Blog Post #3 - Learning How to Use DaVinci Resolve

To start my Genius Hour this week, I visited the DaVinci Resolve website and watched their two-part tutorial, Introduction to Editing. This tutorial starts by going over how to start a project based on your needs (ie. choosing a resolution, frame rate, etc.), and how to input and organize media (videos, pictures, audio, etc.). The tutorial discusses utilizing metadata, which is additional information that can be stored within the media files (ex. dates, locations, keywords, etc.). This metadata is important for finding media files when working on a large project. Then, using this metadata, I learned that I can create smart bins that will organize my clips for me, improving my workflow in the long run.

Black Magic Design. (2022c). Editing on Laptop. [Photograph]. Retrieved from https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/ca/products/davinciresolve

The tutorial also outlines multiple different useful shortcuts/hotkeys that can help improve workflow, such as using [t] to trim, [b] to use the blade tool, [Backspace] to delete a clip without affecting the timeline, or [CTLR + T] to quickly add a transition. While this may only save a small portion of time, these actions are used often and, consequently, it will add up and improve my productivity.

The tutorial also outlines useful tips, such as creating and saving multiple versions of an edit so that you can explore different types of edits and see what works best with the other edits within your timeline.

In the tutorial, they walk the viewer through the creation of a large-scale project, even down to making small adjustments to improve quality. This allowed me to see how I can apply all of the tools and skills that they introduced at the beginning of the video. Since I am more of a visual learner than an auditory learner, being able to see these applied and, eventually, being able to follow along with the speaker will be very helpful to my learning process.

Blackmagic Design (2022a)

In the second part of the tutorial, they went over more refining details and finishing touches, as well as common things that people may come across when editing videos, such as incompatibilities with different video clips or tracks not coming through as stereo, and possible troubleshooting measures.

Blackmagic Design (2022b)

To help fill in any information that Black Magic’s tutorials may have missed and to help give me an unbiased understanding of the program, I also watched a tutorial on YouTube created by Kevin Stratvert. As a smaller-scale creator with a more consumer-level understanding of the program, he was able to demonstrate real-life tricks that I can utilize and errors that I will likely run into, as well as illustrate some of the limitations of DaVinci Resolve.

Kevin Stratvert (2022)

I was a little nervous to start working with DaVinci Resolve because I am not familiar with it. However, these tutorials demonstrated that it has many useful tools to help me tune my experience based on my preferences and needs. These tutorial videos have solidified my choice of software for this project.

Next week, I am hoping to take what I have learned through the tutorials today and apply them to my own process. I would like to make a separate “test” project to try different things and get more comfortable actually using the program. Black Magic Design also provides a file of the project they worked on in the tutorial. Next week, I would like to look at this file more closely to get a deeper understanding of the project they worked on and the creative choices they made to get some inspiration. Finally, I would like to watch videos that people have created using DaVinci Resolve to gain inspiration for my project.

Resources

Blackmagic Design. (2022a, January 6). DaVinci Resolve 17 Edit Training - Introduction to Editing Part 1 [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYlwId_z_yU&list=PLURZdvzBgI3ro0L8MFXWEo_TubW1W9nnk

Blackmagic Design. (2022b, January 6). DaVinci Resolve 17 Edit Training - Introduction to Editing Part 2 [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6-Ol-ytMCw&list=PLURZdvzBgI3ro0L8MFXWEo_TubW1W9nnk&index=2

Blackmagic Design. (2022c). Overview of Davinci Resolve 18: Professional Editing, Color, Effects and Audio Post. Blackmagicdesign. https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/ca/products/davinciresolve

Kevin Stratvert. (2022, May 16) DaVinci Resolve 18 - Full Tutorial for Beginners [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEksPdEc7aI