DaVinci Resolve Beginners Tutorial 2025: Edit like a PRO for FREE!

So you chose DaVinci Resolve, good choice! In this video, I'll get you up and running with it in 10 minutes. Start by downloading the latest  version of the DaVinci Resolve software from the Blackmagic website, which I'll link below. 

While there is a paid version, you can get 90% of functionality from the free version. Once you've  downloaded and installed it, this window will pop up. This is where we're going to create a new  project.

Give it a name and click "create". Now, the main software will open up. And while  DaVinci is a very advanced software, if you want it to be, it can also be a simple one.

So, down  at the bottom, you'll notice from left to right, there are different workspaces, all designed  to do something different. There's Media for importing your shots, Cut for doing basic edits,  Edit for doing more complex edits, Fusion for visual effects, Color for color grading, Fairlight  for audio editing, and Deliver for exporting. If you're working on a simple video though and  you want to keep your workflow super short, then you can head straight to the Edit page, where  we can import our media directly into here.

Before we do that though, head down to the  bottom right and click the gear icon to open the project settings. Here we're going to set our  project resolution and frame rate. Personally, I like shooting in 4k at 50 FPS, so I'm going to  set my project to that.

However, many of you will also be using HD, in which case you'd choose 1920  x 1080 with whichever frame rate you personally prefer. If you're not sure, I'd recommend choosing  30 to keep things simple. I'm not going to touch anything else except for proxy media format. 

Just make sure it's not selected as ProRes 422 since that format is total overkill for basic  video previews. So, I'm going with H264 instead. Now click "save" to save your preferences.

Next, we're going to import our video clips into the project. To do that, we're going to go to the  Media Pool on the left-hand side. If it doesn't show up automatically, just click it here and it  will show up.

This is where we're going to drag and drop our files directly into the project,  and that's as simple as drag and drop. Now, this box may appear when you do this,  and what it's suggesting is that you change the project frame rate to the same frame  rate as your footage. So, you will want to click "change" so your frame rates are  consistent.

At any point throughout your edit, you can drag more videos, photos, music,  or audio files into the Media Pool. Okay, now the clips we've imported are  available here on the left-hand side. Just double click one to have it shown  in the viewer where you can easily scrub over the timeline to preview the shot.

Down  the bottom, we've got the project timeline, which is where we'll be editing the clips. And  you can zoom in and out of the timeline through the plus and minus here. At the top, we've got our  previews, and there's an option to create either a single or a double preview.

Double preview will  allow you to view both shots from your media pool on the left as well as your timeline preview  here on the right. However, I would recommend using one only so you can have more screen  real estate for your main timeline. Alright, now let's edit.

To do so, drag your first  clip from the Media Pool onto the timeline, and you can drop it anywhere really. It doesn't have  to be at the very start. I like to leave a little bit of space in case I want to add something in  front later.

And as for the timeline, the blue track is video and the green track is audio,  as you can see by the waveforms of this clip. To watch back, you can simply move the playhead  along the timeline or tap the space bar, and it will play in real time. You can make your audio  and video tracks bigger or smaller by dragging this bar at the top and bottom, and this helps  increase the preview size.

You can also adjust other aspects of the workspace, like the size of  the viewer; you can drag that up or down, as well as the Media Pool size and other menus. To make a cut, to a dialogue-heavy edit like the one I'm editing here, I'd recommend selecting  linked selection. What this does is it combines the audio and video tracks together as one,  so any changes you make will automatically be applied to both.

So now when we choose the  blade over here or press 'B' on your keyboard, by clicking at this point in the timeline, it  cuts both the audio and video at the same time. Then when I press delete, it deletes both.  Whereas without the link selection, it only cuts the track that you clicked.

Now, you will  want to be careful when you're using the blade tool not to have it selected while navigating the  timeline because sometimes you can accidentally cut up your footage when you meant to just move  across. So whenever you're not cutting, make sure you switch back to the arrow. Command or control  Z will also undo anything you do in Resolve.

Another way to make a cut is selecting the  arrow and hovering it over the start or end of your clip and simply dragging it to the  left or right. And you can see there's that white outline that indicates how long the total  clip is and how much space you have to work with. If you have a secondary clip like the one I just  put on the timeline, if you hover the arrow over the transition between the two clips, you can  drag it left and right, and it will adjust the length of each clip simultaneously.

Now you  can also move clips around on your timeline. So if you just select a clip, you can drag it  left and right, as well as on top of the other track. And this is what you do if you're using  a b-roll shot on top of a talking head without deleting what's underneath here because you never  know, you might decide to use this later.

So what if you want to get rid of the audio  track from one of the clips? As you can see here, the 'A' camera has captured my voice, but  the b-roll shot is just empty and shots of me actually getting the shot, which will create  extra background noise that we don't want. This is where you want to make sure link selection is  off so we can select just the audio without it being attached to the video and hit delete.

If you want to add music to your edit, it works the exact same way as importing video clips. So  I've got my track here that I've downloaded from Epidemic Sound, and I'm going to drag it over to  the Media Pool. You can double click it to preview it or listen to it back.

However, you can also  just import your music track directly into the timeline, and it will automatically import the  file into the Media Pool, which is a lazy way of doing it, AKA my way. I'm going to drag it  across to the start of this video edit, and I want it to start right when the camera starts. So  now we'll press play and see how well this track suits the video.

It's a bit loud. Now, just like  with our first audio track, which is the dialogue, with the second audio track, you can also expand  the size so you can see the waveforms better. And you'll notice that there's a faint white line  here.

This represents the decibel level. If you click that and drag it up, everything will  go much louder, which you definitely don't want unless you want to go deaf. You can also make it much quieter, which I'd absolutely recommend when using any kind  of music over talking.

