Easy WINS in DaVinci Resolve 20 with these quick little tips

0:00 Quick little tips that get you some quick little wins.

0:04 It's been a while since I made one of these, so we're giving it a go.

0:07 What up, folks?

0:08 It's Alex here.

0:09 Quick tips for Da Vinci Resolve.

0:10 Let's cut the chat and get straight to it.

0:12 Let's kick things off with multiple audio sync.

0:16 I've got this folder here.

0:18 I recorded some on camera audio.

0:20 When it comes to using the scaling options, which doesn't sound great,

0:24 but then I also recorded some decent audio as well.

0:27 I can sync all of these up, but you don't need to do them individually.

0:31 Just put all of your video with its rough camera audio and then

0:34 your good quality audio within the same bin like I've got here, audio sync.

0:39 Then I can rightclick anywhere without having selected anything.

0:43 Then come to autosync audio by waveform.

0:46 I can leave everything as it is and then click sync.

0:49 It's going to go through all of the clips,

0:51 all of the audio, and line everything up like so.

0:54 So now if I grab this footage, put it on my timeline,

0:58 it's replaced the camera audio with the good quality external audio.

1:02 We're going to kick things off talking about the just like so.

1:06 Sub clips.

1:07 Sub clips are like a mini portion of a clip or a timeline

1:11 that you can back up for safekeeping and then use later.

1:15 They're really handy.

1:16 Let me show you how they work.

1:17 So I've got this timeline here.

1:19 Let's pretend that I want some of this timeline for later.

1:22 If I put my playhead where I want,

1:24 I can hit I on my keyboard to mark an in, O on my keyboard to mark an out.

1:28 Let's pretend I want to make a backup of this section because we need it later.

1:32 We need it in another timeline, whatever it may be.

1:35 If we then right click on the little bar at the top,

1:37 there is an option to create subclip or it's a keyboard shortcut alt and b.

1:41 So if I hit alt and b, you can see we've got a mvx timeline, copy sub clip.

1:46 Then on a brand new timeline or a different timeline,

1:48 I can grab that sub clip, bring it in.

1:51 We then rightclick decompose using clips and we've got all of that stuff.

1:56 But there is also another way.

1:58 If we click on edit at the very top,

2:01 come down to edit options, there is an option decompose compound clips on edit.

2:06 What that means is then if I grab a sub clip, bring it onto this timeline.

2:09 We don't need to decompose.

2:11 It's just got all of the bits ready to go.

2:13 The alt key, I've talked about the alt key a bunch of times.

2:17 It's really useful.

2:18 option if you're on a Mac.

2:20 Let me just show you super quickly the main uses for it.

2:23 So, this clip here has the audio attached.

2:26 You can see when I give that a click, it also selects the audio.

2:29 If you want to work on them independently, if you just hold alt or option,

2:33 then give it a click, you will just select the video and not the audio.

2:38 Or if you want to do the other way, hold alt, click on the audio.

2:41 Now, we've selected the audio.

2:42 So, you can really quickly click them and select them independently.

2:46 If you hold alt, click on this once again,

2:48 hold alt again, and then click and drag.

2:51 It's a super quick way of duplicating,

2:53 copying anything you like on the timeline.

2:56 Just hold alt, click and drag, and you'll make a copy.

2:59 It's also really useful if you give something a click

3:02 and then you use the controls within the inspector,

3:05 it can jump just a little bit too much.

3:07 If you hold alt and then click and drag,

3:10 you can do teeny tiny little adjustments just

3:13 allowing you to fine-tune things like the rotation,

3:16 the position, the zoom, and whatever else.

3:18 Swap clips.

3:20 Keyboard shortcut that's really easy to miss, that's just incredibly useful.

3:25 Swap clips.

3:26 So, we've got these two clips on the timeline here.

3:29 This little screenshot one and this of my face.

3:32 If we want to swap them over, you don't need to kind of click and drag.

3:36 Oh, I've moved me audio.

3:37 I need to move this.

3:38 Oh, it's all gone wrong.

3:40 If you give your first click a click like so,

3:42 so it's highlighted or selected on the timeline.

3:46 Then hold controll shift and use the full stop or period key.

3:50 You can just move that over to the right.

3:52 So you can keep nudging it over it goes

3:55 and it will just move things out the way like so.

3:58 You can swap them around.

3:59 If you want to go forward, use control shift and full stop or period.

4:03 And if you want to come back, use controll shift and comma, left and right.

