Quick take: I've been editing client work in DaVinci Resolve for a few months, but I haven't ditched Premiere Pro. Resolve excels exactly where Premiere has its pain points: stability, smooth 8K playback without proxies, color, AI tools and a cloud workflow across iPad and laptop. Premiere still wins for social video, thanks to third-party plugins, faster timeline editing, and the After Effects and Photoshop integration. Resolve Studio is absolutely worth $300.
Tools, Not Teams
This video continues a conversation from my comments about why I moved some projects to Resolve. I treat editing software like cameras: I only care about what helps me get the job done. Nobody pays me to use either one. I pay for both, and I'll jump ship the second something does it better.
Where Resolve Wins
Resolve doesn't just do better where Premiere struggles. It does exceptionally well. It has better AI tools, better color management and color workflow, and a better cloud workflow. I can start a project on my iPad, make quick cuts, then pick it up at home on my laptop for transitions, animations and color.
Stability: Resolve crashes too, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. But when it does, I lose nothing. Even a cut I just made is there when I relaunch. Premiere has improved, but I can still lose 15 to 20 minutes of work once a project gets unstable with lots of adjustment layers, effects, transitions or Dynamic Link to After Effects. Now that I edit long client projects like 30-minute online college courses, I can't tolerate that. A project last year that wouldn't stop crashing, even after rebuilding it, is what pushed me to Resolve.
Playback: I shoot most client work in Canon 8K for reframing. My Razer Blade 16 has 96GB of RAM and an RTX 4090, and it still struggles in Premiere. In Resolve, I never have to make proxies. I once asked an Adobe rep through a PetaPixel podcast submission about GPU-accelerated timelines, and the answer was that GPU acceleration isn't the issue. I don't know what that means, I just know what works.
Where Premiere Still Wins
Social video: It isn't Premiere itself, it's the third-party support. Tools like Mister Horse, Film Impact, Red Giant Universe and captioning plugins make social editing much easier. Resolve's plugin ecosystem still feels like the early days of MOGRT packs, even though its AI transcription is better than Adobe's and Resolve 20 adds pretty good animated captions.
Timeline speed: Assuming Premiere isn't bogging down, editing is just faster: vertical workspaces for shorts, ripple deleting through cuts, dropping in plugin effects, and pulling stock footage and music from the Storyblocks panel. Much of that is still manual in Resolve.
The Adobe ecosystem: I made my living in Premiere for ten years, five freelance and five in corporate. I do a lot of rotoscoping, cutouts and animated ads, and After Effects with Dynamic Link is still far easier for that than Resolve's Fusion page. Ironically, After Effects runs smoother than Premiere. I can also drop Photoshop PSDs straight into a timeline. Resolve can do everything, but you'll hit occasional file compatibility issues.
Learning Resolve
The biggest friction is finding solutions mid-project. Premiere has decades of editors who've hit the same problem and posted a fix. On Resolve forums, the answer is often "read the manual." To be fair, Blackmagic's manual is complete, comprehensive and amazing for a company to put out, and I recommend everyone go through it, especially coming from Premiere with different shortcuts. Reddit and the Blackmagic forums help too. Small annoyances, like smooth scrolling only existing on the Cut page, are being fixed. It's now on the Edit page and the iPad app.
Is Resolve Studio Worth It?
Absolutely, at $300. It's not a subscription, though Blackmagic has said future upgrades may cost extra. If the upgrades are this big, it is what it is, and you can always keep using the version you bought. The AI masking, transcription and Resolve 20's Smart Cut, which smooths jump cuts much better than Premiere's Morph Cut, are phenomenal for client work.
Like camera brands, these are all tools from businesses whose job is to make money. If you have suggestions for Resolve replacements for tools like Mister Horse, let me know. Saving three clicks per action adds up over hours of editing.
