look "cool" because it's just the same design as the original Blackmagic graphics box from a few years ago, instead of a new design. Inside although is a whole different story so who cares if they don't put it in a fancy new box?
With this new release, we finally see the one little device everybody has been waiting on to make cloud workflow make sense.
In the Blackmagic Cloud Store is RAID 5 secure M.2 storage. M.2 is already very secure, but setting it up in a RAID sets up extra redundancy. There are multiple 10-gig ethernet connections for setting up a local area network on set which means you can have one station on set doing downloads, another doing edits, and another doing exports, all with the help of this one box. It also has a USB-C port for downloading directly to the box and a second USB-C port so you can make affordable backup copies to a harddrive.
Blackmagic Proxy Creator
Best of all, it's all built to integrate quickly and efficiently with Dropbox. Instead of trying to make a ton of money off locking you into an online storage platform to charge you an arm and a leg for, you can instead just work with the Dropbox account you already have, and away you go.
If you do want to move things to the cloud, Resolve has completely redesigned its proxy workflow designed to make it easier to create your proxies and have them flow through the cloud. You might want camera originals up on Dropbox, but for the most part, a lot of folks will be using lightweight proxies.
To that end, there is a brand new application, "Blackmagic Proxy Creator," for making proxy media files. With it, you can create watch folders that will automatically create proxy files as soon as you drop media in them.
When rolling this out, Blackmagic laid out some of the cultural rules it uses for building its cloud solution.
- Blackmagic isn't interested in locking in lifetime users with a subscription, but instead with a good product. Many software companies have an investor-driven desire to get subscribers, but Blackmagic doesn't like that. If you spend years working on a movie with certain software, you should still be able to access that project years later. That's why they focus on making their income on individual purchases, hardware, or studio license upgrades that justify themselves.
- They refuse to track their customers and sell data. This also leads to why they aren't as fixed on monthly subscriptions as other platforms.
- It was incredibly refreshing to discuss so honestly how the decision-making process was made when BMD determine how to monetize their products. Obviously, they had been making their own unique decisions over the last few years, but once you hear thier thinking, it makes sense.
Availability and Pricing
The Cloud features are included in Resolve 18 and The Cloud Store starts at $9,595. This is a bit pricey for most of us but BMD will also roll out a Cloud Store Mini for freelancers and small studios that comes in at only $2,995.
With 10g ethernet and monitoring out, it will still provide some pretty great flexibility for individuals and members of small teams.
For even more flexibility they are rolling out a "Cloud Pod" where you get the syncing power but bring your own hard disks.
