Video Editing Made Easy with DaVinci Resolve 18 E-Book

Lance Phillips

• Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 440

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Micro content dominates social media marketing, but subpar editing and low-quality videos can shrink your audience. Elevate your social media game with DaVinci Resolve - the world’s most trusted name in color grading that has been used to grade Hollywood films, TV shows, and commercials. Version 18 enables you to edit, compose VFX, mix sound, and deliver videos for different platforms, including social media and the web.
You’ll learn the basics of using DaVinci Resolve 18 to create video content, by first gaining an overview of creating a complete short video for social media distribution directly from within the “Cut” page. You’ll discover advanced editing, VFX composition, color grading, and sound editing techniques to enhance your content and fix common video content issues that occur while using consumer cameras or mobile phones.
By the end of this book, you’ll be well-equipped to use DaVinci Resolve to edit, fix, finish, and publish short-form video content directly to social media sites such as YouTube, Twitter, and Vimeo.

Leseprobe

Video Editing Made Easy with DaVinci Resolve 18

Create quick video content for your business, the web, or social media

Lance Phillips

BIRMINGHAM—MUMBAI

Video Editing Made Easy with DaVinci Resolve 18

Copyright © 2023 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing or its dealers and distributors, will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to have been caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

Group Product Manager: Rohit Rajkumar

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First published: March 2023

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Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

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ISBN 978-1-80107-525-1

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I would like to dedicate this book to my dentist, who did a wonderful job saving my teeth and, with his wife’s permission, also contributed their wedding video for this book.

I would like to dedicate this book to my friends, who supported us when we were temporarily homeless while writing it by giving us a place to stay, as well as their moral support.

Finally, I would like to dedicate this book to my wife, who helped me write this dedication and loves my new smile but, especially, our new house.

– Lance Phillips

Foreword

About a year ago, a colleague recommended Lance Phillips as a DaVinci Resolve-certified trainer to teach a module on our MA editing and post-production course.

From the moment I met Lance, it was clear that we both shared a passion for education and using our personal career experience to give our students the tools and confidence to progress in their chosen fields.

Our MA students have found Lance’s teaching methods both engaging and appropriate to their varied abilities and educational backgrounds.

In Video Editing Made Easy with DaVinci Resolve 18, Lance has combined his knowledge, acquired through many years of experience across filmmaking disciplines and as an educator, to give a new generation of video-makers the ability to create professional high-quality content.

By using freely available software, Video Editing Made Easy with DaVinci Resolve 18 delivers a comprehensive yet accessible training tool for the aspiring social media director and editor.

It provides an essential step-by-step guide, from beginner to advanced level, that will enable you to produce high-quality video content with freely available resources.

Stefania Marangoni

Senior lecturer and MA editing and post-production course director at London South Bank University

Contributors

About the author

Lance Phillips is a UK-qualified teacher, actor, color-grading lecturer, Blackmagic Design Training Partner, and Certified DaVinci Resolve Trainer, with 30 years’ experience in training and supporting people from diverse backgrounds (including master’s degree students, young people, prisoners, people with disabilities, and people from diverse ethnic backgrounds) in their creative careers.

As a Blackmagic Design Training Partner for DaVinci Resolve software, Lance specializes in training media/film professionals at the early stage of their careers or those who are new to using Resolve, which enables them to make their own films and digital experiences to tell their own stories.

In addition to delivering DaVinci Resolve training to film industry professionals, Lance delivers a color-grading module at the master’s level for London South Bank University (LSBU). He is also a creative technology researcher for LSBU’s Research and Development Hub at Maidstone Studios, where he collaborates with small and medium-sized businesses on research on virtual production and volumetric capture, among other emerging technologies.

Special thanks to my friends who supplied practice media for this book:

Dr. Awais Ali, Dentist and Videographer of filmdental.com, for supplying his wedding video for chapters 7, 8, 10, and 11.

Donovan Parsons, Multi-Skilled Lighting Cameraman of ITN and SET-EST LTD, for supplying the greenscreen footage for chapter 9.

Kathryn de Vries, Blackmagic Design, for her support to me as a trainer to keep my skills and knowledge updated and supplying a studio version of Resolve for the Technical Editor to check Chapter 12.

About the reviewer

Alex Berry has been working in post-production for over 20 years, starting at an independent post-production house and then as a national broadcaster, before founding Quality Control TV, a boutique color-grading studio based in London. He has worked for many leading brands at an international level. As a self-taught editor and colorist, he has always needed to personally seek out information and resources to improve his craft, which is why he’s happy to endorse this book, which will help you to do the same. Alex presents a course on color grading in DaVinci Resolve, which you can find on the Domestika learning platform, following on from the excellent foundation provided by this book.

Table of Contents

Preface

Part 1: A Quick Start to DaVinci

1

Getting Started with Resolve – Publishing Your First Cut

Technical requirements

Creating your first project in DaVinci Resolve!

Opening Resolve for the first time

Cache files

Stills

Creating your first project

Customizing your digital workspace

Understanding the Resolve pages

Simplifying the workspace

Getting your media files in and organized

Import Media

Media Pool – changing your views

A few words about bins

Reviewing your shots and cutting it all together

Reviewing your footage

Editing your footage together

Adding footage to the Timeline – using Track 1

Adding footage to the Timeline – using Track 2

Let’s publish!