4:10 Or if you want even more control, hold control and shift once again,

4:13 but this time click and hold your mouse as well.

4:16 Keep everything held and then you can drag instead.

4:19 This allows you to do the exact same thing, swapping clips.

4:22 But this also allows you to then put it in the middle of existing clips

4:26 and it will split the clip and put

4:27 them either side without actually overwriting anything.

4:31 Then you can just barge everything out the way

4:33 and put this clip wherever you want it to go.

4:36 Crossfade audio.

4:39 This one's super useful if you want to just

4:40 kind of bring the volume of something down super quick.

4:43 You can of course do key frames.

4:45 There is now the auto audio ducker in the free version.

4:49 But here's a super quick way of just bringing the volumes down

4:52 on a particular part of a clip without all of the FAF.

4:55 So, I've got this music track here.

4:57 Now, here's a bonus tip.

4:58 If you hold Alt and then click on the little line in the middle,

5:01 sometimes it's hard to see, but your cursor will change to that new icon.

5:05 Give that a click, you can super quickly set key frames just like so.

5:10 So, that can be a super quick way of doing key frames.

5:12 But an easier way, let's get rid of all of those.

5:15 Simply make a cut on this audio clip like so,

5:19 I can then bring the volume down of the next

5:21 one just by clicking and dragging that line.

5:23 If we then right click on that edit point, we can add a cross fade.

5:28 There you go.

5:29 Then we can move this wherever we like and it

5:31 will just automatically kind of duck that audio down.

5:35 Now it's at a lower volume.

5:36 When I want it to come back up, I'll do another cut.

5:39 Right click, crossfade, bring this back up.

5:44 And there you go.

5:45 Delete through edit.

5:48 If you've made a load of cuts and then realize you don't

5:50 actually need those cuts and it's kind of annoying having them there,

5:53 what I've seen a lot of people do is

5:54 just kind of delete the clip and start again.

5:57 You don't need to do that.

5:58 You can delete edits.

6:00 So, using that previous example where we did our crossfades,

6:03 let's just get rid of these crossfades on these edit

6:06 points here because we haven't put anything new in there.

6:10 It's the same clip.

6:11 We've just randomly made cuts.

6:13 If you once again right click on those edit points,

6:15 there is an option delete through edit.

6:18 And that'll just get rid of those.

6:20 Once again on this one, delete through edit.

6:22 Job done.

6:23 Now it's back to its original form.

6:26 Clip colors.

6:27 I could talk about clip colors for a while because they're really useful.

6:30 But let me just show you the main reason why I really

6:33 like them and I think they're a quick tip for a quick win.

6:36 So, from your timeline,

6:37 simply select one or multiple different clips, right click,

6:41 come to clip color, and you can see all of the colors to choose from.

6:44 Let's go with orange.

6:45 And that's just going to make those clips orange.

6:48 Super useful for just marking different sections on your timeline.

6:51 You can also do that for titles, which I find particularly useful.

6:55 If I grab this title,

6:56 another way to also do this is by opening up the inspector,

6:59 come into file, you'll see clip color within here,

7:02 select the color, that will change the color of the title.

7:05 So, wherever this title appears, if I duplicate it,

7:08 it's always going to be pink.

7:09 Again, making it nice and easy to find.

7:11 Now, you can also do that within the inspector.

7:13 So, if I find this clip here, I can write click, come down to clip color.

7:19 Let's set this one to be lime.

7:21 So, whenever I add this clip to my timeline, it's going to be lime.

7:24 Again, making it nice and easy to spot.

7:27 You can even do that after you've built up your timeline.

7:30 So, this clip here, this is my main A-roll,

7:32 but I didn't set it as a different color.

7:35 And this footage is used all throughout this timeline

7:37 on a few different tracks, as you can see.

7:40 Now, I don't need to go through and select

7:42 all of these different clips on the timeline.

7:45 Instead, if I find the source media within my media pool,

7:48 easiest way to do this is just to give it a click on the timeline,

7:51 hit alt or option and f, it will highlight that clip within the media pool.

7:57 Then I can rightclick, come down to clip color.

8:00 Let's set this to be orange.

8:02 Now all the instances of that clip on the timeline will now be orange.

8:07 Useful, yes, for identifying different clips,

8:10 but that's not the main reason I'm telling you about clip color.

8:13 I'm telling you about clip color so you can filter by clip color.

8:18 This is particularly useful if you're doing a bit of a grade.

8:22 So, I've built up the timeline.

8:23 I forgot to color grade it.

8:24 And all my A-roll is mixed up.

