Re: SInce Davinci now costs nothing, is it worth anything?

I think the unannounced reality is that the cracked version of 7.1 has been out there for quite some time now. So many of the users for whom the Lite version appealed were already on top of that. As even the cracked version requires a Blackmagic card, they probably figured it was only a matter of time before someone created a dongle emulator. The reality in that instance is that the only people who would be buying are more serious pros with cubix expanders, networking, distributed processing, etc. This short circuits the need and desire of the hacking community to even go there. So really nothing changes for them and it opens up the markets even more to their cards. The goal is a BM card in every home!

What of course they continue to neglect saying is that their Extreme 3D card is really only a recommended config and that even their less expensive cards do the basic i/o job.

I think the reality today is that software must come down and it must be in the service of some kind of hardware because the consumer market will never have the same needs as the pros and if you are smart you find a way to market to both.

However, even more than ever the necessity of having a real grading monitor, an actual physical grading interface, the horsepower to do 4K in real time and the ability to switch between multiple color platforms based on the job before you is what will really determine a colorist's value in the marketplace.

Will Lustre and Baselite be the new gold standard? Undoubtedly, but as someone mentioned before the kind of environment the work is graded in will show the degree of commitment the colorist has to this profession or not.