Setting up your social media accounts in Resolve

Publishing to social media within Resolve

Preparing a video to upload to social media outside Resolve

Summary

Questions

Further reading

2

Adding Titles and Motion Graphics

Technical requirements

Opening, saving, and sharing projects

Exporting a project

Exporting a project archive

Importing a project

Importing a project archive

Relinking media (version 16 and earlier)

Relinking media (version 17 onward)

Transitions – moving from shot to shot

Transitions button (Cross Dissolve)

Transitions browser

Saving your favorite transitions

Customizing transitions

Removing transitions

Adding a title and changing it

Basic titles

Text+ titles

Fusion titles

Saving titles as favorites

Adding visual effects

Summary

Questions

Further reading

3

Polishing the Camera Audio – Getting It in Sync

Technical requirements

Understanding sound and different ways to record it

The properties of sound

Microphone types

Microphone pickup patterns

Microphone placement

Syncing audio

Auto-syncing audio to video

Manually syncing audio to video

Fixing sound

De-Esser

Removing hum

Changing stereo to mono

Noise reduction

Voice isolation

Summary

Questions

Further reading

4

Adding Narration, Voice Dubbing, and Subtitles

Technical requirements

Welcome to the Edit page

Edit Index

Sound Library

Metadata

Mixer

Importance of subtitles and closed captions

Legal requirements to add subtitles to your video

Subtitling and SEO

Lower thirds

Subtitles versus closed captions

Creating and working with subtitles

Creating your own subtitles

Adding a new subtitle clip

Adding a new subtitle track

Renaming a subtitle track

Changing default subtitle settings

Formatting our subtitles

Exporting and importing subtitles

Exporting subtitles to upload to YouTube or Vimeo

Exporting subtitles in the File menu

Exporting subtitles in the Subtitle track header

Exporting subtitles on the Deliver page

Importing subtitles into Resolve

Positioning subtitle clips on the Timeline

Welcome to the Fairlight page

Index

Meters

ADR

Creating a new audio track

Patching, arming, and recording

Patching tracks

Arming tracks

Recording audio

Voice dubbing in Fairlight using ADR

Creating a new Timeline using selected footage

Adding scene cuts (Studio version only)

Scene Detect

Ripple deleting clips on the Edit page

Ripple-deleting clips on the Cut page

Smooth Cut

The ADR interface

Summary

Questions

Further reading

5

Creating Additional Sound

Technical requirements

Enhancing the vocals

Pitch

Vocal Channel

Dialogue Processor

Importing audio effects plug-ins

Installing AU or VST plug-ins into Resolve

Applying plug-ins

Importing an SFX library

Importing the Fairlight Sound Library

Creating your own SFX library

Auditioning and adding SFX to the Timeline

Summary

Questions

Further reading

Part 2: Fixing Audio and Video

6

Working with Archive Footage

Restoring video using Fusion FX

Resolve FX Revival (Studio version only)

Changing audio speed

Changing the audio speed in the Inspector

Changing the audio speed using the Cut Page tools

Using Elastic Wave

Normalizing audio

Summary

Questions

Further reading

7

Stabilizing Shaky Footage

Technical requirements

How video stabilization works

The steps of video stabilization

Creating a new Timeline and reviewing our footage

Stabilizing our video footage

Stabilizing video on the Cut page

Stabilizing video in the Inspector on the Cut and Edit pages

Stabilizing video on the Color page

The Classic Stabilizer

Summary

Questions

Further reading

8

Hiding the Cut – Making Our Edits Invisible

Technical requirements

Understanding cutaways, cut-ins, and the editing process

Cut-ins

Cutaways

The editing process

Understanding continuity editing

Creating cut-ins

Creating cutaways

Using Smooth Cut to hide an edit

Hiding cuts with a split edit

Summary

Questions

Further reading

Part 3: Advanced Techniques

9

Adding Special Effects

Technical requirements

Understanding codecs

What is a codec?

Types of compression

Types and uses of codecs

Shooting video for greenscreen

What is a chroma key?

Lighting your background

Camera settings

Filming your subject

Chroma keying in DaVinci Resolve

Preparing our Timeline for the key

Creating a greenscreen effect on the Edit page using the 3D Keyer

Applying the 3D Keyer

Adjusting the 3D Keyer

Creating a greenscreen effect on the Edit page using the HSL Keyer

Applying the HSL Keyer

Adjusting the HSL Keyer

Removing chroma key background spill using the Despill Resolve FX Color plugin

Applying the Despill plugin

Adjusting the Despill plugin

Summary

Questions

Further reading

10

Split Screens and Picture-in-Picture

Technical requirements

A simple split-screen effect

Auto-aligning clips on the Timeline

Compound clips

Creating a compound clip

Video Collage | Create Background

Preparing our Timeline for Create Background

Applying the Video Collage | Create Background effect

Adjusting Video Collage | Create Background

Repositioning the videos under the tiles

Video Collage | Create Tile

Preparing our Timeline for Create Tile

Applying the Video Collage | Create Tile effect

Adjusting Video Collage | Create Tile

Assigning video tracks to tiles using Paste Attributes

Repositioning the videos in the tile frames

Summary

Questions

Further reading

11

Enhancing Color for Mood or Style

Technical requirements

Understanding basic color theory

Color science

Color psychology

Color sociology

Color technology

Stabilizing color (DaVinci Resolve Studio version only)

