By user utilization, it's quite easy to call Pr a "major NLE" these days. Such as the data from Sundance, which for the last couple years has shown Pr having an absolute majority (over 50%) of the films shown there cut in Pr. Then of course there's how many people use Pr for pro work daily ... which is a truly massive number.
All of the complex post-production apps have strengths and weaknesses. And work differently on different gear with different media, effects, and workflow. They're nothing but fancy hammers. Use the hammer that works and fits best for your needs.
The auto-transcription feature added recently to Pr is wondrous ... I'm using that all the time. Perfect for all needs? Oh, Hades no! But vastly better than any other NLE has at this time.
I need to work both in the Adobe suite, and with Resolve. I vastly prefer the Adobe UIs, and the ability for making custom workspaces. And the way I can map my Tangent Elements panel to not only color but audio mastering, graphics movement/sizing/rotation, all sorts of things.
Resolve does not allow custom workspaces nor any user mapping of any control gear. My Elements panel in Resolve is very frustrating, because it's half 'black' at any one time, more controls unassigned than used. But of course, BlackMagic's business model is to provide relatively cheap software to get you to buy their hardware. I don't want to buy their hardware because it only works with their software.
Resolve started as a colorist app that's been adding many other capabilities in editing, sound, graphics and vfx. It's still way heavy on the color capabilities versus the others. And the more they've modded the app to make it a 'complete suite in one!' the more issues the users have on updates.
The newest 17.4 version being a perfect example. Though a 'minor' number upgrade, it was clearly a major release in changes under the hood. And broke usability for a goodly group of users. Very much in the pattern of Adobe releases: most users were working fine, some users had one or more annoying issues they could work around, and ... some users were totally bonked.
Gee, go figure. Being a one-app-fits-all means simply having more places to fail at least some subset of users. And yes, again, I do work in Resolve and also work daily and communicate with a ton of colorists. Mostly Resolve based, and yes, I know their long list of complaints about that app. But also, why they have to use it because the only other things with as good or greater color capabilities cost a LOT more.
I'm also on the LIft/Gamma/Gain and BlackMagic forums daily. I need to keep up because I'm a user of their stuff. Totally love my BMPCC4K camera, for instance. Add that and a couple Atem Mini Pros, a few other things, I've got I don't know how many full Resolve licenses now. Several just sitting in a drawer somewhere.
As to the color software that costs a lot more, there's the Baselight turn-key system, for instance. You buy a full Linux computer built by them for their app, then pay a LARGE yearly fee for using it. Incredible capabilities, amazing stability ... and that is the ONLY thing you will do on a very expensive computer setup. I love the look and 'feel' of Baselight, but as an incredibly expensive color-only app, it's never going to be in my facility. Ah well.
Such is Life. Choices, and never perfect ones. You just have to sort out what's usable and get on with things.
Neil
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