8:26 And if I go to the cutter page, it's a bit of a pain.

8:29 Now, there are a ton of different ways to do things,

8:31 remote grades and whatever else, but the easiest way to do it,

8:34 click on clips at the very top left here, click the little drop down.

8:38 There is an option clip color, and I can filter by orange.

8:41 There's all my A-roll cuz I've nicely marked it as orange.

8:45 And then if I highlight all of it, I can give this a click in my gallery.

8:50 Apply the grade.

8:51 And now I have that same grade applied to all of those clips.

8:55 Now, if you've never done that thing I just did,

8:58 which is where I applied the grade using something within the gallery,

9:02 that's my next tip for a big quick win.

9:05 And that is grabbing and applying still.

9:07 So, on the color page, if you click on gallery to open this gallery on the left,

9:12 there is also then another option over here,

9:14 still albums, and you'll have stills, power grades, and timeline.

9:18 If I go to this stills one, this clip here has a grade.

9:22 You can see I've done my grade over on the right.

9:24 I can simply rightclick on the preview window and click grab still.

9:28 And that will grab this still.

9:30 Now, this looks like a screenshot,

9:32 but it's not because if I clear this grade like so,

9:37 I can then simply rightclick on this still and then apply the grade.

9:42 And while it looks like a still image, it's not.

9:44 It contains all of the color grade we've done.

9:46 So then this can sit there in this project ready to use.

9:50 Anytime I want to apply the grade, I can rightclick and come to apply grade.

9:54 Alternatively, bonus tip once again, if you're using a mouse,

9:58 just click your middle mouse wheel.

9:59 Bing, and that will apply the grade.

10:02 Now, once you've done that, you can grab

10:03 this and you can put this into power grades.

10:06 Power grades are the same except these things sit in your project library.

10:10 So, anytime you open a new project within this library, within this database,

10:14 those will be there ready to go and you

10:16 can just apply the grades with a simple click.

10:19 And now for my next quick win,

10:20 why not take a look at this video sponsor, Motion VFX.

10:24 Motion VFX have a massive range of presets and plugins for Da

10:29 Vinci Resolve that are designed specifically for creators just like you and me.

10:33 If you do vlogs or make travel videos,

10:35 you might want to take a look at M Scrapbook,

10:37 which brings a handmade charm to all of your videos,

10:40 containing 60 different tools from titles, effects, transitions, and add-ons.

10:45 Or if you like the clean Apple kind of aesthetic,

10:49 you can check out the brand new M Keyynote 2,

10:52 which contains a massive range of titles, effects, transitions, add-ons,

10:57 backgrounds, infographics like these super cool looking charts,

11:01 placeholders, and more.

11:03 All with a super clean, simple, colorful Apple kind of look.

11:06 Or if it's only titles you need, you could check out the M title mega pack,

11:11 which does exactly what it says on the tin,

11:13 containing 125 different title openers,

11:16 so you've got a title for every occasion.

11:18 So, if you want to check out the full range

11:20 of plugins for Da Vinci Resolve designed by Motion VFX,

11:23 simply click on the link down in the description below.

11:26 Right, next quick win, applying LUTs from within the media pool.

11:32 So, did you know you can apply alerts directly within the media pool?

11:35 You can do this for multiple clips at once.

11:37 Now, this is useful if you've got a particular look.

11:39 You've shot in a standard 709 and you've got some LS you want to apply,

11:44 but this is also useful if you've got a manufacturer

11:46 L which takes like a log format into 709

11:50 or whatever and maybe you don't want to mess around

11:53 with color management or using CSTs and all that stuff.

11:56 Let's not get into that.

11:58 Let me just show you.

11:59 So, all of these were shot with Panasonic Vlog.

12:01 If I just highlight them all once again in the media pool, right click,

12:05 there's a L option and all of the L you have installed will appear here.

12:10 I can come down to Panasonic Vlog to 709.

12:14 Now, all of these have that L applied.

12:17 Now, this is worth showing because if I go to L once again,

12:20 if you've shot with DJI, there's a bunch of DJI L.

12:23 We've got RED, Samsung, Sony's, we've got all sorts of different stuff,

12:27 and it's just a right click away, the film strip.

12:30 So, this is maybe not that useful to everyone,

12:33 but I find it particularly useful if I'm

12:34 editing on a laptop or a smaller screen.

12:37 So, your media pool might look something like this.

12:40 And I've just never got on with this mouse

12:44 scrolly thing when you're reviewing back your media footage.