Applying the Color Stabilizer effect

Adjusting the Color Stabilizer controls

Contrast Pop (Studio version only)

Applying the Contrast Pop effect

Adjusting the Contrast Pop effect

Auto Color

Exploring DRCM

Summary

Questions

Further reading

12

Studio-Only Techniques

Technical requirements

Smart Reframe on the Cut page

Changing our Timeline aspect ratio

Using Smart Reframe

Smart bins for people

Enabling Smart Bins

Adding metadata manually

Using Face Detection on the Cut page

Summary

Questions

Further reading

Glossary

Artificial intelligence (AI)

Archive

B-roll

Bins

Cache

Caching

Clip

Code

Color cast

Color grading

Color management

Color model

Color space

Color temperature

Colorist

Composition

Continuity editing

Cut

Cutaway

Cut-in

Data

Database

Digital audio workstation (DAW)

Exposure

Exposure controls

Frame rate/FPS

Frames

Framing

Gamma

Graphics

Greenscreen

Gray card

Hard disk drive (HDD)

ISO

J-cut

L-cut

Lead room

Looking room

Media

Neural Engine

Neutral

Non-linear editor (NLE)

Plugins

Project

Reaction shot

Render

Resolve

Run and gun

Solid state drive (SSD)

Sound effects (SFX)

Split edit

Stills

Thumbnail

Three-point edit

Timeline

Tools

Transitions

Visual effects (VFX)

White balance

Answers to Questions

Chapter 1, Getting Started with Resolve – Publishing Your First Cut

Chapter 2, Adding Titles and Motion Graphics

Chapter 3, Polishing the Camera Audio – Getting It in Sync

Chapter 4, Adding Narration, Voice Dubbing, and Subtitles

Chapter 5, Creating Additional Sound

Chapter 6, Working with Archive Footage

Chapter 7, Stabilizing Shaky Footage

Chapter 8, Hiding the Cut: Making our Edit Invisible

Chapter 9, Adding Special Effects

Chapter 10, Split Screens and Picture-in-Picture

Chapter 11, Enhancing Color for Mood or Style

Chapter 12, Studio-Only Techniques – so much quicker

Index

Other Books You May Enjoy

Preface

DaVinci Resolve is used to enhance the color of Hollywood films, TV shows, and commercials and does so better than any other video editing software. Version 18 enables you to edit, compose VFX, mix sound, and deliver for different platforms, including social media – all in one piece of software.

This book provides a hands-on approach to using DaVinci Resolve to create and enhance your videos for social media and the web, using a Hollywood-standard video editing suite of tools.

Who this book is for

This book is for emerging creatives, social media influencers, and content makers; anyone with an idea they want to realize and publish online will benefit from this book.

Not only will the nascent content maker who is looking for quick techniques to improve their work benefit from this book but it will also be useful for experienced content makers who want to begin using DaVinci Resolve for its more advanced features. It is a useful and practical training manual for social media marketers, influencers, short film makers, small business owners creating their own content, vloggers, and film/media studies students at schools, colleges, or universities.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Getting Started with Resolve – Publishing Your First Cut, will teach you how to quickly import, organize, review, assemble, and publish video footage on the Cutpage's Timeline.

Chapter 2, Adding Titles and Motion Graphics, will help you enhance the project you created in Chapter 1 by adding a basic title and motion graphics, using Fusion FX and transitions on the Cut page.

Chapter 3, Polishing the Camera Audio – Getting It in Sync, looks at how recording separate audio can improve your video and how Resolve makes it easy to sync separate sounds with your video.

Chapter 4, Adding Narration, Voice Dubbing, and Subtitles, will look at making our now-complete video accessible by adding narration, voice dubbing, and subtitles.

Chapter 5, Creating Additional Sound, will look at creating a sound library and importing sound effects into Fairlight to then use on our Timeline.

Chapter 6, Working with Archive Footage, will look at using Fusion FX to restore old video footage and changing the timing of our dubbed audio to match the timing of the video.

Chapter 7, Stabilizing Shaky Footage, teaches you how to stabilize shaky video footage on the Cut and Edit pages.

Chapter 8, Hiding the Cut – Making Our Edit Invisible, will look at continuity editing and how to use cutaways, cut-ins, and split edits on the Edit page to hide bad cuts.

Chapter 9, Adding Special Effects, will cover how to shoot for a green screen and how to work with it in DaVinci Resolve, using different types of Keyers.

Chapter 10, Split Screens and Picture-in-Picture, looks at creating a split screen using composite footage and video resizing, as well as picture-in-picture effects using the Resolve FX Transform Video Collage filter on the Cut page.

