DaVinci Resolve - COMPLETE Tutorial for Beginners!

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DaVinci Resolve - COMPLETE Tutorial for Beginners!
fathaAugust 29, 2020


- DaVinci Resolve is

an awesome video editor

for Mac, for PC, and for Linux.

So in this video we're gonna run through

a complete tutorial for beginners

with everything that you need to know,

all the key features and a

ton of video editing tips

to get you cutting videos like a pro fast

in DaVinci Resolve.

Hey, it's Justin Brown

here from Primal Video,

where we help you grow an audience

and scale your revenue with online video.

So let's jump into it.

Now I've gotta tell you,

this is one of our most requested videos.

DaVinci Resolve is actually

taking out the top spot

in several categories

of our best video

editing software reviews,

for the past few years,

both on the PC and Mac side of things.

So if you're interested in checking out

our latest roundup of best

video editing software,

then I've included links to

those in the description.

But in this video though,

we're gonna fast track

your editing with Resolve.

Whether you're brand-new to it

or whether you've been

using Resolve for a while,

I'll be giving you a full

tutorial for beginners

with everything that you need to know,

all the key features to be aware of,

plus a ton of pro tips

to help you maximize your

efficiency along the way.

Now the fastest way to

edit your videos down

in the most efficient and effective way

is to follow a streamlined process.

So throughout this video,

I'm gonna be sharing with you

our Primal Video Method process

which is the fastest and

the most efficient way

of editing your videos down,

with minimal waste of time and rework.

So I'm gonna be taking

you through these steps

in this video,

but at the end, I will link

to where you can download

your copy of the Primal Video Method

to follow along while

you're editing your videos,

no matter which video editing software

you're going to be using.

Okay, this is the first thing you'll see

when you open up DaVinci Resolve.

This is your project manager window.

This is where you can

open up existing projects

that you might already have on the go

or you can start a new one

and you can sort them in here

by adding folders as well.

But for now we're just

gonna go New Project,

and let's call this Justin Edit,

and we'll go Create.

So this is the DaVinci Resolve interface

and the first thing to notice

is down the bottom here,

you have these different areas of working

or different workspaces.

So you've got your Media,

you've got your Cut for basic edits,

you've got your Edit area

which is where you're gonna do the bulk

of your video editing.

Fusion here is really your special effects

and motion graphics and

all of that kind of stuff.

Next one across is Color.

This is where you can do

all your color grades,

color correction.

Fairlight is for all of the audio stuff

and all of your pro

audio tools are in here.

And Deliver, this is

where you have control

over exporting and rendering

out your video projects.

So typically with any project,

you're going to work from left to right.

So we're gonna come back

across to the media area here.

Now just before we start bringing in

all of our footage and video assets,

the first thing that you wanna do

is to make sure that your

project is setup correctly.

So you wanna come down the bottom here

to the Settings button

and then this is where you can configure

all of the settings and

everything for your video.

The main ones that you

wanna change in here

are your timeline resolution.

So you can see here,

we're currently set to Ultra HD.

For this one, we're gonna

go to 1080p, 1920 by 1080.

You can then select your

timeline frame rate.

For us the bulk of the footage

that we're gonna be using

today is 25 frames per second.

So we're gonna set this to 25.

But it's likely you're gonna

be selecting 24, 25, or 30,

based on the footage that

you're going to be editing.

And whatever you select here

for timeline frame rate,

you wanna make sure that

you're selecting the same one

down here under playback frame rate too.

And likewise for the next

one down here, video format,

you wanna match that again.

So we've got 1080p 24

or we're using 1080p 25.

So we'll wanna pick here 1080p 25.

Now obviously there's a lot

of other settings in here

we can go through.

We're not gonna have

time to cover them all.

But just cover off the main ones

that you need to get you going.

So now that you've got

your settings in there,

if you do wanna save a preset,

just come back to presets, hit save.

Give your preset a name,

so we can go 1080p 25.

And go, OK.

And we've now got all of those

settings that we've applied

saved as this preset.

So next time, we just

can come back in here

and load this preset.

Okay, so we can close out of this now

and we can come across

and start to import our video footage.

Now as with any

video editing application,

there's lots of different

ways to do the same thing.

