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A Beginner's Guide To Using DaVinci Resolve For Video Editing (2020) "DaVinci Resolve 16 is the world's only solution for video editing ". That's what Black Magic thinks of DaVinci Resolve. Well, you might ask what else they were supposed to think since they are the creators. But if you ask most professionals what they thought of this powerful software, they'll most likely come to the same conclusion as Black Magic. And why not. It is powerful. Intuitive. And free. If you're looking to start a new journey into the lands of video editing or you just want to try out this software for the first time, the aim of this DaVinci Resolve beginners tutorial is to guide you on your way to editing your first video. Contents 1. How to use DaVinci Resolve to edit videos​. a. Step 1 : Create Project b. Step 2 : Import Footage c. Step 3 : Edit Footage d. Step 4 : Add Audio e. Step 5 : Add Texts f. Step 6 : Add Transitions g. Step 7 : Adjust Audio Quality h. Step 8 : Adjust Colour i. Step 9 : Export Your Video 2. ​Conclusion How To Use Davinci Resolve To Edit Videos The version of DaVinci Resolve used for this tutorial is 16. This is the free version and it can be downloaded ​here​. Using the steps outlined below, you'll be able to go from a DaVinci Resolve first timer to sharing your first video in no time. Let's begin. Step 1 : Create Project The first window you'll see when you open DaVinci Resolve for the first time is the ​project manager ​window. This is where you'll find all of your project files; and if you are using DaVinci Resolve for the first time, this is where you'll be able to create a new project to work on. Once you enter a new project, you'll be directed to the ​DaVinci Resolve interface​. I want to direct your attention to the seven tabs or 'workspaces' lined up at the bottom of the interface. As you can see from the image below, the seven tabs are media, cut, edit, fusion, fairlight, colour, deliver. As a beginner, you'll most likely not be able to use each of the seven tabs to the full extent of their functionality. But I'm still going to briefly describe the use of each tab so that you can have a sense of what to expect from them. Let's quickly do that. 1. Media : ​this is where you can import and sort out your footage. 2. Cut : ​this is the home of basic edits. It is especially useful if you want to quickly reduce the size of bulk videos. 3. Edit : ​you'll be spending a lot of time here. This is where most of the specialized editing work will happen. 4. Fusion :​ this tab is for adding special effects and motion rendering. 5. Colour : ​this is for your colour edits. You can perform colour correction and colour rendering here. 6. Fairlight : ​you'll find your pro audio editing tools here. 7. Deliver : ​this tab is reserved for export and rendering of your videos when you are done editing. Okay. Let's continue. Before you import your videos and start editing, you need to make sure that your project is set up properly. Just click on the little setting button at the bottom right hand corner of your screen and you'll be taken to a page where you'll be able to configure your video settings. On this page, you won't need to do much to get going. You'll just have to ● Set your timeline resolution. ● Choose a timeline frame rate. You can set this to 25. But as you become more proficient, you will find out that this value can vary between 24, 25 and 30. ● Select playback frame rate and choose the same value you chose for timeline frame rate. ● Lastly, input in video format the same values you chose for timeline resolution and frame rate. Once you're done with this, you can save the settings in order to make it available for future projects. And then go ahead to import your video footage. Step 2 : Import Footage When you create a new project in DaVinci Resolve for the first time, you'll land in the media workspace by default. And recall that I said this is where you can import your videos. There are two ways to go about doing this. The first method is to right click in the media pool and choose import media from the box that appears. You can then navigate through your computer and find the footage(or footages; including audio files) that you'd like to edit. The second method is to simply drag and drop the footage file from your desktop into your media pool. When you're done importing your files, your screen should look like the one below. Then you can move on to the next step. Step 3 : Edit Footage There are two places you can go to in DaVinci Resolve if you want to start trimming your video content : the cut page and the edit page. The cut page has basic edit tools, which is good if you have heaps of videos to cut down. However, if you want to effectively tell your story and have control over the specifics, you are going to use the edit page. Once you are in the edit window, you can start by dragging your primary footage into the timeline. The timeline is the area on the edit page where you work – it is like a chopping board. Your timeline can contain an infinite number of video and audio tracks. And each track can be focused on individually. On the timeline, you can start cutting out part of the videos that you don't want. There are three ways to do this : ● The first method is to move your cursor to the part of the video clip you want to erase, then click and drag until you get to the point you want your video to start. You will be left with an empty space once you perform this action. You can take care of this by selecting the space and pressing delete. ● The second method is to use the blade tool. By pressing B on your keyboard, you can bring up the blade tool which you can use to slice up chosen parts of your clip. To get rid of the sliced part, select it – the sliced part – and press ​shift + delete ​to remove and close up the gap. ● The third method you can use is called the ripple edit. This is actually a shortcut – or rather two shortcuts because ripple edit works for both left and right directions – that you can use to delete and close up space in one move. The shortcuts are : ​control (command) + shift + ] ​for ripple edit right and ​control (command) + shift + [ ​for ripple edit left. Keyboard shortcuts are very useful in DaVinci Resolve. They can help you save precious seconds once you get used to them. Some of the most important shortcuts for editing videos are : B ​= Blade tool A​ = Arrow Shift + delete​ = Ripple delete clip Alt (option) + click​ = Select single clip Shift + click​ = select multiple clips. When you begin to edit your videos, make sure to repeatedly review your work and make necessary adjustments so as not to mess up your storyline. Step 4 : Add Audio You do not have to leave the edit page to add your music or any other form of audio. The same general method and tools used to import and edit your video can also be applied here. ● To add music to your timeline, drag and