Introduction to DaVinci Resolve

DaVinci Resolve integrates editing, compositing and

motion graphics, color correction, audio recording and mixing, and finishing within a single, easy to learn application.

The editing, compositing, grading, and audio tools found in DaVinci Resolve should be immediately familiar to experienced artists who’ve used other applications, but they’re also approachable to folks who are new to post-production.

Additionally, dedicated tools available for on-set workflows integrate tasks such as media duplication, shot and metadata organization, and on-location look management into a complete toolset that lets you smoothly segue from the camera original media being acquired in the field to the organization and use of that media in a wide variety of post-production workflows with DaVinci Resolve at their heart. In particular, the tight integration in DaVinci Resolve means that you can freely move from one task to the next of your project’s workflow without skipping a beat, making it easy to back up and organize a shoot’s media before immediately diving into editing, while switching over to add a quick composite or to color-correct clips in the middle of your editing spree, and then getting right back to cutting, with a bit of mixing to make sure things sound right, all without needing to export projects or launch other applications.

And you can go further, using the collaborative features of DaVinci Resolve to enable multiple artists, for example an editor, a colorist, and assistants, to work together on the same timeline simultaneously, for the ultimate integrated workflow.

Of course, no post-production professional works in a vacuum, and DaVinci Resolve makes it easy to work with other facilities by importing projects and exporting project exchange formats and rendered or managed media among applications such as Apple’s Final Cut Pro X, Adobe’s Premiere Pro, Avid’s Media Composer and Pro Tools, Autodesk’s Flame Premium, and many other applications via robust support of XML, AAF, and EDL import and export workflows.

This chapter introduces the DaVinci Resolve user interface (UI), explaining where to find each group of features, and how the highly focused and tightly integrated Media, Edit, Fusion, Color, Fairlight, and Deliver pages work together to let you pursue nearly any post-production workflow you can imagine.

After this brief tour, the rest of Part 1 of this manual provides much more in-depth information about project management, preferences, project settings, and other topics of general interest for getting started.

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