My personal preference

is to come down to the media pool here,

right-click and choose Import Media,

and find the footage

that you want to import.

We could go Footage, Camera1, Camera2.

If you hold down Control or Command,

you can select multiple

clips and hit Open,

and they will be imported.

Or the other way that you can do it,

is you can literally just drag and drop.

If you've got a folder like

we do on the desktop here,

we can drag this folder

into the media pool

and that will import all of those clips

into our project for us.

So you can see the footage

that we just brought in,

we've got two files, Camera1 and Camera2,

off one of our YouTube videos.

We've got two music tracks here

and we've got some b-roll

or some overlay footage

of the Elgato stream deck.

So now that we've got all of our media in

or our video assets in,

the next step is to

start cutting that down.

There's two different

ways you can do this.

DaVinci Resolve

does have a Cut area or a Cut workspace

where you can start to

trim down your footage

with some very basic tools here.

So this could be ideal

if you're gonna cut down

a heap of different clips.

But my personal preference

is to just jump straight

into the Edit area

and just start to build out the story

and build out your edit,

all within this one workspace.

So the next step here

is to bring in all of our

primary video footage,

the actual story content

or the primary content of your video.

So we're gonna grab Camera1.

I'm just gonna drag it down

onto the timeline here.

So this here is our timeline interface.

You can see as we click

and scrub across here,

we're able to move through

the footage back and forth.

Up the top here is our playback monitor.

This is what our finished

product is gonna look like

and over here we have our preview window.

So if I wanna preview any of our clips,

I just click and drag

them into this area here,

and as I click and drag along here,

then I'm able to scrub

through this footage here.

Now we have our playback controls here,

if we wanna play through the footage,

we can hit play.

If we wanna zoom in and

out on our timeline,

we can grab this little slider bar here

and you can see we can

zoom all the way out,

zoom all the way in, get more control,

or more perspective over our edit,

or we can use these two little

buttons here, Detail Zoom,

which will jump straight into

where our playback head is,

or our playback indicator,

this orange line.

Or if we wanna zoom back

out to see our entire edit,

then we can click this

one here, Full Zoom,

and that'll pull us back out.

Now if we're gonna change

how the clips on our timeline look,

we can come over here,

press this button here,

and we get to customize up that view.

So if we wanna turn off

our audio waveforms there,

then we can press this button here,

and those are off.

I'll put them back on.

I like to have 'em on.

We can customize up the

way the video piece looks.

If we just want one thumbnail image

at the start and at the end,

we can select this next view

or if we want no thumbnail

images or no pictures at all,

then we can turn them off completely.

And this can be really

handy to customize this up,

if you are working on a really large

or really complicated project.

Now I personally like

it with the film view

or the little thumbnail images,

and you can change the track

height down the bottom here.

You can see it's a little bit smaller now.

We can make that bigger or smaller

using the slider down at the bottom.

And we'll turn audio waveforms back on

and you can customize up the view

for the audio waveforms here as well.

All right, we'll make

that a little bit bigger.

So for me, I just like to have things

at a size where I can easily see

which clip I'm working on.

And I can clearly see the

audio in there as well.

Now one other thing I like

to do before I get started

is just to maximize the

screen real estate here,

so we've got a bit more room.

So I have to come up here

and press on this button here

to hide that panel

and then grab this side

here and shrink it down,

so that we've got a bit more

real estate to play with.

All right, now for the editing.

We've got our base footage in here.

The first step here is to

start trimming this down.

So I will zoom in on our

timeline here using the slider.

And I do here, is we're going through it,

we're doing a quick pass

and we're removing any of the bad takes

or any of the mistakes or any footage

that you 100% don't want

in your finished product.

There's a few different tools

that you can use to do this.

So we can grab our playback head here

and we can scrub through

or we can just hit play.

Now we can move our cursor

back here to the start of the clip.

You can see that the

cursor actually changes.

We can click and drag back this way

and our video clip is now

gonna start at this point.

So we've removed all of that

stuff at the start of our clip.

Now what we have got at the

start of our video here though

is some blank space.

So we can click on that

and just press Delete

and now our actual video

starts at this point too.

So that's one way.

