How do they actual make money? I've been using Resolve for years without paying for it (and without thinking about its business model too much). It seems that they sell quite expensive professional hardware so I assume the software users are just compensated by hardware users?
I used to work at Blackmagic, wrote some of the peripheral code around BRAW and did some work with the Resolve guys up in Singapore.
Used to have lunch regularly with one of the owners too. Need to check in with him again!
At least back in 2019, BMD made a lot of money selling professional licences for DaVinci Resolve. I don't know exact figures but that part of the business was healthily profitable of its own accord. Very, very healthily profitable!
Most parts of the business were profitable standalone, AFAIK. Their model didn't revolve around loss leaders, burning VC money or anything like that; just selling good products at fair prices and making bank.
I think a big part of it was a fairly lean culture (whole company was bootstrapped and grown sustainably), and specifically in the case of DaVinci they bought out an existing business that had already done a lot of the development and marketing work for absolute peanuts.
Very smart team doing good work.
I'm just a satisfied customer (Resolve and hardware), but it probably helps that it's a private company run by a cofounder CEO that seems to both understand and care about the company, its products, and their market.
From an outside perspective, "selling good products at fair prices and making bank" sounds about right for the hardware, but I always assumed the Resolve software itself was, if not a loss loss-leader, also not a major profit center.
Then again, there's something to be said for volume, especially in a market that includes lots of independent operators and dedicated amateurs worldwide who are willing to spend what good money they have on their craft.
Were you there when BM produced the macOS compatible eGPU units in collaboration with Apple?
Yep, I don't remember a whole lot about them though.
(Actually, anyone else from BMD here? Was that the product that the Industrial Designers won second place in the design awards for, losing out to the accessible playground?)
I didn't work at BMD but worked for a cine distributor supplying lenses to be tested. But yes, lean clean company that works well.
I’m an avid user of Fairlight for almost a decade now. The accelerator card has an interesting history (as does Fairlight).
Do you have a link to learn more about that history?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairlight_(company)
Hardware. It's like the Apple model (before they got into services). They sell a full suite of hardware that works great with their software, and they see the software as a way to keep good will, and also showcase their tech well.
They also sell a paid version, if you want a few extra features.
Their hardware is deeply reliable, affordable, and you can see that they have super solid software chops.
I made the unconventional choice of using a Blackmagic Micro Studio 4K camera for a robotic application and it turned out to be a not crazy choice - we get our choice of lenses and they have controllable focus and zoom, there's a REST API for the camera (which can connect to Ethernet), etc. To speak nothing of the crisp image. And that I can pick one up in 30 minutes at B&H (in NYC).
Industrial vision cameras can cost ~the same but you'll want to rip your hair out before you get to grab an image (or change the focus - sorry, that's mostly never possible).
Huge, huge fan of Blackmagic. The rock-solid free editing software is just cherry on top.
Interesting! How is the latency of this camera?
I can check tomorrow to give you a real answer.
We use the SDI output (that cable is sturdy and the bnc lock connector is rock solid) and a Blackmagic 12G SDI to HDMI converter, and then an El Gato HDMI capture card.
Intuitively, I’d say most of the delay is coming from the HDMI capture side (it’s a pretty cheap usb dongle).
Yep, I was at a broadcaster when we bought a whole pack of their SDI capture cards... the only ones on the market really (everyone else wanted to sell you massively expensive enterprise "appliances") for a very affordable price (I believe they were like 500$ a piece for 4 SDI inputs?).
Also they were first to sell us USB3 based HDMI capture devices that we could take around and do live capture from cameras at full HD for also a pretty affordable price (around 1000$?).
Whenever we needed affordable (semi) professional gear, they were consistently the ones to look at.
> They also sell a paid version, if you want a few extra features.
And the great thing about the paid version is that updates are (so far) free with no subscription bs.
I paid for it once like 10 years ago and still get every new version for free.
And from what I remembered, it wasn't a too expensive license, a few hundreds?
Couple hundred, or free with the cameras.
[dead]
That and I imagine the overwhelming majority of professional users pay for the Studio license. It has a few quality of life things that are a total no-brainer when you use it to make money and/or are paying the person using it.
so you only export to 1080p? I pay for it, albiet the $300~ price point is still low for forever free updates
GPU hardware accelerated encoding/decoding is only in the paid version as well.
Although MacOS users get this on the free version if they are using M-series chips
And they paywalled the ability to install the foss reactor plugin.
The free version can now export 4k too as of a few versions ago.
If you scroll down to the bottom of the linked page, there is a lot of pricing shown for various things. It looks like it gets expensive fast.
Premium features in the paid software as well