Chapter 11, Enhancing Color for Mood or Style, will introduce color theory as used in Hollywood films and how to use color FX tools on the Cut page to fix color.

Chapter 12, Studio-Only Techniques, will look at the AI Neural Engine tools, only available in the Studio version of DaVinci Resolve, that can speed up your edit process.

Chapter 13, Glossary, covers the definitions of all the key technical and film-making terms used in the book.

To get the most out of this book

For this book, you do not need to have any previous technical knowledge, apart from a basic understanding of how to upload content to social media and how to organize files on your own computer.

You will need at least the latest version of DaVinci Resolve 18.1 installed on your computer. The exercises in this book should also work with future releases of DaVinci Resolve.

Software/hardware covered in the book

Operating system requirements

DaVinci Resolve 18.1

Windows, macOS, or Linux

You will need the Studio version of DaVinci Resolve 18 for some of the features explained in this book, particularly Chapters 4, 6, 11, and 12.

We advise you to source videos yourself or download the practice video files from the book’s Packt server link (a link is available in the next section).

Feel free to post your video creations on social media and use the hashtag #ResolveEasyEdits to share them with us.

Download the example video files

You can download the example video files for this book from https://packt.link/B5bqz. If there’s an update to the video files, they will be updated.

We also have code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

Download the color images

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots and diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://packt.link/NtGgR.

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

Code in text: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: “Where it says Save as, name your Bins.DRB file something useful such as Video Bins wo Credits.”

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see on screen. For instance, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in bold. Here is an example: Make sure you are in List View.

Tips or important notes

Appear like this.

Get in touch

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Part 1: A Quick Start to DaVinci

The objective of this section is for you to gain an understanding of how to use the Cut page in DaVinci Resolve as a tool to quickly create a finished video for social media or the web.

This section comprises the following chapters:

Chapter 1, Getting Started with Resolve – Publishing Your First CutChapter 2, Adding Titles and Motion GraphicsChapter 3, Polishing the Camera Audio – Getting It in SyncChapter 4, Adding Narration, Voice Dubbing, and SubtitlesChapter 5, Creating Additional Sound

1

Getting Started with Resolve – Publishing Your First Cut

As a video content maker, whether you are creating videos for the web, YouTube, or TikTok, there will come a point where you will need to edit the videos you have made using a dedicated video editing software, rather than struggle with the limitations of a phone app. Dedicated video editing software applications can be quite daunting for a beginner, but once mastered, they can provide a whole host of powerful features to take your videos to the next level.

There are many video editing applications to choose from. This book will cover how to use Davinci Resolve, which is a powerful video editor used by the film and TV industry to edit, color, and add sound and visual effects to films. It is amazing that Resolve, which used to cost $1,000s, is now available for free!

Resolve is an incredibly powerful piece of software. In fact, it is not just one software program, it is a merger of several very powerful software programs that the film industry has been using separately for decades. Each page in Resolve has the power of each one of these software programs. We will cover some of these pages later in the book, but as a beginner, we will be mostly focusing on using the Cut page to quickly and simply create your edited video.

The Cut page is an incredible tool to quickly put together your first video edit or cut. It has many tools available in the rest of DaVinci Resolve but simplified onto one page, to make them quicker and easier to use.

In this chapter, you will learn how to quickly import, organize, review, assemble, and publish video footage on the Cut page Timeline. Additionally, you will learn how to start a new project and set and save your project settings for future use. You will be shown the interface of Resolve and the Cut page, learn how to customize it, and be able to save your preferred settings so that you can have a user workspace that suits you. You will then import media that you want to edit together (i.e., audio, video, photos, and computer graphics) and use the unique features of the Cut page such as Source Tape and Smart Insert to review and add footage to the Timeline to quickly create a basic edited video. Finally, you will export and publish a video directly to YouTube from within the Cut page of DaVinci Resolve rather than having to export it first and then upload it later.

All these tools combined will make editing and publishing short-form films and videos much quicker, saving you time and freeing you up to make more content.

In this chapter, we’re going to cover the following main topics:

Creating your first project in DaVinci ResolveLaying out your digital workspace how you want itGetting your media files in and organizedReviewing your shots and cutting it all togetherPublishing your video to social media

Fun fact

The editing term Cut is named after the physical cutting process used in the early years of editing film, where a razor blade was used to cut out unwanted footage before it was all taped back together for the final edit. Today, it is a lot safer just to use DaVinci Resolve to cut your films digitally!

Technical requirements

You will need to have installed a copy of DaVinci Resolve version 18. Some exercises may work in older versions of Resolve after version 16. However, to get the most from this book, it is best to have the latest version of DaVinci Resolve. You can download the latest free version of DaVinci Resolve from the Blackmagic Design website here: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/uk/products/davinciresolve/

Also, download the DaVinci Resolve Bins (DRB) file here: https://packt.link/B5bqz

All exercises will also work with the paid studio version of DaVinci Resolve. The technical requirements for your computer to run DaVinci Resolve can be found on the Blackmagic Design website here: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/support/readme/e8b376651a8d4f1fb7bb18167325fb7f

Creating your first project in DaVinci Resolve!