Just using these handles here on the end

to slide it in and out.

Now let's say that there was a mistake

in this first take here

and we actually wanna

start the video here.

We could just grab that handle

at the start of the clip

and slide it back as we just did

or we can press B on the keyboard

to bring up the Blade tool

and we can just click on that place.

And we've actually cut our

clip in two different areas.

So we can go through and

add cuts in our timeline

or in our clips just by

clicking with the Blade tool.

So we can go through and we

can select all of these areas

where there is no audio.

So there's no audio in this section here

and we can start to remove

some of the gaps that way.

So by using this Blade tool,

we're slicing up our footage,

then we can press A on the keyboard

to come back to our arrow

or you can come up here

and select the arrow.

We can select this clip

and if you press Delete

with that clip selected,

we're going to just remove that clip

without closing the gap

if we undo that now.

And we select that clip again

and press Shift + Delete,

then that's going to remove

it and close the gap.

So likewise with this one,

we can press Shift + Delete,

and we have removed that

section from our video.

Now you can actually use a

combination of these as well.

So we could come over here to this clip,

click and drag this back

to remove the start of it.

Select that gap in the

middle, press Delete,

and we have closed up the gap.

So there's no right or

wrong with this stuff.

It's just knowing which

tools you've got access to

to be able to edit your video down fast.

Now the other tool that

I love and I use a lot

is called a Ripple Edit or

a Trim Top or Trim Tail.

Now we're just showing

you how you can add a cut

in our footage here

and we could then select

this clip and press Delete

and then close up the gap.

But using Ripple Edit

Left or Ripple Edit Right,

we're able to do all of that

with some keyboard shortcuts

with really one press.

So let's say that we wanna

finish our clip here,

at this point, we wanna

delete this section

and close up the gap,

and move all of this stuff back.

All we need to press is Command + Shift

and Square Bracket Right

or Control + Shift + Square Bracket Right.

And obviously, if we wanna

go back the other way,

let's say that we want

to start this clip here

at this point,

and remove all of this,

then we can use Command or Control + Shift

and Square Bracket Left.

And we have removed all of the stuff

to the left of that clip.

Now while you're going

through and trimming down

and editing your clips,

you can also pick them up

and move them around.

So you can click on them,

you can lift them up,

if you want them out of the way,

and you wanna move some

clips and things around,

or you might even wanna

swap the order of them.

So you can pick them up

and swap them straight in.

It's really like a big game

of shapes and Tetris here,

where you can pick up your clips

and move them around.

So we might want this one here

a little bit further down.

We can click on that one.

Now if we just let it go here,

that's going to overwrite that footage.

So the footage that was

underneath it is now gone,

we'll undo that.

So now that you know some

of the most common ways

to trim your footage down in this step,

we're gonna go through and remove anything

that you 100% don't want in your video.

Remove all of the gaps,

remove all of the bad takes.

But your focus here is on

building out the content

or building out the story

of your edit. Okay, so now

that you've gone through

and you've done your first pass

of refining this edit down,

the next step is to start to add in

some of your b-roll or some

of your overlay footage

to really help your viewers stay engaged

but also understand what

it is you're talking about

in your video.

So if we come up the top here

to some of our b-roll footage,

we get to move our mouse

cursor left and right on this

to find where we want that clip to start

and press I on the keyboard

to mark an in point.

And if we scrub across here,

let's say we want it right when

it hits the other edge there

before it bounces back, about here,

and press O on the keyboard,

we've now marked and in and an out.

So you can see, we've

selected just this section

of that much bigger clip.

Now if I click and drag

this down at the timeline,

we've just got that section of the clip.

And you can see, it's also

got audio added to it.

If we don't want the audio,

we can either mute it by

grabbing this little line

and pulling it down

or we can Alt + Click or Option + Click

just that audio piece

to not select the video as well

and we can just press Delete

and now that clip has no

audio associated with it.

Now obviously,

the other way that we

could bring our footage in

is just to bring in that

entire clip into our timeline.

We can again Option + Click

or Alt + Click the sound

if we don't want it on that.

And we can just use our regular tools

to find the start and the end point

of the clips that we wanna use.

So we start at around there,

play it through to where we wanna stop it.

