An 11-minute resource guide covering every free and paid path to learning DaVinci Resolve in 2026.
Posted
yesterday
Duration
Format
Talking Head
educational
Views
5.9K
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Big Idea
The argument in one line.
The best DaVinci Resolve education in 2026 is almost entirely free, spread across Blackmagic's own training program, a handful of dedicated YouTube channels, and downloadable guides — and knowing where to look is the only bottleneck.
Who This Is For
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
You've just downloaded DaVinci Resolve and don't know where to start.
You're an editor who's self-taught and wants to fill in gaps in color, audio, or motion graphics.
You've been relying on scattered YouTube tutorials and want a structured path through the software.
You're specifically interested in color grading and want to know whether Daria Fissoun's Legacy course is worth the price.
SKIP IF…
You already have a structured DaVinci Resolve curriculum and aren't looking for new resources.
You're not a DaVinci Resolve user — the resources listed are all Resolve-specific.
TL;DR
The full version, fast.
DaVinci Resolve has an unusually rich ecosystem of free official training that most users never find. Blackmagic runs free live sessions covering photo processing, AI tools, podcasting, professional editing, and full post-production workflows — all registerable through their website. Their training site also hosts downloadable guides with certifications. On YouTube, Casey Faris (4-5 hr beginner series), Brandon Wampus (2 hr 2026 edition), Tom Lyons (colorist-focused tutorials), Paddy Cartwright (kinetic editing), and Ermia Ramez (cinematic tutorials) are worth bookmarking. For color specialists, Daria Fissoun's paid Legacy course covers the why behind color decisions, not just the how.
Members feature
Chat with this breakdown.
Modern Creator members can chat with any breakdown — ask for the hook, quote a framework, find the exact transcript moment. Unlocks at T2: refer 3 friends + add your own API key.
Upcoming free Blackmagic live sessions: photo processing (May 29), AI tools, podcasts (June 26), professional editors (July 24), complete workflow (July 31). DaVinci Resolve 21 beta mentioned.
01:42 – 03:45
02 · YouTube free resources
Casey Faris's 4-5 hr beginner series; Bring Your Own Laptop (Brandon Wampus) 2 hr 2026 edition; Wampus's own channel with animation tutorials.
03:45 – 04:24
03 · Blackmagic training website and guides
Free downloadable books (beginner, editor, Fairlight, colorist, two visual guides), free video tutorials, certifications included.
04:24 – 06:58
04 · Daria Fissoun and the Legacy colorist course
Daria wrote Blackmagic's colorist guide. Her paid Legacy course (live, two weekends) covers the why behind color theory, not just technique.
06:24 – 07:31
05 · Magic Grade plugin and giveaway
Host's own film emulation plugin for DaVinci Resolve. 7-day free trial. Buyers entered to win a Legacy course ticket.
07:31 – 07:43
06 · Tom Lyons
Professional colorist on YouTube (~10K subs). Polished, well-paced tutorials on all aspects of DaVinci Resolve.
07:43 – 09:22
07 · Paddy Cartwright — kinetic editing
English filmmaker known for anamorphic reels and kinetic editing. Done 1-hr deep-dives on his short-form process on YouTube.
09:22 – 10:37
08 · Ermia Ramez — cinematic benchmark
Camera/tutorial channel with exceptional production quality. Host warns viewers will feel 'simultaneously motivated and inadequate.'
10:37 – 11:00
09 · Outro
"I'm back to being a YouTuber again." Casual sign-off, teases more videos.
Atomic Insights
Lines worth screenshotting.
Blackmagic runs free public live training sessions on DaVinci Resolve — most users have never heard of them.
DaVinci Resolve ships with a full reference manual accessible from the Help menu — no download required.
The Blackmagic colorist guide is written by Daria Fissoun, the same expert who runs the Legacy paid course.
The best free beginner resource for DaVinci Resolve in 2026 is a 2-hour YouTube video by Bring Your Own Laptop that starts from zero.
Paddy Cartwright's kinetic editing deep-dives are 1-hour videos on YouTube explaining the full process behind snappy short-form reels.
A free Blackmagic certification is available at the end of their downloadable training guides — including editing, color, audio, and Fusion tracks.
Ermia Ramez makes cinematic camera and tutorial content that benchmarks what exceptional production quality actually looks like.