When opening Resolve for the first time, it can be quite confusing where to start. You will learn how to create a new project and where to set and save project settings in DaVinci Resolve so that you can load them up quickly for future projects.

Opening Resolve for the first time

After installing Resolve, the first time you open it, you will be greeted with the welcome screen (Figure 1.1) that gives you an overview of the latest features. This can be found in the Help menu if you need to be reminded: Help > Welcome to DaVinci Resolve:

Figure 1.1: Welcome screen

Next, Resolve will ask where you want to save the certain files it needs to be able to work. You can always change these locations later, but first, let us look at what they are so that you can better understand where to tell Resolve to store them.

Cache files

Cache files are media files that Resolve temporarily stores for easy access to help Resolve access them quicker while you are editing, which also helps for the faster playback of your media on your Timeline. It is best to store these cache files on your internal hard drive on your computer, or if it’s faster, an external Solid State Drive (SSD) connected to your computer. If you’re using an external drive for your cache files, remember to plug it in before you start Resolve; otherwise, Resolve will not know where to store your cache files and present the following message (Figure 1.2):

Figure 1.2: Cache files warning message

Stills

Resolve also needs to know where to save your stills. Otherwise, you will get the following message (Figure 1.3) if Resolve can not find the drive your stills folder is linked to:

Figure 1.3: Stills warning message

This is not, as it sounds, where you store still photos you use in your edit. It is where Resolve stores still images of frames you select from your Timeline. It’s a bit like a screenshot or photo of a moment in time of your edit.

This can be useful if you want to share an image from your Timeline as a thumbnail for your social media posts. You can store these stills on a hard drive anywhere. It doesn’t need to be a fast drive – save that for your cache files.

Top tip

If you change your mind, you can change the cache and stills locations later. It is good practice to store the cache and stills files directly on your computer as Resolve will not lose the link to them. Unless, of course, you move the folders when tidying up your computer. In this case, you can relink them to the moved folder or create a new folder to link to if you have deleted it.

Creating your first project

Now that we have told Resolve where to store the files it needs to create in order to work fluidly, we can create your first project. This is done in Project Manager (Figure 1.4):

Figure 1.4: Project Manager

There are two ways to create a new project:

Click on the New Project button in the bottom-right corner of the Project Manager windowAlternatively, open the Untitled Project template

Which you choose is up to you.

The only difference is that New Project will ask you for a project name before creating it, whereas, with Untitled Project, you can create a blank project without having to name it.

The Untitled Project option is good for creating a temporary project to play around with the features in Resolve without needing to save a project. Of course, if you change your mind, you can always save this project and Resolve will ask you to name it first so that it can save it.

Now that you have created your first project, let’s look at the visual layout or User Interface (UI) of Resolve and how you can customize it to suit how you work.

Customizing your digital workspace

When first using Resolve, it can be a little confusing, as there are so many pages all with a myriad of functions, which to a beginner can be understandably overwhelming. It’s like learning to fly for the first time using a Jumbo Jet! Thankfully, we can simplify the workspace by hiding many of the pages so that our interface is more appropriate for a beginner, much more like learning to fly in a small propellor plane. It is still daunting but much more achievable!

However, first, let us look at how Resolve is unique in using pages in the first place.

Understanding the Resolve pages

Blackmagic Design, the owner of DaVinci Resolve, has created a separate page for each of these different software programs laid out in a row at the bottom of the software interface (Figure 1.5). The benefit of this is that you can do advanced sound, color, and visual effects without having to export your film edit out into another application. Resolve is the only editing software that has this function. Other editing programs rely on plugins or exporting the edit into another application to do more advanced work and then reimporting it back in to do further edits. Of course, if you prefer to work this way, then Resolve will let you do this too. However, this is a more advanced and time-consuming technique and is beyond the scope of this book.

You might have noticed that the pages are laid out in the order of a traditional filmmaking workflow. However, the beauty of Resolve is that you can go back and forth between the pages and work in any order that you want.

In this chapter and for most of the book, we will be using the Cut page, which is the default page that Resolve will take you to when you first open a new project.

The Cut page is used for creating a quick edit and is great for quickly creating and publishing social media content or rough cut for a feature film:

Figure 1.5: The Cut page

Now, let us simplify our workspace so that we can focus mainly on the Cut page without the distractions of the other pages.

Simplifying the workspace

Having so much software functionality can be great when you need to use all of the powerful features of Resolve for your feature film. However, if you just want to use one or a few of the pages, Resolve has a handy feature where you can temporarily hide the page you don’t want. Let’s do that now. For now, we are going to hide the Media, Edit, Color, Fusion, Fairlight, and Deliver pages:

Select the Workspace menu in the top-right corner of Resolve (the Menu bar).Select Show Page.Click on the pages you want to hide – in this case, the Media, Edit, Color, Fusion, Fairlight, and Deliver pages.There will now be a tick next to the pages Resolve will show and no tick next to the pages Resolve will hide. By default, all pages are preselected.

Now that your workspace is a lot simpler, we can save this new look as a preset, which you can quickly load again when you want to use it in the future:

In the Menu bar, select Workspace.Select LayoutPresets > Save Layout as Preset….In the Enter Preset Name textbox, name your preset Basic Workspace.Click on the OK button or press the Return key on your keyboard.