Now you can see here that

our cursor is snapping

or jumping to these

edits in our timelines.

If you don't want that

and you want more control,

then just turn off this

button here, the Snap tool,

and that's gonna give you a

greater amount of control.

So I do find myself turning

that on and off quite a bit

throughout the edits,

but find where we want this

to finish, select our clip,

and we're going to cut off the end of this

using Command + Shift

+ Square Bracket Right

to remove all of that.

So again, lots of different ways

to essentially do the same thing

when you're video editing.

So we'll go back to our other clip here,

just double-click on that

to open in this preview monitor.

And let's see what else

we've got in the clip here.

Now the pan across.

Let's start that, so we'll

press I on the keyboard

to mark an in point about there.

O to mark an out point.

We've got this section selected.

Now you can just click and drag again,

to bring in both the audio and the video.

But if I put this back up here now,

you can see what's

appeared down the bottom

is we can just grab the

video or just the audio.

So if we only want the video piece,

we can click on that and drag that down

and see that we don't have the audio

that comes down with it.

And let's put it about here.

So go through in this step

and add in all of your

b-roll or overlay footage.

And as you're going through,

you might find that you're

making some minor edits

to your timeline,

tweaking and adjusting some of the clips,

all just to refine your edit down

and to build out the story.

So your video editing here

really is an iterative process

where you're going through,

making tweaks and adjustments

and building this out on each pass.

So the next step then

is to bring in any audio

or any music into your videos,

if you want audio or music in your video.

So we're gonna come up here.

We're gonna grab this music track

and drag it down into our timeline here.

And just the same as we did

with all of our video clips,

you've got the ability to

pick up your audio track,

to move it around.

You can adjust the start and end points

using all of those same tools,

these handles using the Blade tool

or using Ripple Edit, left and right.

So let's make sure this finishes

at the end of our video.

Clip selected, Command +

Shift + Square Bracket Right

or Control + Shift + Square Bracket Right

and our song is gonna

finish at that point.

Now if you wanna add a

Fade In and a Fade Out

to this music track,

then you can move your mouse cursor

up to this little top marker here,

and pull it back in.

And you can see

that we've got a time

indicator there that's shown.

So let's just say this

is about four seconds.

So what this means is that our audio

is gonna play through here

at a normal volume level.

When it hits this marker for four seconds,

it's going to drop that

down to a zero volume level.

So it's going to fade it out to nothing.

Likewise if you want one at the start,

you wanna fade your audio in.

We can pull that little marker in

for as long as you want that transition

or that effect to come into play.

So now that you've got your

music in and you've gone through

and refined your edit even further,

it's now time to add

any text or any titles

or graphic elements into your video.

So let's come back towards the start here.

We'll come up the top

here to Effects Library

and let's come down here to Titles.

Now the titles at the top here

are your basic text titles

that you can add in and customize up.

And your Fusion Titles are

a little bit more advanced.

So you can see here, we've

got a lot of 3D ones.

I'll just drag one of these out,

so you can see what we're talking about.

And if we scrub through this,

you can see we've got

the first line of text,

spins around second line of text,

and then it slides back out.

So there's a lot more advanced titles

and things in here as

well that you can use.

I'm gonna select that,

go ahead and delete it.

We're just gonna grab the basic text here,

drag this out and then you can see,

it definitely is basic text.

Now we're gonna double-click on this

and that's going to open

up our Inspector palette

up the top here.

This is where we can customize this up.

So if we select the title

here or the text here,

we can type in Justin Brown.

We can change our fonts.

Let's go down to or up to Oswald.

Let's make it bold.

We can adjust the size.

We could make it all capitals if we want.

We can rotate it, change

the position of it.

You can also add a drop

shadow, stroke, backgrounds.

You can customize it

up quite a bit in here.

Let's just move it down to the

bottom corner here somewhere.

And for more finer controls,

we can come back over

to this position X and Y

and we can move it up and down,

to move it over to the side a little bit.

And maybe we'll change the

color to be Primal Video blue.

Okay, maybe we'll make

this a little bit smaller.

Let's put it down that bottom corner here.

Let's move it across.

Now let's turn on a

background so we can read it.

Let's adjust the width

down and the height down.

