# DaVinci Resolve 175 Hacker News commenters recommended DaVinci Resolve and 66 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 3 years (14 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** A professional video editor and color grader whose free version rivals Premiere, with a fair one-time Studio license; expect a learning curve, heavy GPU demands and rough Linux support. ## Why people recommend it - Replaces Premiere and Adobe suite (6 comments): "One $300 USD purchase and you have resolve studio (premiere), fairlight (audition but admittedly not as feature rich/stable), fusion (after effects)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47823821)) "Resolve is clearly the superior NLE with a company that has thus far maintained pretty stellar business practices" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47765215)) "my partner and I have had great luck replacing AfterEffects and Premiere with Blender and DaVinci Resolve" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47671580)) - Capable free version (5 comments): "There are excellent video editing tools: on the desktop from paid ones like Premiere to free (as in beer) ones like DaVinci Resolve" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45901828)) "even for just cutting together clips, adding text, and using keyframes it's hard to beat how nice Resolve is" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49512240)) "I was pleasantly surprised when I had to start 4k video editing work and could just use Davinci Resolve" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46797796)) - Fair one-time perpetual license (6 comments): "One $300 USD purchase and you have resolve studio (premiere), fairlight (audition but admittedly not as feature rich/stable), fusion (after effects)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47823821)) "it was valuable for me to use for a month to evaluate if the Studio features warranted the investment in the permanent license" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48388485)) "that kind of pricing model makes me want to buy a license just to make sure that companies like this stick around" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49614515)) - Industry-standard color grading, pro features (3 comments): "It's the de-facto "standard" for color grading and it's getting more and more capable for things like editing, audio mixing and VFX." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49617911)) "The speed/time remapping controls are quite good; here's a clip I made that demonstrates how deep you can go" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49626668)) "this is software for professionals, most of which highly appreciate most of the features BMD puts out" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48391217)) ## What people warn about - Linux codec and GPU problems (5 comments): "the free version of DaVinci Resolve does not include H.264/H.265/AAC support on Linux due to codec licensing issues" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47761587)) "On Linux I use Davinci Resolve with some tricks to get the good codecs, would use Davinci on Windows too" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49230423)) "The biggest issues are the supports of video cards (nvidia is the king) and different popular codecs." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49613711)) - Crashes and freezes (4 comments): "I've just installed DaVinci and pointed it at my photos from this year and so far it's been frozen for 8 minutes" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47765106)) "I've had DaVinci Resolve reproducibly crash on Intel Arc GPUs when hardware acceleration was on during rendering" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47818245)) "I just used it last month whatever the latest version was. It didn't freeze at startup but all the other issues were still there." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48400315)) - Steep learning curve (3 comments): "I spent a little while trying. My knowledge of lightroom didn't really carry over. I couldn't work out how to do things like masks." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49618383)) "The settings are a bit daunting at first; some are what you expect in a regular photo editor, and others are... weird for me." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47831492)) "Davinci/Premiere is great software, but for beginners it is still a very high barrier to learn the software." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49050368)) - Demands lots of RAM/VRAM (2 comments): "Resolve is extremely RAM hungry. For 4K video I wouldn't want to be editing with less than 12GB of VRAM." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49612975)) "The biggest issues are the supports of video cards (nvidia is the king) and different popular codecs." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49613711)) ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "DaVinci Resolve", https://hackerapproved.com/p/davinci-resolve/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).