12:47 Now, if you're on a bigger screen, you can, of course,

12:49 close the inspector and enable your two panels,

12:52 but that doesn't always work if you're on a laptop.

12:55 What I like to do is turn over to this view here,

12:58 the list view, where you just get the list of all your footage.

13:02 Then you click on these three little dots, and then show the film strip.

13:06 Then whenever you select some footage,

13:08 you get the same little film strip at the top.

13:11 I just find it looks neater.

13:12 I don't accidentally go over things when I'm moving up here,

13:15 going past and having the preview change,

13:18 but I can really quickly just give this one a click,

13:20 go through, do some in and outs right in here.

13:23 Click, drag, bring it onto my timeline.

13:26 It's really nice and quick and I just find it

13:28 a little bit neater and a little bit nicer to use.

13:31 Media pool transform.

13:33 Here's another super quick one.

13:34 It might be obvious, but it's easy to miss.

13:37 You can do transforms for a bunch of things at once in the media pool.

13:40 So, I've got some PGs in this little folder here.

13:44 Now, if anyone can guess which fellow YouTuber this is,

13:46 type their name down in the comments below.

13:49 Now, what I can do before we even put these on the timeline,

13:52 let's highlight all of these.

13:54 Then, we can go to video.

13:55 We've got all of our video controls within the inspector,

13:58 and we can zoom this out, maybe change the position,

14:01 the rotation, do whatever we like to do,

14:03 change any of the things within the media pool.

14:06 Now, anytime we grab any of those from the media pool, put them on the timeline,

14:10 they will have those transforms already made,

14:14 so they will already be in the position you've set them.

14:17 Scaling.

14:18 Now, you can do the exact same thing when using the scaling options as well.

14:22 Now, this is particularly useful if you're using photos,

14:24 but it also works if you're using videos with different aspect ratios

14:28 or if you're trying to put horizontal video on a portrait timeline.

14:31 So, take these photos here.

14:33 We've got some that are vertical.

14:35 This one is square, so it doesn't fit our 16x9.

14:38 If we double click on any of them, come to in the inspector video,

14:42 scroll down to the rettime and scaling, we have scaling options.

14:46 The two that are most important that you'll use most often fit.

14:50 That will just make sure that it fits within the frame.

14:52 That's still going to give us our black bars on the side.

14:55 If we go to fill, it's going to punch it

14:57 in to make sure that it completely fills the frame.

15:00 If we were to do it on this one, change the scaling to fill.

15:04 It's going to punch in so it fills the frame.

15:06 Now, rather than doing that clip by clip,

15:08 you can also do this for an entire timeline.

15:10 Particularly useful if you're doing a vertical timeline.

15:13 So, if I create my new timeline,

15:15 I'm going to untick the use project settings, go to format,

15:19 tick the box to use vertical resolution,

15:21 and it will automatically change this mismatched

15:24 resolution to be that same option.

15:26 It's called scale full frame with crop rather than fill,

15:30 but it will do the same thing.

15:31 We've got fill at the top here, and we've got fit underneath.

15:34 So, if we make sure we scale full

15:36 frame with crop and then create this vertical timeline,

15:40 even if we grab some really wide footage, put this on this timeline,

15:44 it's automatically going to punch it in so

15:46 it completely fills our frame just like so.

15:49 Power bins.

15:50 You might have heard of power bins before.

15:52 Power bins are bins which you can access amongst

15:54 all of the projects within your current project library.

15:57 That means that if you've got videos or images or sound effects,

16:00 music, whatever it may be, which you use a lot,

16:03 you can have it ready to go because

16:05 it's basically there in any project you create.

16:08 To turn it on, you simply click

16:09 on these three little dots within the media pool.

16:12 Come down to show power bins.

16:14 The power bins will appear within your media pool.

16:16 Open them up and here you go.

16:18 Anything you put in here will be accessible in any future projects you create

16:22 in this project library or even if you go back into any existing ones.

16:27 And that transform and scaling tricks we did before,

16:31 they carry over to the power bins.

16:33 So let's grab these images which we've already set the scaling for.

16:36 We're just going to drop them into this power bin just like so.

16:40 And now here we are in a brand new project.

16:42 We can open that power bin.

16:44 There's my three images.

16:45 Grab them all.

16:46 put them on my timeline and each one will already

16:49 be punched in because we've already set the scaling to fill.

16:52 Replace.

16:53 This is one of my favorites.

16:54 It's really easy to overlook.