Okay, something simple like that.

Now this clip, just

like all the other ones,

we can adjust the start

and the end time on it.

So if you zoom in now,

I'll show you what this looks like.

Zoom in so you can see that

as we play through here now,

when we hit that title, the title appears,

and then it disappears at the end.

And again, you can adjust the length

and everything of these,

and pick them up and move them around,

just as you can with any other clip.

So this step here is to go through

and add in all of your

titles, all of your text,

whether it's for a section header,

whether it's a list of text

you wanna bring up on-screen.

These are the tools that you use

to add all of your text in.

Once all your texts and titles are in,

the next step is to add in any effects

or transitions to your video.

So if you've still got this

panel here open on the side,

they're in here as well.

If not, come up to Effect Library,

and then down to Video Transitions.

Now Video Transitions is

one of the easiest ways

that people can make their

videos look really bad

by going overboard with

silly-looking transitions

or too many transitions.

I would suggest that you're

using these sparingly

and using them as a storytelling element

or to add a little bit

of polish to your videos.

But do not go overboard with transitions.

So let's say that instead

of just appearing,

we want this title to fade in.

We could come over here

to a cross dissolve

and click and drag it

and drop it on our clips.

You can see, we've now

got one at the start.

Let's put one at the end as well.

And as we play through this now,

that title is fading on.

Let's say we want to adjust

the speed of that fade,

we can come down here and

we can make it shorter.

So it's a quick fade.

Or if we wanted a longer slow fade,

we can stretch that out as well.

So if we scrub through now, it fades on,

and at the end it fades off.

Really simple.

Likewise, you can apply this to any clip.

Let's grab a Dip to Cross Dissolve

and put it on the start of this one here.

So if we scrub through this one here now,

instead of just appearing,

it's now gonna dip to

white or flash to white

and then when it comes back from white,

it's now our b-roll or

our overlay footage.

So this could be like

a little camera flash.

So let's just scrub through this.

You can see what looks like.

I finished talking and

it slowly fades to white

and then back.

Now obviously with this one here,

we could speed this right up as well.

So it is like a little camera flash,

much quicker.

So there's lots of little

things that you can add,

just add a little bit of polish,

a little bit of style to your video,

without just using hard jump cuts.

But again, I would suggest

that you're using these things sparingly.

And there's lots of other

ones in here as well.

But the other one that we use

from time to time is a Wipe.

And if we delete that, I'll

show you the other one here,

Slide, it's very similar.

Scrub through this.

Just sliding it off the screen.

Now for us, we don't normally

use too many transitions

in our videos.

But in a case we've got a hard cut

between two different clips here.

Maybe I've made a mistake,

and it's likely I've made a mistake,

we've cut it out and there is a hard cut.

You could apply some sort of transition.

You could leave it as just a cut

or you could zoom in on

one of these two clips

just to make it look a

little bit different.

And then this is typically what we'll do.

So in this case, we'll

select this second clip here.

We'll come up the top here to video.

Now you can either just tick

the box here for dynamic zoom

and that's going to jump in

or punch in a little bit on that shot

or for me personally, I

don't really use that.

I'll come over here to zoom

and I will just zoom in a

little bit on the shot here.

And the trick to really make this work,

if you're doing it on a shot

where there's someone on camera

is to try and keep the eyes

in a very similar position.

So it's just a subtle zoom in

or a subtle change of shot,

without it being too jarring.

So we might move our second

one down a little bit here,

just to try and get them

a little bit closer.

And down a little bit more

and maybe across a little bit.

Now it doesn't need to be perfect

but it's just a little

bit to break up the shot,

so it's not just a hard cut all the time.

All right, so go through,

add in all of your video

transitions or video effects

and then we're going to

adjust your audio levels.

Now with the audio tracks

down the bottom here,

what we're going to look at

first is our spoken audio,

the actual core audio for our video.

So we are going to mute the music.

So the only thing that we hear

is the stuff that I'm actually saying.

Now if you are a more advanced user,

you're likely gonna be doing

this over in the Fairlight area

where you have so much

more control and features

and pro level tools in

here just for audio.

But for most people and for me personally,

I do most of my audio adjustments

just here on the Edit window,

as you would in most video

editing applications.

