If I started using DaVinci Resolve in 2026, I’d do THIS

https://youtu.be/3KHJ1qvQQNU?si=AXdj-1Fiu8G4No56

0:00 · When I first opened Da Vinci Resolve, I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't know if I was doing anything correctly or if my edits were even any good. They weren't. But this was 10 years ago, and things have changed. So, to save you hours of time trying to figure out where to start, I'm going to show you the eight things that I would do now to go from beginner to pro in Dinci Resolve.

0:23 · and make sure you watch to the end because the last one is the exact thing that made me go from editing for local businesses to working with worldwide brands like Rubik's. So, the first thing I would do is just learn the basics. And to do this, I would give myself a little goal of making a really basic edit. It could be something really stupid like this, for example. Meet the man who woke up one day [music] and realized, "I've got nothing for breakfast."

1:03 · [laughter] So, making something basic like this teaches you the fundamentals like how to put clips on a timeline, how to make a cut and delete things, and how to add basic text and also add voiceovers as well. So, while I'm doing this really simple edit, I'll find little things that I don't know how to do. So, I'll then just go on to YouTube and search for a tutorial on how to do it. There's a good chance that someone's done a video about it. But don't just watch the tutorial.

1:29 · Make sure to practice what you learn straight away, otherwise it won't stick in your head as much. But YouTube isn't your only resource for learning the software. And this moves me on to number two. Back when I first started editing, if YouTube didn't have the answer, then I'd have to go on to Google and spend ages sifting through a bunch of forums and finally found the answer I was looking for.

1:52 · Thanks, Turtle Man 306. You know who you are. But now, I don't have to waste my time doing that. I can just use AI to do it for me. I'll go [clears throat] to chatgpt.com and ask it a question. It will scour the internet for me and give me the answer instantly, whether it's a simple answer like a keyboard shortcut or a step-by-step process of how to do something. And it's free. It's so good for stuff like this. AI is also built into Da Vinci Resolve itself as well.

2:19 · So now a bunch of things that used to take ages can now be done with just a single click. I made a whole video about my top 10 favorite AI features that are inside of Da Vinci Resolve. So I'll leave a link to that in the description if you haven't seen it yet. It's crazy some of the stuff you can do with it. Now number three. The next thing I would do is set up a fast access system for my folders on my computer. This saves a ton of time. I used to have files from my timeline all over my computer.

2:49 · Some would be in the downloads folder, some would be on the desktop, some would be in my movies folder. It was just an absolute mess and it made backing up my videos a nightmare. Now I have an organized system for my folders for every video that I edit, which also integrates with Da Vinci Resolve. So, let me explain. I have an external USBC hard drive that I keep all of my video files on. I call this drive media files.

3:17 · Inside of here, I have a folder called my client's rushes. This is where I keep the video files for all of the videos I'm currently working on. And then when I finish them, I'll back the files up online and on a separate drive. So, right now, I'm just working on a couple of videos for a YouTuber called Ed Lawrence. So, inside of his folder, I have one folder for assets. So, this is things like brand guides, logos, fonts, that sort of thing. And then I have a folder called videos. And inside of here, I have a folder for each video I'm working on.

3:47 · So, this video is called Views to Sales. And inside of here, you can see I've got a folder for A-roll, which has Ed's A-roll in. I have a folder for video assets, which has all of the other media that Ed has given me, like screen recordings and images. And I've also got a folder called extra media. These are things that I've downloaded or made for the video, like extra images and screen recordings. I like to keep these separate because I want a quick access to the media that I've just downloaded.

4:14 · Ed's videos don't normally have B-roll, sound effects, or music, but if they did, then I'd also have a folder for each of these things here as well. So, the way to integrate this with Da Vinci Resolve is by coming over to the media pool. And in here, you can see that I already have bins set up for the same things. So, I'll drag that video's folder and drop it on the Rushes bin here. If I drop it over here instead, then the next part I'm about to show you won't work. It has to be dropped on the left hand side here. So, this creates its own bin for that video.

4:47 · And then if I right click on this bin and come down to automatically reync media files, [music] this means that whenever I'm saving a new file for a video, I just save it in my folder here and then it's automatically going to show up in Da Vinci. So, no more downloading something and then trying to find [music] if it's in the downloads or the desktop or wherever. I know exactly where it is. and then when I finish a video, all of the files for it are in this one folder that can be backed [music] up. Keeping files organized saves so much time and confusion.

5:15 · And then if you have to go back to make changes on an old video, then you know that you're not going to be missing any files. Number four, the next thing I would do is something that isn't talked about anywhere near enough. When I used to put text on screen, I'd sometimes have it right on the edge of the frame like this. or I might have it overlapping something where you can barely read it like this. And this is because I didn't know basic composition and design rules.

5:42 · So my text on the edge of the frame is actually breaking a simple composition rule which is to keep text inside of the safe zone. Da Vinci Resolve has an inbuilt overlay which you can use as a guide for this. If you come to this button here and click on the drop-own arrow, click on title and it will give you this white rectangle, showing you that everything inside of it is the safe zone for text and everything out of it is too close to the edge.

6:07 · In fact, these guides can do a ton of useful things like setting a center guide so you can see where the center of your frame is. You can also turn on these guides here which you can drag around wherever you like. And then if you have your onscreen overlay on with snapping enabled, then you can drag your image over the guides and it will automatically snap to [music] them.

6:30 · Another design rule that you'll want to follow is to give contrast and make things stand out. Like with this text example here, you can barely see the text because it's blending in with the background. So that's why with one of my presets I made, it is really easy to make the text stand out. I can add a drop shadow or I can add an outline and then blur it so that the text has this subtle dark patch behind it to make it stand out from the background easier. Or I can just add a background color behind the text.