Well done! You have now created your first workspace preset, which you can quickly recall later.

Top tip

You can save your layout presets on a USB stick (or even in cloud storage such as Google Drive or DropBox) so that when you are working on someone else’s version of Resolve, you can load your workspace without affecting the way they like to lay it out.

Now that you have simplified your workspace, let’s start importing your media.

Getting your media files in and organized

The Media page has some advanced functions for importing media that big-budget feature films use. However, it is quick and easy to import media directly into the Cut page. In fact, every page has the space to quickly import media – it’s called the Media Pool. The Media Pool is located in the upper-left corner of every page (Figure 1.6), which makes it easy to locate.

Import Media

In the upper-left corner, underneath the Media Pool button of the Cut page, there are two icons that allow you to quickly import media into Resolve:

Figure 1.6: Media Pool

The first button, Import Media (Figure 1.6), imports media files:

Left-mouse click on the Import Media button.In your computer’s File Manager window that pops up, navigate to where you have your media files stored.Select the files you want to import.Click on the Open button.If your imported footage (clip) does not have the same frame rate as your project’s frame rate, you will get a pop-up message (Figure 1.7) asking you to change the project frame rate to match the footage you are importing:

Figure 1.7: The Project Frame Rate pop-up message

Go ahead and click on Change to change the project frame rate to match the frame rate of your imported clips. We will cover project frame rates in more detail later.

You should notice that your Media Pool is now filled up with the media you just imported.

Now, let us look at the different ways we can view our clips in the Media Pool so that we can check we have the right footage before moving it to the Timeline.

Media Pool – changing your views

By default, your imported media are shown as thumbnails, but you can change this at any time. Let’s do this now:

Click on the Media Pool View options (Figure 1.6) in the top-right corner of the Media Pool.Select List View (the fourth button from the left).

The thumbnails disappear but you can now see a more detailed list of the file properties of the media you imported.

The most common file property is the name of the file, “filename.” The problem with most cameras or audio recorders is that they name the files they create with a semi-random name such as SA478937.mov. This probably means a lot to the camera but means nothing to us.

Of course, the temptation is to change the filenames on our computer to make the file content easier to understand. The problem with this approach is that each time you change the filename on your computer (after you have imported it into Resolve), Resolve can no longer find it because it is looking for the previous filename.

A better approach is to use a feature in Resolve called Clip Name, which means you can change the name of the media in your bins as often as you like while retaining the original filename on your computer:

Make sure you are in List View.Select Clip Name.Type in the Clip Name field to change the clip name to something memorable.Press the Return key on your keyboard or click outside the text field.

You have now changed your clip names to easily identify what they are.

Top tip

If you want to see a combination of the ThumbnailView and the ListView, with a list of the most common properties of the media file, select the Metadata View.

Now, let’s preview some of the files that you have imported to see whether they were the ones you wanted to import:

Select Thumbnail View again (the second button).Select a clip to load it into the Viewer.Hover your mouse over the thumbnail.Move your mouse cursor over the thumbnail.

As you move your mouse cursor over the thumbnail, you will notice the media will play back in the Viewer window.

This is a quick way to review your footage before committing it to the Timeline. There is an even quicker way if you have a lot of media to review, which we will show you later.

A few words about bins

By default, Resolve has a Master bin in the Media Pool that contains all the media (video, audio, and graphics) you have imported into your video project.

You might be wondering why it is called the Master bin, as like in real life, a bin on a computer is usually where we delete files.

Bin is a word that professional film editors use for a folder. It comes from the early days of celluloid film editing where strips of film would be pegged up over a bin, waiting for the film editor to splice them into the main edit (Figure 1.8):

Figure 1.8: Old 1925 photo of film over a bin (Source WikiCommons)

Creating a new bin

You can create extra bins to keep your media organized, for example, one bin for separate audio such as music and sound effects, and another one for video. Let’s do that now:

Right-mouse click anywhere on a blank space inside the Master bin.Select New Bin.A new bin will be created in the Master bin.Name the bin Video. There are two ways to do this:Right-click on the bin and select Rename BinType directly in the Bin Name field under the Bin iconCreate another bin using the preceding steps and name it Audio.

Top tip

You can rename any bin apart from the Master bin by right-clicking on the bin and selecting Rename Bin. Right-clicking on objects such as bins, media, Timeline, and Viewers will usually reveal a hidden options menu. Try it and see what hidden options you can discover!

Now that we know what a bin is, and we have created our own, let’s look at the second button to import media with, called Import Media Folder.

Import Media Folder

This imports media but also imports the folders that are on your computer and converts them into bins:

Click on the Import Media Folder (Figure 1.6) button.In the pop-up window, navigate to where your media files are stored.Select the folder and files you want to import.Click on the Open button.

You will now notice that nested inside the Master bin are other bins with the same name as the folders that held the media on your computer.

It is good practice to put all your media into appropriately named folders on your computer and import them using this second option rather than the time-consuming approach of creating your bins from scratch every time you edit. The other way to save time is to import the bins that have already been created in another project.