But what I do enable is the Audio Mixer.

So you wanna come up here to Workspace,

then down to Show Panel in Workspace,

and select Mixer.

This is gonna give you volume

controls here on the side.

So you can see here, we've

got a volume level for Audio 1

which is our Audio 1 track here.

We've got a volume level

for our Audio Track 2

which is our music track in this case,

and then we've got Main 1

which is our overall master volume.

So if we wanna make a volume adjustment

to all of our Audio 1,

we can boost the volume up

here or lower it down here,

and exactly the same for all of our music

or we can actually adjust our

audio on a clip-by-clip basis.

So let's just go back to the

start of our project here

and hit play

and let's gauge what audio

levels our content is.

Landscape constantly changing,

here's our latest roundup

of the best video editing

software for Mac right now,

including free, paid, and professional.

So you can see, it's mainly in the yellow

with some of it going into the red.

But what you definitely don't want

is to have your audio hitting the top,

hitting the zero,

and have a peaking and distorting.

That sounds really really bad.

So ideally, you want it

sort of around this level

where it is in the yellow and

a little bit into the red.

But again, definitely

not touching the top.

So we might bring this

down just a little bit.

We'll grab this slider here

and just lower it down a little.

Now because all of our audio here

was recorded the same

time, same microphone,

the audio is gonna be pretty consistent

across this entire track.

Now if we did want to adjust our audio

on a clip-by-clip basis,

we can come over and select our clip.

And when you put your mouse

over this little faint line here,

this is your volume line,

we can click on it and

we can drag up and down.

So you can see that we're

lowering our volume here

and our audio waveform is getting smaller

or we can actually stretch this up

and increase our volume

here at this point as well.

So that's how you can adjust

your audio on the entire clip.

But what if there's one little section

that we wanted to make louder or quieter

and not affect the rest of the clip?

If we Alt or Option +

Click on our audio track,

just so we've got just

that audio clip selected

and not the video piece,

come up here to our Blade tool

or press B on the keyboard.

Then we could cut out that section.

Let me go back to our arrow cursor,

I'll press A on the keyboard,

and you can see here

that we have that little volume indicator

that we can now increase or decrease

just that section of the audio.

So we'll undo that now

and I'll show you one other way,

just Command + Z or Control + Z.

So we've undone all of that.

The other way you can do it,

is to select your clip.

Come up to the top here for audio.

If you're not seeing that,

you can double-click on the clip

and then you've got your audio panel

which will show up on the top here.

Go across to where you wanna start

making adjustments to your audio,

and you can use the left and right arrows

on the keyboard to really dial this in.

And you can adjust the

settings up here as well.

So we're gonna add what's

called a key frame.

We're gonna select that key frame there.

We'll come across a

little bit in our timeline

using the arrow keys,

and we'll add another key frame.

Let's go across to the other end of this.

Add another key frame,

move across a little bit further,

and add one more key frame.

Lots of key frames.

Now if we click and select

on that little circle,

that's that key frame we just added,

and we Shift + Click on

the second one there,

now we can boost or lower the volume here,

just for that section.

And if we wanna expand this out

and get some more control over it,

you give out this little symbol down here,

showing the key frames.

If we click on that,

we're able to see this a

little bit bigger down here.

And it's gonna give us

more control over it.

So we maybe wanna stretch

this out a little bit

on either side.

This is essentially where

we're starting a fade.

So our volume at this

level is coming in at,

it's call it 100%,

and then drops a little bit

to wherever we have set it to,

and then it starts to transition

back to the original volume

level after that key frame.

So you can see how easy it is in here

to really get a great level of control,

quite easily in your timeline

while you are editing.

And to hide this key frame window,

we'll just click on that

again and that is gone.

Okay, so we've gone through it.

We've done the audio on

our primary audio track,

the spoken piece.

Now let's unmute our music

and let's get that

volume set right as well.

Now there really is no right or wrong

with what volume your music should be at,

as long as it's not

distracting or overpowering,

and as long as your viewers can still hear

and understand any spoken audio

that is on at the same time.

Depending on the actual audio track itself

and how loud it is and how

fast or slow the track is,

would typically lower the

audio in our YouTube videos

down to around 25 to minus 30 decibels.

