The free Resolve version is ridicolously powerful for it being freeware. BMD has been adding features and improving the package at a pace that is imho truly unprecedented in the industry.

The full version (notable features are a proprietary GPU-based h.264 codec and support for framerates beyond 60 Hz and resolutions beyond 4K (the free version does 4K) is still only 300 bucks or so.

That's really cool, I didn't realise the free version did 4K! As with most of these specialist types of applications (thinking of music software, with which I am more familiar), the GUI and concepts can take quite a lot of getting used to as they are so specialised, but Resolve actually seems reasonably user friendly for doing simple edits. No idea how to use all the Fusion stuff, etc, but seems really powerful!

Absolutely. In my view, it's not that Resolve is a $300 professional app with a free dumbed-down version—Resolve is a free professional app with a $300 amped-up version.

Many of the features added by Resolve Studio are super awesome things that most people don't need and that other NLEs don't have. I bought the Studio version for the realtime lens distortion removal filter, which saved me a lot of time on a project.

For my use I have replaced all GUI video editors, with a bunch of ffmpeg scripts (no irony).

Depends what you need to do I guess. ffmpeg or Handbrake are great for many tasks and would always be my first choice as they are so much quicker and easier to work with for simple things, but if you need to do some splicing together of footage, colour correction, etc. then really I think you need a visual environment to do it in above a certain point.

I can't really imagine how you'd do video editing with scripts, unless you are emulating a linear editing workflow. But then I can't imagine how it would be time-efficient.

Well, I am not doing heavy weight editing or making movies. Most of the time I need to remove audio, resize and re-compress for web, cut the first and last seconds, or splice together 2 videos. Generate thumbs. etc.

I have also fully replaced image editors with imagemagick on the cli and some bash scripts.

>If you're more interested in the “free” than the “open source” part

This phrasing will confuse people who are not familiar with the expression "Free Software". It would be better phrased like this:

>If you're more interested in the “free-of-charge” (as in beer) than the “Free Software” (as in Freedom) part

Sorry, my bad, you're absolutely right!

I had some trouble getting started with Resolve, myself, coming from tools like Premiere. I checked it out because some version of it curiously came on an SD card with my Blackmagic Intensity card.

You can quite often get older versions of Vegas Pro ridiculously cheap on humble bundle as well with all of the money going to charity

Yes, but then you're using Vegas Pro.