Introduction to Davinci Resolve

Welcome to Davinci Resolve 101 — care of the Stocksy video team. Let us walk you through how we use Davinci Resolve to edit and color grade videos for the collection. This powerful editing and color correcting tool has a free trial version that is more than capable to meet most users’ needs. We also have a color grading tutorial available here.

Our Recommended Workflow

Gabi Bucataru explains how our video team uses Davinci Resolve to edit footage in the collection. He shows a full video workflow from ingestion to export, covering the basics of how to import clips and set up a sequence.

Create a Project

Create a new project in the project manager.

Set the Frame Rate

It’s important to set the frame rate before importing any video files, since this can’t be changed later. At Stocksy we need this to be set to 23.976 frames per second.

Also, set the timeline resolution to the same as the media you’ll be working with.

Drag Clips Into Media Pool

In the media page, navigate to the drive where you store your footage, select the clips you want, and drag them into the media pool. If your frame rates are different than the project settings, select “don’t change”. This will keep the project setting, this is important when working with high frame rate clips for slow motion.

You can also sort your clips into smart bins according to size for better organization.

Start Trimming Footage in Edit Page

Trim your footage to the region of interest using keyboard shortcuts: “i” in , “o” out, “alt” to drag only video (no audio). You can have multiple clips from the same master clip.

Recommended Export Settings

On the deliver page, use these settings to export:

Individual Clips
QuickTime
H.264
Restrict to 45,000 kb/s for 4k or 20,000 kb/s for 1080
No Audio
Set filename to source name w/ unique filenames

If working with LOG footage and you want to export the ungraded footage, you can reset the grade and then export as a ProRes 422 codec after setting a separate export location.