16:56 And if you've done kind of any work honestly to a clip on the timeline,

17:00 then you want to replace that clip with a different clip.

17:03 This can be music, it can be logos, PGs, or even videos.

17:08 You can do that replace without losing all of the work you've already done.

17:11 So, this clip here has a color grade on it.

17:14 But let's also just change the zoom, maybe the rotation, pitch, your, whatever.

17:21 Let's also go to the effects library and really quickly drop something on here,

17:26 like the flying flag, whatever it may be.

17:28 Now, we want to replace this clip,

17:30 but we don't want to lose all of the stuff we've already done.

17:32 Put your playhead at the very beginning of it.

17:34 Make sure to select that track.

17:36 So, if you click on the tracks over here on the left,

17:39 you can enable these A1's and V1's.

17:41 You want to make sure the V1 is on the video

17:43 track with the clip that you're wanting to replace.

17:46 Then if I go to any of the clips within the media pool,

17:49 if I click and drag onto the preview window, you get this little pop out.

17:54 You can also use keyboard shortcuts which are on screen for you.

17:57 Now, if I go over replace and then let go,

18:01 it's going to replace that clip on the timeline with my new clip,

18:05 but it's not going to get rid of any of the attributes.

18:07 So, we've got the flying flag.

18:09 We've got all of the transform stuff we set.

18:11 And if we jump over to the color page,

18:13 you can see it's already got our grade applied as well.

18:16 Display stacked timelines.

18:19 I made a whole video about this, but here's

18:21 the quick version because it belongs in this video as well.

18:24 Just above your timeline,

18:25 click on this little icon and then click on display stacked timelines.

18:30 This allows you to have multiple timelines open at once.

18:33 That's handy.

18:33 We're not going to go into that in this video.

18:35 Why I recommend you do this anyway is because you can

18:38 then right-click this little timeline and you have loads of options.

18:41 Close the timeline, close all the other timelines,

18:44 rename this timeline, open up the timeline settings,

18:47 load it into the source viewer,

18:48 find it in the media pool, and even duplicate it.

18:51 So, if you're making any changes,

18:52 you can do a super quick duplicate to know that you have a backup.

18:55 You can do all of those things in other ways,

18:58 but having that option there just makes life a little bit easier.

19:01 And no, annoyingly, you can't set that as the default.

19:04 You have to turn it on every time you open a new project.

19:08 Export preset.

19:09 Rather than setting all of the export settings every single time,

19:12 do it once and create a preset.

19:14 On the deliver page, just select all of the settings that you usually use.

19:18 The format, the codec, the encoder, resolution, frame rate, whatever it may be.

19:23 You can also set file names.

19:25 Now, you can do wild cards in here, which is super useful.

19:27 So, if you just do the percentage sign, it will come up with these options.

19:32 So, I like to do something like the timeline name.

19:35 So, it'll automatically populate the timeline name.

19:37 And then I might do another one, which is like today's date.

19:40 I'll just type the date in there.

19:42 And there you go.

19:43 Then, if we click on these three little dots, come down to save as new preset.

19:48 It's going to ask you to give it a name.

19:50 I'm just going to call mine demo.

19:51 We can choose a logo, little icon, so we know which one's which.

19:55 And if we want to, we can add it to quick export.

19:58 So, I'm going to give that a tick and then click save.

20:00 And now whenever we want, we can come into the deliver page.

20:03 On the far left of this little menu at the top,

20:06 I've got a little drop down because I've got a few of them.

20:08 If I go to demo, it's going to load in all of my settings.

20:11 If I add this to the render queue, you will still need to set a destination.

20:16 You can see it's pulled through the timeline name and today's date.

20:19 So, it's all ready to go.

20:21 I don't even need to go that far, though,

20:22 because we added it to the quick export on the edit page.

20:26 We've got quick export in the top right hand corner.

20:28 Give that a click.

20:30 It will now appear within this list.

20:32 Quick note, this won't use your wild cards.

20:34 It will always just default to the timeline name.

20:37 You can't change that weirdly within the quick export,

20:40 but it will come out as the timeline name.

20:42 You simply click export from here and you're good to go.

20:44 And that pretty much covers everything I wanted to cover in this video.

20:48 If you found it useful, please do let me know thoughts and feelings down below.

20:51 Like, subscribe, all the other YouTube nonsense.

20:54 Thank you to Motion VFX for sponsoring this video.

20:56 And do give them a click if you fancy

20:59 checking out some of their offerings and whatever else.

21:02 Thanks for watching.

21:03 Catch you next time.