6:57 · All of these things will make the text pop out from the background instead of being difficult to [music] read. Another thing you can do is put the text in the center of the frame, dim the background, and give it a slight blur to bring the viewer's eyes to the text. So you could use a gorian blur effect on the background and then add a black solid color and then bring the opacity down to do this. I actually made a preset called blur and tint which makes this a lot easier to do. So I can just add it to the background here and it's done. Learning basic composition and design rules will 100% [snorts] improve your editing.

7:29 · All you need to do is search basic composition and design rules on YouTube and there's a ton of videos here that will teach you the fundamentals that you can apply directly to video editing. And since I just mentioned about using presets, this brings me on to number five. Don't waste time animating things by hand and then repeating the same steps over and over again when you can just use presets that have already done all of the hard work for you.

7:54 · So, for example, if you want a bit of text to slide in on screen, instead of dragging the text off screen, setting a key frame, dragging it to where you want it to go, setting another key frame, then have to play around with the timing because it's too slow, and then having to play around with the key frame handles to try and make it look smooth. Just use a preset that's done all of this already. Like here, I would just use my in-n-out transitions preset.

8:20 · I've got a ton of them that are all pre-animated. So, I just drag this one on, which is called slide in from left, and it'll just slide in from the left nice and smoothly. I can adjust the timing with the transition handle, and I can even use it again to animate off, or even put it between two clips to animate one off and then the other on.

8:37 · Presets like this are a huge timesaver. [music] And these in-n-out transitions here, these are just one of my 21 presets that are part of my essentials preset pack, which includes effects, generators, titles, and transitions. [music] So, if you want to make your life easier, follow in the footsteps of tons of editors who are already editing faster than ever by checking out my essentials preset pack [music] in the link below.

9:03 · Number six, the next thing I would do is something that a lot of editors forget about, which is to learn how to color grade and how to edit your audio. Because it can be really easy to forget these things as a new editor if you spend most of your time on the edit page. But learning these two skills can take your video from looking and sounding like this to looking and sounding like this. So, you don't want to skip it. There's tons of in-depth tutorials on YouTube showing how to learn these two things.

9:31 · And I've also made a couple of videos showing how I would color grade and edit audio for one of my subscribers videos. So, I'll leave a link to those videos in the description below if you want to check them out. But this is definitely something that you don't want to skip. I remember delivering a video to a client years ago before I properly learned how to color grade. And he came back to me and he said, "Yeah, it looks good. Can you start on with the color grade now?"

9:54 · And I read it and I was thinking, "Uh, I've already done the color grade."

9:58 · [laughter] And it was at that moment that I learned how to actually do it and it took my image from this to this. I didn't even realize how bad it looked originally.

10:07 · So, this was definitely an eye openener for me. Number seven, if you've watched my videos before, then you'll know that I always recommend to people to learn keyboard shortcuts. This just speeds up the whole editing process like crazy.

10:21 · So, if you find yourself clicking the same things on the timeline or the menus over and over again, have a look and see if it has a keyboard shortcut for it or if you can make one. So, if I right click on this clip here, you can see it shows me what the keyboard shortcuts are for these different things. So, if I found that I keep right clicking and hitting ripple delete, then I would just make a note of the keyboard shortcut for that, which is shift backspace, and then use that instead. So my goal would be to learn a couple of shortcuts a day.

10:48 · And then over time, these shortcuts will start to become second nature to the point where I now actually use hundreds of these shortcuts. And I have them on my mouse. I have them on a console of buttons. And I also have them on my iPad. And you might be wondering, wait, how are you using them on your iPad?

11:08 · Well, this brings us on to number eight.

11:10 · The one thing that has taken me from editing for local businesses up to working with global brands like Rubik's.

11:18 · So about 3 years ago, I was in a bit of a editing rut. I was editing the same videos over and over and my editing just felt a bit stagnant. And I remember I got to the end of the year and I thought to myself, my editing literally hasn't improved at all in the last 12 months.

11:34 · And so I made a point to myself to make sure that when I get to this time next year, I will be a much better editor than I am today. So I had to push myself. I started learning the Fusion page, which opened up a whole other world of possibilities [music] to my edits. I started actively looking for editing inspiration in films and on YouTube and then recreating those things for myself in clients videos. I then got the opportunity to edit videos for Rubik's. It was a series of videos on how to solve the Rubik's cube.

12:01 · And they had recorded their hands solving the cube, but they were having trouble with showing certain things to the camera.

12:09 · So, I learned a 3D program called Blender [music] and built the cube in 3D and exported those animations back into Da Vinci to show those more complicated parts. [music] And they liked it so much that they asked me to redo all of the videos completely in 3D. But having better looking edits wasn't enough for me. I wanted to create a whole workflow that would allow me to edit faster [music] and easier than ever. So, I built a whole time-saving system with my iPad.

12:34 · So, for example, with Rubik's, I created branded [music] titles and assets on the Fusion page to be able to use in their videos. [music] And then I saved them all as presets that could be found here. And then I set them up with my iPad [music] so I can just tap on the image for that title and it instantly comes to my cursor on the timeline. I was editing faster than ever. And the quality of my editing was higher than ever, too. And this was all because I actively [music] pushed myself. I took myself out of my comfort zone and tried something new.

13:06 · And with AI and all of these tutorials out there now, there's never been a better time to learn how to edit. Oh, and if you want to set up that iPad system for yourself, watch this video here, which shows exactly how I did it and how you can set it up [music] for yourself along with your own custom keyboard shortcuts that will speed up your editing [music] like crazy.