Big Idea

The argument in one line.

DaVinci Resolve's free version already contains the narrow slice of features, roughly ten percent of the app, that produces a professional-looking edit, and mastering that slice beats trying to learn everything at once.

Who This Is For

Read if. Skip if.

READ IF YOU ARE…

You just installed DaVinci Resolve and don't know which of the seven bottom tabs you actually need.
You're cutting your own talking-head or vlog footage and want one repeatable start-to-export workflow.
You've bounced off Resolve's menus before and want the smallest toolset that still looks professional.

SKIP IF…

You already edit in Resolve professionally and know the interface cold.
You want deep Fusion visual effects, Fairlight mixing, or advanced color grading techniques.

TL;DR

The full version, fast.

DaVinci Resolve 21 is free, powerful, and easy to over-learn, so this walkthrough sticks to the roughly ten percent of features a beginner actually needs. It covers creating a project and matching frame rate to your footage, importing clips into the media pool, cutting with linked selection and the blade tool, stacking b-roll on a second video track, adding a music bed kept around minus 25 decibels under dialogue, keyframing volume so the track sits between minus 10 and minus 5 on the meters, dropping in simple text titles and transitions, doing a 60-second color pass with the wheels, then setting in and out points and exporting an H.265 master. Learn this one path before touching Fusion or Fairlight.

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Chapters

Where the time goes.

00:00 – 01:04

01 · Starting a project

Download the free version from Blackmagic, create a new project, and skip most of the seven bottom tabs if all you need is the Edit page.

01:04 – 02:10

02 · Project settings

Match the project's resolution and frame rate to your footage before you start, since DaVinci Resolve autosaves and never needs a manual save.

02:10 – 02:53

03 · Importing & previewing footage

Drag clips into the media pool, accept the frame-rate-match prompt if it appears, and scrub the playhead to preview before editing.

02:53 – 03:31

04 · Timeline basics

The timeline's blue track is video and green is audio; drag a clip down to start editing and zoom with the plus/minus slider.

03:31 – 03:57

05 · Customising the workspace

Resize the audio track taller and the video track shorter so waveforms are easier to read when deciding where to cut.

03:57 – 05:01

06 · Cutting footage

Turn on Linked Selection so a cut affects audio and video together, use the blade tool (B) to split at the playhead, and switch back to the arrow tool right after to avoid stray cuts.

05:01 – 05:50

07 · Adding b-roll

Drag a second clip onto a higher video track to layer b-roll over the main shot, and delete unwanted ambient audio from that track without touching the main dialogue.

05:50 – 06:44

08 · Adding music

Drag a music track onto the timeline like any other clip, pull the volume line down to about minus 25 decibels under dialogue, and use the keyframe icon to fade it in or out.

06:44 – 09:04

09 · Leveling audio

Watch the audio meters and aim for minus 10 to minus 5, keyframe volume around just the problem section instead of the whole track, and treat the built-in AI Dialogue Leveler as a rougher backup to doing it by hand.

09:04 – 10:05

10 · Adding titles

Skip the gimmicky preset title effects and drag on the plain Standard Text title instead, then adjust font, color, size, and position from the right-hand panel.

10:05 – 10:49

11 · Adding transitions

Drag a preset from Video Transitions onto a clip's outer edge for an in/out transition, or drop it between two clips on the same track to transition between them.

10:49 – 11:56

12 · Color correction

Use just four color wheel controls, temperature, boost, shadows, and highlights, for a meaningful before/after in under sixty seconds, and leave Fusion and Fairlight for later.

11:56 – 13:00

13 · Exporting

Set in/out points with the I and O keys to bound the export, choose the H.265 Master preset, then add to the render queue and click Render All.

13:00 – 14:14

14 · Next steps

The right ten percent of Resolve's features, learned in the right order, is what actually produces a professional video; the other ninety percent can wait.

Atomic Insights

Lines worth screenshotting.