Tom Lyons is a professional colorist with tutorials covering all of DaVinci Resolve, not just color — worth following at any skill level.
Takeaway
Free DaVinci Resolve training most editors never find.
WHAT TO LEARN
Blackmagic publishes a full curriculum — live sessions, downloadable guides, and certifications — that most self-taught editors have never encountered because it lives outside YouTube.
Blackmagic runs free live training sessions multiple times per year covering photo processing, AI tools, podcast delivery, professional editing, and full post-production workflows — register once and attend any session.
DaVinci Resolve ships with a complete reference manual accessible from the Help menu; most users never open it because they don't know it exists.
Blackmagic's downloadable guides cover six tracks (beginner, editor, Fairlight audio, colorist, and two visual guides), each with lessons and a certification exam — free, at your own pace.
The best free beginner YouTube resource in 2026 is a 2-hour Bring Your Own Laptop video that starts from zero knowledge and covers a full first project inside Resolve.
For anyone serious about color, learning the why behind decisions — middle gray, saturation as a function of lighting, printer light offset tools — matters more than learning menu paths.
The YouTube channels worth following for DaVinci Resolve are clustered around specialty: Casey Faris for beginners, Tom Lyons for color, Paddy Cartwright for kinetic editing craft, and Ermia Ramez as a production quality benchmark.
Glossary
Terms worth knowing.
Fairlight
DaVinci Resolve's built-in professional audio editing and mixing page, comparable to a DAW, for dialogue, music, and sound design work.
Fusion
DaVinci Resolve's node-based compositing and motion graphics page, used for titles, visual effects, and animations without leaving the software.
Nova-3 / Deepgram
A cloud transcription engine with speaker diarization; unrelated to DaVinci Resolve — used in this pipeline, not mentioned in the video.
Kinetic editing
A style of editing characterized by rapid cuts, matched sound design, slow-motion inserts, and anamorphic aesthetics, popularized in short-form social video.
Log footage
Camera footage recorded in a flat, low-contrast color profile that retains more dynamic range and requires a color grade or LUT to look normal.
Rec 709
The standard color space for HD video displays; the target output format when converting log footage for web or broadcast delivery.
“If Daria doesn't know something, it's probably not worth knowing.”
Clean, punchy authority signal — works standalone→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
09:33
“I feel equally motivated as I do inadequate, so it's a good mix.”
Self-aware humor with a universal creator feeling→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
10:38
“I'm back to being a YouTuber again.”
Relatable return-to-platform energy, shareable among creators→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
The Script
Word for word.
17px
00:00So you wanna learn DaVinci Resolve. Well, now is a pretty good time and YouTube is a pretty good place to start. But there are other resources out there which can really help you out.
00:11So let's talk about it. And we're gonna start off with some free training by Blackmagic because Blackmagic are putting on a series of public training sessions which you can get involved in completely for free.
00:25Now, I'm slightly late to the party because I've missed the very first one, but there are still a bunch remaining. So on Friday, May 29, we've got creative photo processing with DaVinci Resolve 21. Now, if you've been living under a rock, you may have missed that DaVinci Resolve 21 is out in beta, so you can download it and play with it right now if you want to, and it introduces a brand new photo page.
00:48So you can mess around with photos and stills and raw images and whatever else in DaVinci Resolve, which is pretty neat. So they're putting on a training session for that one. Work smarter with AI tools in DaVinci Resolve.
00:58That's probably gonna be mostly focused on DaVinci Resolve Studio. Hence, it's talking about AI tools. June 26, we have finish and deliver podcasts with DaVinci Resolve.
01:09July 24, we've got DaVinci Resolve for professional editors, which is probably gonna be a very interesting one for a lot of you guys that are watching this because you're into the editing side. So that one should be pretty good.
01:21And then we've got July 31 complete post production workflow with DaVinci Resolve. Everything from import to grade, fusion graphics, audio and delivery. So again, another really good one which is gonna cover the entire workflow kind of start to finish within DaVinci Resolve.
01:37And as mentioned, completely free. So there's a link down below. Click on the link.
01:42It's kind of strange. There's one link and you have to register and then you find out more details after, but there's no dates or anything on there.
01:50Bit strange. I don't know why they've thrown it that way, but there's a link down in the description below. So click it, register, and then you'll be able to hop on to any of these training sessions completely for free by Blackmagic themselves.