I like to go with a maximum of around -20 dB, even sometimes up to -25, so  it's really nice and faint. So that's how you adjust the audio levels as a whole, but sometimes  you need individualized adjustments based on how loud or quiet your audio track or music is.  If you want your music to fade in or out, you'll notice the white keyframe marker here. 

Just drag that across, and as you can see, it's fading the music in over 6 seconds. You'll  see one at the very end as well. You can get a sense of how well your overall audio is balanced  by checking the waveforms on the right-hand side.

So when you play the clip back, you can see  the waveforms rising and falling, and ideally, you want everything around the minus 10 zone. So  I'm going to raise up my audio track until it's consistently hitting around -10 at the loudest.  You want to go to Min -5 but never anywhere near zero as that means it's clipping and it's going  to be distorted.

Now playing that back and those are looking good. You will notice especially  from a zoomed-out perspective that sometimes certain parts of your clip appear much louder than  others, which is usually because you're talking louder at those parts. And if we turn the volume  down universally, it lowers everything too much, which is why we want to pinpoint just this one  bit and turn just that down but nothing else.

So, to do that, down at the bottom of your  waveform clip, you'll notice this keyframe icon. If you click that, up will come our volume  keyframe timeline, and I'm going to start by navigating to a part of the timeline where  the audio levels are normal. Then, I'm going to click this diamond icon to add a keyframe.

As  you can see, there it is. Then, I'm going to go to the other side where the dialogue levels are  normal, hit the keyframe again. Now, I'm going to go around about where the louder parts start  and end, then I'll add two more keyframes.

So, as you can see by this audio timeline, this is the  loud part of this clip, and to lower the volume, simply click and drag it down, and there it  goes. Now, the audio waveforms look the same as the others. You can minimize the keyframe  timeline by again clicking this icon.

There is an automatic audio setting, which you can find  up here in the Audio menu on the right-hand side, and that is Dialog Leveler. If you turn that on,  DaVinci will do its best to lower the loud parts and raise the quieter parts. However, I found  this to be a bit hit-and-miss and not quite as targeted as doing it manually.

However,  there's no harm in turning it on. Now, if you want to add text and titles to  your video, you can do so in the Effects tab, then choosing Titles on the left-hand side.  There are a few different options here, and by hovering over them and moving your arrow from  left to right, you can preview the text animations before you drag them over.

Once you find a text  effect you like, drag it over to the timeline and place it above your clip. Let's zoom in so we can  see better, and when we play that, we can see the text animation over our video. To customize it,  just click on it and enter your own text.

Then, you can adjust the font, the color, the size, as  well as a few other things. And there we go. Now, it's also super easy to add transitions  to your video, that is if you want to use them and not just go with hard cuts.

To choose  one, go back to the Effects tab and choose Video Transitions. Here, there's a whole  bunch of preset transitions. To add one, drag it across and drop it at either the start  or end of one of your video tracks.

Then, it will apply the effect automatically. If you're  working with two clips on the same timeline, just drag it and drop it between the two. The next tab is Fusion, and this is for more advanced effects, which I won't be able to  cover in this tutorial.

If you're a beginner just starting out, I would recommend that you use  the inbuilt effects here on the Edit page. The next phase of the edit is color correction,  and this is what Da Vinci Resolve first became known for as the world's best color correction  software. So obviously, there's a lot of menus here and so much you can do with your color  correction.

If you're just starting out though, I would recommend keeping things as simple as  possible. So, select the clip you want to color correct, come down here to the color wheels, and  the ones I'd recommend most are Color Temperature. Sometimes your shot is either too blue or too  orange, so move that across until your colors look normal.

Contrast, as you can see, this shot  is very contrasty, so I'm going to reduce that. I'm going to bring up my Shadows to get my  shirt in the background a bit brighter. I'm going to reduce the highlights to get the window  a bit under control.

And Color Boost is a great one for enhancing colors to be a bit brighter and  more vivid. If you look at the before and after, that is already a massive difference after  just 60 seconds of color correction. If you have multiple clips that you want to color correct  at once, just hold down command or control on your keyboard to select multiple clips and follow the  same process to color correct them all at once, which I'd recommend if it's exactly the  same shot but not for different shots.

The next tab across is Fairlight, and this is  an audio editor. Lots of great features here but again, this is a bit on the advanced side and  not needed if you're a beginner just starting out since we've already done some super helpful audio  editing in the Edit tab. So, we're going to leave that for now and head over to the Deliver tab. 

This is where we'll be exporting the video. So, the first step is setting in and out points,  which means I want the video to start here and end here, since sometimes you can have random  clips on your timeline that you just had there as backup but you didn't end up using them because  they just weren't good. To set the in point, navigate to the start of your video and press 'I'  on the keyboard, and 'O' on the keyboard to adjust the out point.

I recommend keeping it simple here.  You can export at the H. 264 codec.

It is important that you check these settings here to make sure  the resolution is the one you want as well as the frame rate. Give your file a name, choose a  location to save, and then add to render queue. Finally, hit 'Render All', and you're done.

So, there you have it. Those are the basics of The DaVinci Resolve editor. This is a fantastic  program that can be, like I said, as beginner or advanced as you like.

And the best part is it's  completely free. While you can pay for it, you don't need to upfront, and this is an editor that  can totally be used professionally for paid jobs as well as content creation. I recently switched  from Premiere Pro to DaVinci, and I haven't looked back so far.

I was using Premiere Pro for years,  but it was taking so much time and causing me to totally burn out as a creator due to the much  slower and more cumbersome workflow. So, if you want to hear some insights from 20 years of video  editing and why I'm starting fresh, check it out.