Ninety percent of DaVinci Resolve's features are unnecessary for a typical project; the other ten percent is all a beginner needs to learn first.
DaVinci Resolve autosaves on every change, so there's no save button and no risk of losing work to a crash.
Turning on Linked Selection ties a clip's audio and video together, so one cut or delete affects both at once.
B-roll is just a second clip stacked on a higher video track; the top layer in the stack is what plays in the final export.
A music bed under dialogue should sit around minus 25 decibels at its loudest, or it competes with the voice.
Dialogue should read between minus 10 and minus 5 on the audio meters; anything consistently outside that range needs a volume adjustment.
Keyframing volume around a single loud or quiet section, instead of adjusting the whole track, keeps the rest of the mix untouched.
The built-in AI Dialogue Leveler auto-balances loud and quiet sections, but manual keyframing around a specific section is more targeted.
Whatever sits on the top layer of the timeline, audio and video alike, is what actually shows in the final video.
In and out points, set with the I and O keys, define exactly what gets included in the export, not the whole timeline.
H.265 Master is a recommended export preset for keeping file size down without losing visible quality.
Color correction in four moves, temperature, boost, shadows, and highlights, can transform a clip in under sixty seconds.
Plain Standard Text titles, dragged from the Titles bin onto the timeline, outperform Resolve's gimmicky preset title templates for most videos.

Takeaway

The right ten percent of Resolve beats knowing all of it.

CORE WORKFLOW

A complete edit, from project settings to export, only needs a handful of DaVinci Resolve's tools if you learn the correct workflow instead of chasing every feature.

01Starting a project

The seven bottom tabs each do one job: skip straight to Edit for a simple project instead of touring Media, Fusion, or Color first.
DaVinci Resolve autosaves continuously, so there's no save button to remember and no project lost to a crash.

02Project settings

Set the project's resolution and frame rate to match your footage before importing anything, or you'll get a frame-rate mismatch prompt later.
When frame rate is uncertain, 30 frames per second is a safe default that most footage and playback expects.

03Importing & previewing footage

Importing footage that doesn't match the project's frame rate triggers a prompt to change the timeline; accepting it keeps playback consistent.
Scrubbing the playhead over a clip in the media pool previews it without ever touching the timeline.

04Timeline basics

Blue tracks are video and green tracks are audio; reading a timeline this way makes it obvious what's playing where.
Zooming the timeline in and out is a separate control from playback, and using it constantly makes precise cuts easier to place.

05Customising the workspace

A tall audio track and a short video track make waveforms easier to read, which matters most when deciding exactly where to cut dialogue.

06Cutting footage

Linking audio and video selection means one cut or delete always keeps both in sync; turning it off lets you edit just the audio or just the video.
The blade tool should be switched off immediately after a cut, since leaving it active while navigating the timeline risks slicing footage by accident.
Dragging a clip's edge trims it frame by frame and shows the total available length as a white outline, safer than blind cuts for small adjustments.

07Adding b-roll

Stacking a second clip on a higher video track is literally what b-roll is: the top layer always wins in the final export.
Deleting an unwanted ambient audio track from b-roll footage, with linked selection off, keeps the main dialogue untouched underneath.

08Adding music

A music bed should sit around minus 25 decibels at its loudest under a talking-head voice, or it starts competing with dialogue.
The keyframe icon at a clip's edge creates a fade in or out with no extra tool needed, just click and drag it across.

09Leveling audio

Dialogue should read between minus 10 and minus 5 on the audio meters; consistently outside that range means the whole track needs adjusting.
Keyframing volume around only the problem section, using two anchor keyframes on either side, avoids dragging down parts of the track that were already correct.
An automatic dialogue leveler exists, but manual keyframing around specific sections is more targeted than letting the software guess.

10Adding titles

Preset title effects tend to look gimmicky; a plain Standard Text title, styled manually, holds up better across most video styles.
Whatever sits on the top layer of the timeline, titles included, is what actually renders in the final video.

11Adding transitions

Transitions live in a separate effects bin from titles and only need a drag onto a clip's edge, or between two clips, to apply.

12Color correction

Four controls, temperature, boost, shadows, and highlights, are enough for a meaningful color correction pass in under a minute.
Pushing color boost toward its maximum oversaturates a shot fast; small, restrained moves on each wheel go further than one aggressive one.
Fusion and Fairlight exist for advanced visual effects and audio mixing, but a beginner gets more from mastering the basic workflow first.

13Exporting

Setting in and out points defines exactly what portion of the timeline exports, which matters whenever the timeline holds more than the finished cut.
H.265 Master is a preset built to balance small file size against retained quality, making it a safe default export choice.

14Next steps

Trying to learn every feature of a complex tool before finishing a single project is what causes most people to quit before shipping anything.
Roughly ten percent of a tool's total feature set, learned in the right order, is usually what produces a finished, professional-looking result.

Glossary

Terms worth knowing.