drop the desired file from the media pool into the timeline. ● You can cut out unwanted part of the audio using the same steps previously outlined (i.e by using the cursor, using the blade tool and ripple edit) You can decide to fade in your audio track at the beginning or fade it out at the end. What this means is that your audio's volume increases gradually until it gets to a normal volume (fade in) or it decreases gradually from a normal volume until nothing is heard (fade out). In order to fade out your audio, drag your cursor to the end of the audio track; select and hold the top end, and pull inward for as long as you'll like the fade out to occur. These same steps apply to fade in except that you select and hold the top end of the beginning of the audio track. Step 5 : Add texts You might want to add titles or any other form of text to your video in order to make it more engaging. In order to do this, head over to ​effects library > titles​. You should notice that there are two types of titles available : the basic titles and the fusion titles that you can use if you crave more sophistication. Like every other thing we've talked about, choosing a title will make it appear in the timeline where you can adjust and move it around as usual. Double clicking on your title in the timeline will bring up the ​Inspector Panel​. The Inspector is DaVinci Resolve's impressive customizer, it gives you control over how you want your texts to look with its numerous options. So, you should have a lot of fun with it. Step 6 : Add Transitions You can choose which transition to add to your video in the effects library by clicking on video transitions. Like titles, there are different options for you to choose from and you'll probably need to do a bit of experimenting in order to get used to them all. Transitions can come in handy anytime you want to mask a hard cut between two different clips. This might be as a result of a mistake during the video shooting. Or as a result of you cutting out part of the video clip while you were trimming it. Either way, transitions can ease the startling effect of abruptly changing clips and help you continue with the flow of your video. For starters, you can try out transition effects like cross dissolve, slide or swipe. These are easy on the eyes and you can activate them by performing a click and drag action on to your desires timeline. One thing to remember is that while transitions are a good way to polish up your videos, it is very easy to make your videos look bad by going overboard with their usage. So make sure that you only use them as a storytelling tool. Step 7 : Adjust Audio Quality A more advanced Resolve user will most likely do his/her audio editing work in fairlight where you have all the pro level audio tools. But as a beginner, you'll do most of your audio work in the edit window. You should bring up the mixer (click work space > show panel in workspace > mixer​) in order to have more control over the volume of your audio. ● You can adjust the volume of your audio track on clip by clip basis by clicking on the faint line on the desired audio clip, and dragging it up or down in order to increase or decrease the volume respectively. ● You can also pull up the inspector panel for audio by double clicking on the audio clip. This will give you even more flexibility in terms of improving the quality of your audio. ● You can also find audio effects and transition options in the effects library. But, again, remember not to go overboard! When it comes to deciding what level your audio volume should be at, there really is no standard template. You just have to repeatedly adjust and play until you get an optimum value that won't interfere with your viewer's experience. Step 8 : Adjust Colour DaVinci Resolve 16 comes with a highly sophisticated colour grading software that will take you countless hours to absolutely master as a beginner. However, because this is a beginners tutorial, we are only going to cover the basics. To start, you will have to leave the edit interface (at last, you might say) and head over to colour. All the tools you need are located in the bottom half of this page. Let's go over the functions of the basic tools you'll be using. ● Lift :​ you use lift to adjust the brightness of dark areas in the video, for example, the black T-shirt in the image below. You can do this quickly by moving the slider underneath the lift colour wheel. ● Gain :​ gain is used to set the brightness of the white areas in your video. You can do this by using the slider underneath the gain colour wheel. ● Gamma : ​gamma is used to adjust the brightness of mid-range or skin tone colours. Again, you can do this by using the slider under the gamma colour wheel. And if you want to play with the colours of your video even more, you can move the knob at the centre of the colour wheels to add or remove certain colours. That's not all. You can also adjust the contrast and saturation of your video. Just click and slide the contrast or saturation values until you get your desired effect. Step 9 : Export Your Video When you are done with all those steps and you feel like you are ready for the world to see your work, the next thing for you to do is to export your videos from DaVinci Resolve. As you might have guessed, you'll need to head over to the deliver tab for this one. Once you're in there, the main focus will be found in the top left corner. This is where you'll find all of your basic and advanced settings, which in all honesty can be hard to understand as a beginner. But another good thing about DaVinci Resolve is that it comes with presets for platforms like Vimeo and YouTube that you can actually use to save videos to your computer. Let's take YouTube for example. The following steps will help you use the YouTube preset to save videos from DaVinci Resolve to your desktop. ● Click the little arrow beside YouTube to choose a preferred screen resolution – probably the one you chose when setting up your project. ● Rename your file and choose an export location. ● Decide if you want to directly upload to YouTube. Don't choose this if you want to preview your video again and play it across multiple devices (which I highly recommend). ● Then you add a render queue. ● A pop-up will appear at the other side of the screen. Click on start render and then you're good to go. Conclusion We have covered the basics of video editing in DaVinci Resolve. Without doubt, DaVinci Resolve is a software that can seem intimidating with all the tiny buttons and icons. But as you can see, with just a few clicks and swipes of your mouse, it is very easy to find your way around the software. If you believe that you love video editing and that you will like to hone your skills even further, check out this ​free primal video method​ for video editing on any editing software. This is the same method we, at Primal Video, use to cut our video editing time in half.