02:01Nice. Now annoyingly, the one that I missed was basically DaVinci Resolve for new users, which would have been very handy to point you in the direction of.
02:13So sorry about that. But to make up for it, if you hop on YouTube, you can literally search for DaVinci Resolve getting started. There's a bunch of really good getting started videos out there.
02:23Casey Faris has done a really good one. It's like four or five hours long and it pretty much covers everything from start to finish to get you started within DaVinci Resolve.
02:31So it's definitely worth checking out. Now another one which you may have missed is by a channel called bring your own laptop. It features a guy called Brandon aka Wampus and it's called everything you need to start editing in DaVinci Resolve 2026 edition.
02:46Again, I've linked it down below for you so you can go and check it out. It's completely free. Of course, it's on YouTube.
02:52It's two hours long and it covers literally everything from knowing nothing at all. So how do I even find DaVinci Resolve, open it up and get started through to editing your first project within Resolve. And Brandon is a really cool guy.
03:05He's a really good teacher. So again, it's probably worth checking out. Now, Brandon Wampus has his own channel as well, which I definitely recommend.
03:14He's done a handful of tutorials on DaVinci Resolve. Some of them on text animation and he's done a really good one on five levels of animation for every editor. It's definitely worth checking out.
03:25It's a really good video, especially if you're into motion graphics and trying to learn the fusion side of things. So give OnePlus' channel a look. Now, I'm actually gonna be hanging around with OnePlus this week over on his channel and within his Discord.
03:38So if you like to just come and hang out and have a bit of a chat, please do so. That would be nice.
03:44Come and say hello. Now switching back to Blackmagic for a moment, it's very easy to forget that they release a whole bunch of video tutorials, guides, and actual training books that cover both all of Resolve as a whole.
03:59There's a massive reference manual which you can download. You don't even need to download. You can access at any time by simply opening up DaVinci Resolve, clicking on help, and then you can open the reference manual from there.
04:10It comes with every installation. But if you shoot over to the Blackmagic training website, there's tons of resources within here.
04:17So there's a bunch of different videos covering the editing side, the color side, the Fairlight side, Fusion, as well as these training books which you can download completely for free. So we've got the beginner's guide, the editor's guide, the Fairlight audio guide, colorist guide, and then two visual guides as well. They all come with different lessons which you can download and you can do an exam at the end.
04:39So you get a little certificate you can put on your fridge just to remind you that you know what you're doing, which is nice. Now, if you squint your eyeballs and take a good look at that colorist guide, you'll see that it's written by none other than Daria Fasoon.
04:56Now, if you don't know Daria, Daria is an OG. She knows everything there is to know about color. She literally writes the manual as you can see.
05:05If Daria doesn't know something, it's probably not worth knowing. And she's also an excellent trainer slash teacher.
05:13And she's releasing a colorist's course called Legacy.
05:18Now, I'll let Daria explain what it is. The Legacy workshop demonstrates best practices when working with modern image formats. It explores the creative side of color design and offers actionable advice for creating your own looks and developing a personal style.
05:32We're not just here to demonstrate the how, we wanna talk about the why. Why is middle gray important for setting contrast with intention? Why does color saturation depend on the lighting in the scene?
05:42Why are modern offset tools based on printer light technology? The legacy workshop is delivered live over two weekends. It features four unique projects with over 10 timelines and countless practical resources and case studies.
05:54So it's not a general course, but it sounds really cool, especially if you're into color and you wanna learn more about the history and why we do things the way that we do them. So not a general thing, very specific, but if you're interested in it, I've linked it down below. It's not free.
06:09It's a paid for course. It's also not particularly cheap, but you are getting something really unique from one of the best in the business. So definitely go and check that out.
06:18I'm actually giving away one ticket to Legacy, So you get the four days of training, you get the full thing, two people that have picked up my Magic So I made Magic Grade.
06:28It's a little plug in for DaVinci Resolve. It's available now. There's a seven day free trial, so you can try it for yourself or you can pick up the full thing.
06:35People have been really enjoying it so far. It's like a light take on the film emulation. It's a little plug in which allows you to do color grading really quickly and easily in the free version or the studio version of DaVinci Resolve and on the edit page or even the color page.
06:49But everyone that's picked up is being entered into a competition to win one ticket to this legacy course by Daria, which is pretty cool.
06:59So if you've been thinking about picking up Magic Grade, now's a pretty good time. I've linked that down below as well. Right.