Linked Selection: A timeline setting that binds a clip's audio and video tracks together so a cut, delete, or move applies to both at once.
Blade tool: The cutting tool, shortcut B, that splits a clip at the playhead position; switch back to the arrow tool afterward to avoid accidental cuts.
Media pool: The panel where imported clips, photos, graphics, and music live before they're dragged onto the timeline.
Keyframe: A saved value, like a volume level, at a specific point in time; two keyframes bracketing a section let you isolate an adjustment there without affecting the rest of the clip.
In/out points: Timeline markers, set with the I and O keys, that tell the export process exactly which portion of the timeline to include.
H.265 (HEVC): A video compression codec that keeps file size low while preserving quality, used here as the default export preset.
AI Dialogue Leveler: An automatic audio tool that raises quiet sections and lowers loud ones in a dialogue track, though manual keyframing is often more precise.
Fusion / Fairlight: DaVinci Resolve's advanced visual-effects page (Fusion) and audio-mixing page (Fairlight), best left alone until the basic workflow is second nature.

Resources

Things they pointed at.

00:04linkBlackmagic Design (DaVinci Resolve download)

01:57productDaVinci Resolve Simplified (course)

05:58productEpidemic Sound

Quotables

Lines you could clip.

01:05

“The first thing you need to know is that you don't need to save your project ever.”

counterintuitive, immediately useful opening claim→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote

06:35

“I'd recommend keeping the volume at minus 25 decibels at the loudest. Otherwise it's going to compete too much with the voice.”

concrete, specific number a viewer can act on immediately→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote

13:05

“The truth is 90% of DaVinci Resolve is too complicated and just unnecessary for most projects you'll be working on.”

contrarian stat that reframes the whole video→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote

The Script

Word for word.

Read-along

Don't just watch it. Burn it in.

See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.

metaphor

So you chose DaVinci Resolve. Good choice. In this video, I'll get you up and running with it in 14 minutes.

Start by downloading the very latest version of the software from the Blackmagic website, which I'll link below. While there is a paid studio 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 video editor, if you want it to be, it can also be a simple one. So you'll notice down the bottom that there are different tabs that are all designed to do something slightly different. There's media for importing your files, photo for editing photos, cut for doing basic cuts, edit for doing more advanced editing, fusion for visual effects, color for color grading, fairlight for audio editing, and deliver for exporting.

If you're working on a simple video, however, and you want to keep your workflow on the shorter side, then you can head straight to the edit page. Now, the first thing you need to know is that you don't need to save your project ever.

This is because DaVinci Resolve automatically saves your project anytime you make even the smallest change. Now, before we start editing, you want to head down to the settings icon here and click it. And this is where we can change our project's resolution and frame rate.

I filmed at 4K, which is 3840 by 2160. But if you shot at a different resolution, you want to select it here with whichever frame rate your footage was shot at. Mine was at 50, so I'm choosing 50.

So make sure you check your clip settings so you can adjust this frame rate to match it. If you're unsure I'd recommend 30 frames per second.

Then go ahead and click save and this is what the software should look like at this point in time. Now the actual interface I use for my YouTube videos looks quite a bit different to this since I edit with a lot of b -roll graphics and text so I made my own color -coded timeline that helps me edit bigger projects faster and with minimal friction.

If you want a copy of it it's included for free inside my DaVinci Resolve Simplifier. course I'll link it down below if you're curious 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 just click this media pool button here this is where we're going to drag and drop our media files directly into the project now this box may appear when you do this and what this means is that the clip you just imported doesn't match the project settings that we just set so you will want to click change so the frame rates are consistent now at any point Throughout your edit, you can add more videos, photos, graphics, and music into the media pool.

So I'm starting with these two clips here. Just double click one to have it show up in the viewer. And you can easily scrub over this clip to see what's inside it by dragging the red playhead.

Down the bottom, we've got the project timeline, which is where we're going to edit these clips. You can zoom in and out of the timeline through the plus and minus slider here. All right, now let's edit.

To do so, drag your first clip from the media pool down to the timeline. And you can drop it anywhere really. It doesn't have to be right at the start.