Importing bins

Let’s import some of the bins that I have created for you:

From the menu bar, select File > Import > Bin….In the pop-up window, choose where on your computer you want to import your bins from.You are looking for the Lances_Bins.DRB file you downloaded onto your computer.Select Open.

You will now see a series of bins in your Master bin called Video, Audio, Credits, and Graphics. Each one has a blank media file in it. This is because Resolve needs content in the bins to be able to successfully export or import them. You can delete this temporary media by selecting it and then pressing the Delete key on your keyboard.

Deleting bins

You most likely are not going to need the Credits bin, so let’s delete it:

Right-click on the Credits bin.Select Remove Bin….The bin should now be removed.

Selecting the bin with your mouse and pressing the Delete key on your keyboard will also delete the bin.

Exporting bins

If you have a favorite layout for your bins, as of version 17, you can now export your bins structure as a .DRB file (which stands for DaVinci Resolve Bins) and store this on your USB with your UI presets. Let’s export your new bin structure without the Credits bin:

Click on the Bin List button (or the drop-down arrow next to it) to reveal a list of bins (Figure 1.9):

Figure 1.9: Bin List

Right-click on the name of the bin you want to export.In the pop-up window, choose where on your computer you want to export your bins.Where it says Save as, name your bins.DRB file something useful, such as Video Bins wo Credits.Select Save.

Now you can create, delete, rename, import, and export bins to better organize and keep track of all your project’s media. Now, let’s start reviewing and editing our media.

Reviewing your shots and cutting it all together

The Cut page has some fantastic features that allow you to quickly review and edit video footage together. We will go through each step one at a time, but in reality, once you have mastered these tools, each step will only take seconds to execute, making your edit much speedier.

Reviewing your footage

You might recall how we used the mouse to scrub through each video clip’s content quickly. However, this can be time-consuming if we must do this for every clip. I am glad to say that Resolve has a far more efficient way to review all your video footage at once, using Source Tape mode.

Source Tape

Source Tape (Figure 1.10) is a way to watch all your “Source” video footage together at the same time as if playing it as one continuous video tape, hence the name Source Tape.

Let’s see how it works.

Figure 1.10: Source Tape Viewer mode

Select the Cut page.In the top-left corner of the media viewer, select the Source Tape button (Figure 1.10).The Viewer (Figure 1.10) will now populate with all the media in the selected bin.Scrub through the mini transport Timeline under the Viewer to review all your footage quickly without having to load each individual clip into the Viewer:The spacebar will play back footage at normal speed.Pressing the spacebar again will stop the video playback.Pressing the L key on your keyboard will also play through the footage at normal speed.Pressing the L key twice will fast forward twice as fast. Three presses will be 4x as fast, four presses will be 8x as fast, five presses will be 16x as fast, and six presses will be 32x as fast.Pressing the J key on your keyboard will play the footage backward.Pressing the J key twice will fast reverse twice as fast. Three presses will be 4x as fast, four presses will be 8x as fast, and so on.

Top tip

Although I have focused on using keyboard keys to play back our footage (as it is quicker than clicking back and forth with a mouse), you can use a mouse to click on each of the video playback controls (also called transport controls, Figure 1.10) underneath the Viewer. These are the same symbols you will find on your CD/MP3 or DVD player, if you have one, and they work in the same way.

You will have noticed that, in Source Tape mode, the bin icons have disappeared and been replaced with dates instead. These are the dates when the video footage was created. You can change this view to show the bin names by selecting the Sort button. Let’s do this now.

Click on the Sort button (Figure 1.11):

Figure 1.11: The Sort button

From the drop-down list, select Bin.

You can isolate the playback of the footage to just the contents of one bin rather than everything in the Master bin, perhaps to review footage of a bin you have just imported:

Select a bin from the Master bin using the Bin List icon (Figure 1.9) in the top-left corner of the Media Pool.Select Source Tape mode again (if it isn’t already selected).Play back and review the footage by pressing the spacebar or the J and L keys.

You will have noticed several things when playing back footage in Source Tape mode:

What gets played back in Source Tape is dependent upon what bin you have selectedThe vertical lines in the Viewer TransportTimeline (Figure 1.10) represent the beginning and end of clipsAs each clip is played back, it is highlighted (with an orange border) in the Media Pool

Now you can see how useful Source Tape is for reviewing all the footage in your master or selected bins quickly rather than having to select each clip individually.

However, there is an even quicker way within Source Tape that you can use to review your footage, called Fast Review.

Fast Review

Fast Review uses simple Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) to adjust the playback speed of the clip based on the clip length. So, long clips are played back faster, while short clips are played back slower so that you don’t miss them. Let’s try it:

Make sure Source Tapeis selected.Select Fast Review (Figure 1.12) from the far left of the playback controls under the Viewer:

Figure 1.12: Fast Review mode

Fast Review gives you a quick and easy way to review your video footage to help you make decisions on what to include in your edit.

Editing your footage together

Before you edit your footage, let’s describe what a Timeline is and how it uniquely works on Resolve’s Cut page.