But it really is a case

of setting it, playing it,

and seeing how it sounds,

and then tweaking and

adjusting as you need to.

Again, there's no right

or wrong with this stuff.

So we can make that adjustment

on the entire music track over here

or you can do it on the

actual clip itself as well.

So we'll undo that 'cause we've

done it on the entire track.

So now that you've got

your audio levels set,

you can go and apply any audio effects

or any audio transitions

to your audio as well.

So if you wanna tweak

or adjust the way that the audio sounds,

you can select your music track

or one of your audio clips.

You can come up the top here,

then you've got some basic tools in here,

like an equalizer,

or if you come over here

to the Effects Library again,

down to Audio Effects,

there's a lot of different things

you can apply to your audio here

to really tweak and adjust it.

And there's also some simple

audio transitions here

like a cross-fade, in case you wanna fade

between some of your clips.

So we want a nice soft audio fade

between these two.

If there's a lot of

background noise in one

and not in the next,

you can soften it by using a cross-fade.

And as I said earlier,

if you're on the more pro side of things

or you looking for way more

features and control and stuff,

you've got this Fairlight feature

or area down here as well,

which has all of that in there.

So now that you have

your audio sorted,

the next step is to color grade

or color correct your video footage.

So for that we're gonna jump across

to the Color workspace

down the bottom here.

Now this area is one

that we could dive into

literally for hours,

to be able to totally master this.

This is a beginner tutorial,

so I'm gonna show you some

of the beginner things

that you can look at to get

your videos looking good.

But I do wanna stress that this

is not an advanced tutorial

by any means,

and this is top level,

professional grade video editing software,

specifically color grading software,

and tools in here as well.

So we are definitely only

covering the basics here.

So once again,

we've got our playback monitor here

which is our preview of what

our video is looking like.

We have all of our clips

here from our timeline.

In this area up here,

this is where we can have all of our nodes

or essentially layers

that we're able to apply

different effects and color

grades and controls to

and down the bottom here

are all our color adjustment tools.

And we can switch between them

using the buttons across the top here

and then over the side here,

we've got our key frames once again

to really get granular control

and to animate and tweak

some of these effects

that you're going to apply.

Again, this is gonna be

a really quick overview.

So the first place that

you wanna start in here

is by enabling the Scopes over here

by pressing this button.

This gives you a visual

representation of the shot

for how bright and dark everything is

but also the different

color levels as well.

So once I've got that on,

the next place that I'll come across to

is the Lift to the little

slider down the bottom of it.

Now I'm dragging this to

the left or to the right

to really set the brightness

of the dark areas in my shot.

Now as we move this slider left and right,

you can see in that

Scopes panel on the side

that that is updating as well.

It's giving us, again,

a visual representation

of what is going on in our shot.

So as I make those black areas brighter,

we're seeing everything move up.

And as I make it darker, we're

seeing everything move down

towards that zero line.

So a really general rule here

is that you don't wanna

go below that bottom line

and you don't wanna go

above that bottom line

and wherever your colors

or whatever areas are

hitting that top line

or the bottom line,

you're actually going

to be losing information

or having areas that are too dark

or too bright in those areas.

So once I've adjusted the Lift

or the dark areas of the shot,

I'll then come across to the gain

to adjust the bright areas

or the whites in the shot.

And again, if I grab that

slider down the bottom,

you see that if I pull it down,

we're darkening the shot

or darkening those whites.

And if I pull it back the other way,

yeah, blowing out the whites.

We're going well above that line.

So I'll drop it down to

somewhere around there.

So we've done the dark areas,

we've done the bright areas.

Next we're gonna look

at the mid-range colors

and use skin tones.

And once again, we're gonna

grab that slider down the bottom

and adjust it to where we would like it.

Now that we can adjust the

colors even more in your shots,

this is where you wanna start

using these actual color wheels.

And you can just grab this center point

and move it around to add

or remove a certain color.

So if we wanna add more

warmth to our shot,

more yellow, more orange.

We can grab this slider

and move it towards the orange section,

towards the orange colors around this way.

You can see that we've added more orange

or more warmth to our shot

in the mid-tones area.