I like to leave a bit of space at the start of my project if later on I want to add a clip in front. 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 play your clip, you can either click and drag the red playhead along the timeline or press spacebar and it will play in real time. You can make both your audio and video tracks bigger or smaller by clicking and dragging the black bar at the top and bottom and i'd recommend a big audio track and a small video track since this will help us identify where to cut based on the waveforms you can also adjust other aspects of the workspace so if you want to increase the size of the viewer just click and drag it down as well as the media pool size and other menus now to make a cut to a dialogue heavy clip like this one i'd recommend select linked selection and what that does is it combines the audio and video tracks together as one so any changes you make will automatically be applied to both now when we choose the blade over here or B on your keyboard and clicking at this point in the timeline it cuts the audio and video at the same time then when I press delete it deletes both whereas without the link selection it only cuts one track at a time now you will want to be careful when using the blade tool to not accidentally have it

selected while you're navigating the timeline because that's going to cut up your footage into a million pieces. 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 cut down your footage is by hovering your mouse over the edge of your clip until this icon shows up and then clicking and dragging it either right or left. You'll see that there's a white outline there and that indicates the overall clip length and therefore how many frames you have to work with.

Now you can also move clips around on your timeline so if you click a clip and drag it this will allow you to place it anywhere you want including on top of the other track. This is commonly known as b -roll and this is good because it leaves the bottom clip untouched in case later on you decide that you want to use it and naturally whichever clip is on the very top layer of the timeline will take precedence in your video.

Now you can also delete an audio track from your it as you can see here my a camera captured my voice but the b -roll track has this unusable soundtrack which is just going to be ambient sounds from when I was recording this clip and therefore we should get rid of it so it doesn't interfere with the main audio to do that you want to make sure linked selection is off then click the audio you don't want then press delete on the keyboard now adding music works the exact same way as adding b -roll clips so I've got my music track here that I've downloaded from epidemic sound and And you can either click and drag it over to the media pool or directly onto the timeline where it automatically gets added to the media pool anyway.

Now I'm going to zoom out. and drag this music track to the start of the edit which is where i want it to start now just like with the other tracks you can also expand the size of this new audio track so you can better see the waveforms and you'll notice that there's a faint white line here and this represents the decibel level if you click it and drag it up the music gets louder if you drag it down it gets quieter and if you're using music as your background track in a talking head video i'd recommend keeping the volume at minus 25 decibels at the loudest.

Otherwise it's going to compete too much with the voice. So that's how you adjust audio as a whole. However, sometimes you need to make individual adjustments based on how loud or quiet different sections of your video are.

If you want your music to fade in or out, you'll notice this white keyframe icon here. If you click that and drag it across, it will create a fade. You'll find this at the end of your clip as well.

As for how loud or quiet, your audio is you can judge that with the audio meters here to the right of the timeline. If the meters don't show up head up to workspace then show panel in workspace and meters and this will bring them up.

So now when we play the clip you can see the audio meters rising and falling and the ideal level you'll want to aim for is somewhere between minus 10 and minus 5. If they're above or below that you'll want to adjust the volume until it's consistently hitting that sweet spot. Now playing that clip back and these waveforms are looking good now you will notice as you look at the waveforms across your timeline that some bits of audio are louder than others and this is usually because you were talking louder at those parts so if we were to lower the audio universally it's going to lower everything including the clips that were the right volume so instead what we're going to do is pinpoint the sections that are too quiet and keyframe the audio so the entire dialogue track is even so what i want to do is raise the volume of just this section here but not the vocals on either side.

So I'm going to click the audio clip and that will bring up the settings here in the inspector. Now under volume I'm going to place a keyframe which is this diamond icon. As you can see it's shown up on the timeline as this white dot.

I'm going to move the playhead now just a little bit to the right. Now I'll click the keyframe icon again. Now I'll go to the end and repeat the process adding one keyframe followed by another and now the outer keyframes are going to act as the anchors so when I click and drag the faint white line up I've successfully isolated this section of audio and I'm only adjusting the volume for this part and nothing else.

There is an automatic leveler that you can find here in the audio menu and that is AI dialogue leveler. If you turn that on DaVinci will do its best to lower the loud parts and raise the quiet parts. However I found this to be a bit hit and miss and not quite as targeted.

as doing it manually. Now if you want to add titles to your video you can do so in the effects tab then choosing titles here down the bottom left. There are a few different options here and by hovering your mouse over one you can preview what the effect looks like.

However I found these for the most part to be quite gimmicky and not work well with my videos. So if you're keen to keep things simple I'd recommend choosing just the standard text option and clicking and dragging it onto the timeline. Again whatever is at the top of your timeline layer hierarchy will be visible in your final video.