The Cut page timelines

All editing software has what is called a Timeline. This is a long horizontal strip/line onto which footage (frequently referred to as clips) is dropped, with the time or duration of the edited video displayed along the top of the Timeline.

Timelines

Use of the word Timeline is applied to both the horizontal strip where clips are edited (on the interface) and the name of the file in the Media Pool that contains all your editing decisions.

In this book, to differentiate between the two, we use Timeline for the Timeline interface and timeline for the timeline file in the Media Pool or when talking about timelines in general.

Timecode

This time is displayed in hours, minutes, seconds, and frames and is called a timecode. It is displayed as HH:MM:SS:FF (Figure 1.13):

Figure 1.13: The Timeline timecode

Upper timeline

What is unique to the Cut page is that it has two Timelines (Figure 1.14). The topmost UpperTimeline is the overview of your entire edit, which displays the whole duration of your entire video regardless of how long it is and how many clips there are. This is great for quickly navigating to any part of your Timeline and seeing how all your clips are edited together:

Figure 1.14: Cut page Timelines

Lower Timeline

The second Timeline (Lower Timeline), just below the UpperTimeline, is a more traditional editing Timeline that shows you a zoomed-in view of your UpperTimeline, which is a lot easier to see and make your edits with.

Key concept – Timelines, tracks, and shots

In a Timeline, each layer of the video is called a track, and each track is made up of a series of clips representing different camera shots or angles. So, the hierarchy of content goes like this:

Project > Timeline > Track > Clips.

So, a project can have several different Timelines, each Timeline can have several different tracks, and each track can contain several different clips.

Track 1 versus Track 2

On the Cut page, Track 1 (the bottom track) operates differently from Track 2 and above (that is, all the tracks above/on top of Track 1).

Track 1 will automatically shuffle footage (clips) along the Timeline to make room for the new clip – this is called Rippling. This is great for quickly adding clips to the Timeline to get your first overall edit done, also known as a Rough Cut. Whereas any clip added to Track 2 will overwrite any clips already on Track 2. Track 2 is useful for adding additional clips without affecting the duration of your first edit, such as adding cutaways or titles to be shown over existing clips.

Key concept – cutaway

We will cover cutaways in more detail in Chapter 8. However, as a brief overview, a cutaway is footage that is added to the edit that illustrates already existing footage on the Timeline.

An example of this is when a person is being interviewed and they refer to a product they are promoting – this is a good place to add a shot of the product on a track on top of the original interview footage where we continue to hear the interviewee describe the product.

The effect of this would be that the viewer would see the interviewee talk about the product, then see the camera “cut away” to a shot of the product while we still hear the interviewer talking about it. This gives the illusion to the viewer that these shots are happening in real time, as if they are watching a live multi-camera broadcast switching between cameras.

Of course, none of this has to be shot in real time and can all be accomplished in the edit.

Let us see how Track 1 rippling works in practice.

Adding footage to the Timeline – using Track 1

Using the skills you have just learned, use Source Tape and Fast Review to identify five shots you would like to use for your video:

Using Fast Review, find and identify the followings shots:The master shot (a wide shot)Two mid shots of your main subjectTwo close-ups (either a reaction shot or a cutaway shot)Select your master shot in the Viewer window.Click and drag the master shot onto either Timeline.

Now, you have a master shot on the Timeline, which you can use to edit your other shots. All clips can be added to the Timeline by either clicking and dragging directly from the media bin or from the Viewer onto the Timeline.

Key concept – shot types

When making a video, we use different framing conventions called shot types, which add visual interest for the viewer by changing how much of our subject is in the frame. The closer the shot is to the subject (which is usually a person), the more it has an emotional impact on the audience.

The three main shot types are as follows:

• Wide Shot (WS): This shot contains the whole environment within which our subject is positioned and how they interact with it. For example, it could be a person standing in a room, where we see all of their body and their relationship to their environment – that is, their home or workplace. This shot is too wide to invoke much emotion.

• Mid/Medium Shot (MS): The bottom of the frame starts at the waist of our subject and the top of our frame ends just above the head of our subject. That is good for formal interviews.

• Close Up (CU): This is a small detail that is magnified, such as framing just the head and the top of the shoulders of the subject. This is good for showing intense emotion. It could also be a tight frame of our subject’s hands demonstrating a product.

There are many more shot types, but these are the main ones to use when you are just starting out. If you change your mind, you can delete any clip from the Timeline by selecting it with the mouse and pressing the Delete key on your keyboard. Don’t worry – doing this will not delete your original footage as it is still available in the media bin.

Key concept

Editing in Resolve is ”non-destructive,” which means that you can delete clips from the Timeline and even the media bin and still be able to reimport the same media back in.

When you edit, you are not cutting your original footage but a live preview of it. Resolve stores the editing decisions you make (in a database) and then applies them to your final film when you export it.

The timeline playhead

On the Timeline, you will notice a vertical orange line – this is called the playhead (Figure 1.14). The Viewer will show a picture of the frame that is under the playhead on the Timeline. The Timecode display in the bottom-right corner of the Viewer window also shows the timecode for the current frame under the playhead.

You can move the Timeline playhead just like the playhead in the Viewer