So using these little circles here

and really just some minor adjustments,

we can make some simple tweaks

to really dial in the

look and feel of our shot.

Okay, so now that I've got the Lift,

the Gamma and the Gain sorted,

the next settings we're gonna play with

are down the bottom here,

Contrast and Saturation.

That's the two primary ones.

So coming down the

bottom here to Contrast,

put your mouse over this section,

and move your pointer to

the left and to the right.

You're able to make further adjustments

to the contrast in your shot.

Then we'll jump across to the Saturation

which is the amount of color.

So if we again click and move

this all the way down to zero,

you can see we've removed

all the color at zero.

50 was the start point, the midpoint,

but if we go beyond that,

then we're boosting the

colors dramatically.

So for this one,

I'm only gonna increase

it just a little bit.

Let's go around 52, somewhere around there

and likewise with the hue,

we can make some adjustments here as well.

If we move to the left,

we're adding more green

and if we move to the right

it's gonna be more pink.

Again, we are really only

covering the basics here

but just to show you,

this is what our shot looked like before

and this is what it is

currently looking like.

So it's a subtle difference

but definitely looks better.

Now if you wanna apply all these settings

to the other clips in the video,

there's a couple of different

ways that you can do it.

The first one is to come up here,

right-click on this area

and choose Grab Still.

You see we've got a still added up here

and then we can apply the

settings from that still

to any of the other clips

in our timeline here.

So if we select our next clip here

that we wanna apply it to,

we can then come up to this one,

and choose Apply Grade,

and that is now applied.

Now another way that we

can apply these settings

or these grades to other clips,

is that we can select the

one that we wanna apply.

So let's go back to our first one here.

We'll come over here to this node,

click on it so that it's selected,

press Control + C or Command + C

to copy that node and those effects,

and come across to the

clip we want to apply it to

and then paste it with

Command + V or Control + V,

and that is pasted.

So that's the primary camera

footage that we've done.

You can also apply all of the same things

to all of your b-roll or

overlay footage as well.

So once you've got

all of your color correction

or color grading done,

the next step is to export your video.

And for that, you wanna

come down to Deliver,

so we can deliver your video out.

Now at the top corner here

is where you can get everything

setup for your export.

So if you've got specific settings

that you're looking to use,

you can key all of those in here.

You've got the basic settings

and you've got more advanced

settings down under here too.

But you've also got

presets up the top here

for places like YouTube and Vimeo.

And if you are going to use

either one of those two,

then these are a great place to start.

So what you need to do

is select on say YouTube,

click the little arrow next to it,

choose if you wanna export in

720p, 1080, or 2160p or 4K.

So for us, we've got a 1080p project.

Let's just select 1080p.

We can give our file a name, Justin Edit.

We can hit Browse to choose

where we want this to go.

Let's just put it into Movies

and if you'd like,

there is the option here

to upload your file directly to YouTube

once the export has complete.

Now personally, I don't use this.

I'd rather have the file

on the computer myself,

preview it, make sure it's all good,

and then upload it when I'm ready,

than to have DaVinci Resolve

automatically upload it to our channel.

So once you're happy with your settings,

just hit Add to Render Queue.

This will pop up on the side over here

and you will need to then hit Start Render

and that will go through and

start saving out your video.

Once that's done,

you'll wanna play back your

video, make sure it's all good.

Obviously, if you've

got any changes to it,

then you wanna come back into Resolve

and make those changes

and export it again.

But what I would strongly recommend

is that you are previewing

or playing back your video

on a couple of different devices,

things like your computer, your phone,

your iPad, if you've got one,

just to see what it looks like

and just to see that you're happy

with the overall look

and feel of your video

on multiple devices,

especially because that's

where a lot of people

are consuming your content these days.

So once you're happy with that,

then your video is done

and it is ready for upload.

So that is a complete editing walk through

using DaVinci Resolve for beginners.

Now earlier in this blog,

I said I would share with you

a link to where you can download

our free PDF guide

to the Primal Video Method,

the most efficient way and effective way

to edit your videos down

with minimal wasted time and rework.

And this will work

no matter which video editing

software or app you are using.

and I'll see you in the next blog.