To customize the text, head over to the right hand side here and write whatever you want. And then you can adjust the font as well as the color, size, spacing, and so on. You can reposition it in your video by changing the position coordinates until you're happy with the final location of the text.

You can click the edges to drag it to cover more of your overall video. And you can also add a simple fade by clicking and dragging the white marker icon, like so.

Next let's talk about transitions. If you do in fact want to add transitions to your video. If you do head over to the bottom left which is where the effects live and click video transitions.

Here you'll find a whole bunch of preset transitions. To add one click and drag it across and drop it on the outer edge of a clip. Now when we play it back there we go.

If you're working with two clips on the same timeline you can drag and drop it in between the two and it will apply the same transition effect. So those are all the basics of editing a simple video. in DaVinci Resolve.

While you can get super nerdy and go into the Fusion menu and Fairlight for advanced audio editing and advanced graphics, if you're a beginner, I'd recommend keeping things simple and staying away from those menus. You can head over to Color, however, since DaVinci Resolve was originally known as being the world's best color correction software, and it still is.

So obviously there's a lot of different menus here and so much you can do when it comes to color correction. you're just starting out I'd recommend keeping your workflow as simple as possible. So click on the clip that you want to color correct then come down here to the color wheels and the things I'd recommend adjusting are the color temperature since sometimes shots can be either too warm or too cool so this will help you adjust that.

Color boost will make your colors look just a bit more colorful however I avoid dragging it all the way up to a hundred unless you want your clip to look like it's out of a Disney movie. Then the shadows if you drag that across you can select lighten the shadowy areas of your shot and then finally the highlights by dragging it down you can bring back detail in some of your brighter highlights again though you won't want to go too far with these if you look at the before and after that is a massive difference already after less than 60 seconds of color correction so you want to go ahead and color correct your clips until you're happy with how they look the final step you want to follow is heading over to the deliver tab and before you export you'll want to set in and out Outpoints, which essentially tells DaVinci what part of the timeline you actually want to include in your final export.

So if we go to the very start of our timeline and zoom in to the very first frame, which is this one, now I'll press I on my keyboard and that has set the in point. Now I'll go to the very end of the timeline and press O on the keyboard to set the out point. I'd recommend keeping the export settings simple here by clicking this drop down and choosing H265 master.

this will help keep your file size down while retaining high video quality now it is important to check your export settings here to make sure it's exporting at the resolution and frame rate you want if it's set on timeline resolution and timeline frame rate then it will match the numbers we set at the start of the project give your file a name choose a save location and then add to render queue this will send it here to the right hand side where all you need to do now is click render all and your video should export in a few minutes so now Now that you have your first project up and running, the next step isn't to learn every single feature of DaVinci Resolve, since it's a really complicated software with thousands of features and is going to totally overwhelm you before you ever finish a video.

The truth is 90 % of DaVinci Resolve is too complicated and just unnecessary for most projects you'll be working on. All you need is the right 10 % in the right order to produce professional looking videos that you're proud of. This is exactly...

what I teach inside DaVinci Resolve Simplified. In the course, I've taken the workflow that I've refined over the past 20 years of editing and stripped away everything a beginner doesn't need to know, giving you a simple step by step path from starting a project to final export. Learning the software is one thing, but learning how to edit and how to think like an editor is a completely different skill.

So instead of getting lost in menus upon menus and wondering what to do next, you can follow the simplest and fastest workflow that I use personally in a fraction of the time that it would have taken you otherwise. So if you're finally ready to master the skill of editing, I'll link DaVinci Resolve Simplified down below.

The Hook

The bait, then the rug-pull.

A working YouTuber runs his own free version of DaVinci Resolve 21 end to end, cutting, mixing, coloring, and exporting a real project inside a single unhurried fourteen minutes.

Frameworks

Named ideas worth stealing.

13:05concept

The Right 10%

Only a narrow slice of DaVinci Resolve's total feature set, roughly ten percent, is necessary to produce a professional-looking edit; the other ninety percent is complexity a beginner can defer.

Steal forany 'how to learn a complex tool' teaching framework

CTA Breakdown

How they asked for the click.

VERBAL ASK

13:00product

“I'll link DaVinci Resolve Simplified down below.”

Soft pitch after delivering the entire free tutorial in full; frames the paid course as the next step for speed and workflow, not as gatekept information.

Storyboard