07:07Shooting back over to YouTube. There's someone else that has been making some really great tutorials over the past sort of twelve months and they've already grown their channel to about 10,000 subscribers, but I figured it's worth mentioning them so you aren't missing out. It's a chap by the name of Tom.
07:24Tom Lyons. He's an Englishman, but he doesn't live in England anymore. He lives over in The United States.
07:29He's a professional colorist and he's just really good. Really good at making tutorials, really knows his stuff, really professional, really well paced and full of glorious, gloriously helpful tips, tricks, and just generally good information.
07:43He's done a bunch of videos. I've linked his channel down in the description below. So again, if you're looking to learn more about DaVinci Resolve as a as a whole, he is a colorist by trade, but he talks about all different aspects of DaVinci Resolve.
07:56That's another one for you to go and check out. Now, just to wrap this video up, just two more YouTube channels which I found sort of relatively recently which I absolutely think are worth mentioning. The first one does things kind of like this.
08:28Which I think are cool. It's a chap by the name of Paddy Cartwright. He's again a fellow Englishman.
08:35He's very English. If you like the English sense of humor, then I think you will enjoy Paddy's videos. But he does a lot of reels, a lot of short form content and it's just really interesting.
08:45It's interesting looking. He uses a lot of slow motion, goes out and shoots anamorphic and just creates these really cool looking things, uses loads of different sound effects, and just puts them together in a really interesting way.
08:57He calls the type of editing that he does kinetic editing, and he's done a couple of deep dives. So he's done some like one hour videos that are available on YouTube where he talks through the entire process of how he cuts these super snappy little reels together.
09:13So again, it's absolutely worth an hour of your time to go take a look if you're into that sort of thing and he does some other videos as well which I highly recommend checking out. So go and take a look at Paddy. And last but not least, we have a chap by the name of Ermir Ramiz or Ramiz.
09:29Ramiz? I'm not too sure how to pronounce his name. But anyway, this one's great.
09:32This one's really good for motivation, but be warned, you may feel rather inadequate after watching any of these videos. I know I do.
09:41I feel equally motivated as I do inadequate, so it's a good mix, but you will feel pretty inadequate. He does basically camera reviews and some kind of tutorial
09:53style videos, I guess you could call them, but in a style like no one else. Camera and shot everything at the base ISO. But this time, I transformed the log files to Rec seven zero nine via RE wide gamut four and RE log c three.
10:08I'm sure this is not the right way, but it worked out really well. The colors looked great straight out of the camera and I mostly played with the contrast and mid tones.
10:17They look like movies. They're incredibly well put together, really well written, incredibly filmed and lit, and the color grade and everything else is exceptional. Really incredible, so you should definitely go and check him out if you want to have your day ruined.
10:31But also enjoy some genuinely really, really good quality videos over on YouTube. So there you go. That's it.
10:41I hope this was useful. Go and have some fun. Go and say hello to some people for me.
10:48Go outside and make some stuff. Also, I'm back to being a YouTuber again, so more more videos to to come. Take it easy.
The title already answered the question before the video started. "So you want to learn DaVinci Resolve huh" is a knowing nod to an audience that's already decided — the host's job is just to hand them a map.
CTA Breakdown
How they asked for the click.
06:37product
“So if you've been thinking about picking up Magic Grade, now's a pretty good time. I've linked that down below as well.”
Organic integration — the plugin promo is sandwiched between two high-value resource recommendations and sweetened with a giveaway for the Legacy course, lowering resistance.
An 11-minute screen-share walkthrough of the bolt method: a lo-fi pattern-interrupt clip placed before a polished Reel, edited live inside DaVinci Resolve Studio.
A 9-minute argument that stripping your edit down to five simple steps produces more leads, more sales, and more comments than any over-produced video ever will.
A 10-minute field manual: how to find a viral Reel in your niche, strip it to its skeleton with free apps, rebuild it in your voice with ChatGPT, film it one line at a time, and cut it with CapCut and Submagic.
A 9-minute live walkthrough that builds the case for Instagram's native editor in three rules — and proves it by editing a reel on screen, mistakes and all.
A twelve-minute tour of the five Claude Code skills Brendan Jowett uses daily — humanizer, architecture diagrams, Remotion video, front-end design, and PDF generation — with one-prompt installs and a peanut-butter brand demo running through the back half.
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