DaVinci Resolve how-to guides, collected in one place

The Edit page is a full multi track timeline that opens in Chrome. Ingest a card, assemble on the Cut page, trim on the Edit page, and every clip, marker and speed ramp is still where you left it the next time you open the project on any machine.

The Colour page reads the same timeline as the Edit page, so a grade never waits for a conform. Build a node tree per clip, balance with wheels and curves, isolate with keys and windows, then push the look across a whole sequence from the stills gallery.

The Fusion page is a compositing application inside the timeline. Build a node graph for the shot, keep the result live in the project and hand it back to the edit without a round trip, an export or a second version of the media.

Dialogue, music and effects live on their own tracks in the same project as the picture. The Fairlight page gives those tracks a mixer, processing, automation and loudness metering, so the mix is finished with the film rather than exported to another application.

Delivery is where a browser studio usually falls apart. Here the media pool, the timeline and the presets are one system: pick the destinations once, queue the renders and download masters that already match each platform.

Every plan opens the same studio: the media pool, Cut, Edit, Colour, Fusion, Fairlight and Deliver pages are always there. What changes is how far a timeline can be pushed, how fast it renders and how many people can work on it with you.

Most finishing work never needs an outside plugin: the built in effect set and the neural engine tools cover keying, cleanup, retiming, reframing and restoration. This page explains what is available in the browser studio and what still belongs on a desktop workstation.

There is no hardware compatibility list to work through, because the studio runs in the browser. What matters is a current browser, hardware acceleration, enough memory for the timeline you open and a connection that can stream your media.

People arrive here looking for a download and find something better: a studio that opens in the browser with the media pool, timeline, colour, Fusion and audio pages already in place. Nothing to install, nothing to license per machine, nothing to update.

Learning an editing suite is mostly about order and repetition: assemble until it is fast, trim until it is invisible, then grade and mix with the same material. This is the path the pages of the studio suggest, and the way to practise it without a licence server in the way.

Everything the studio changes gets written down here, newest first. Releases ship from the staging environment after review, so a project is never updated in the middle of a working session without a note.

Both are non linear editors with the same core grammar, so the choice is rarely about cutting itself. It is about the ecosystem around the timeline: the installs, the subscription, the round trips and the deliverables the job actually demands.

CapCut gets a post out tonight with a template and trending sound. A studio timeline gets a channel through the year with grades, mixes and versions. Both are useful; they answer different questions.

Both routes open the same kind of project and keep the same shortcuts, so the choice is less about ability and more about the room you are in: a managed laptop, a borrowed machine, or a dedicated suite with a calibrated monitor.

Most people search for an alternative because of a constraint: no install rights, an older machine, an aversion to subscriptions, or a workflow that starts on a phone. Match the constraint to the tool before comparing feature lists.

The name carries a reputation for being free, and the truth depends on which version you mean: the installed application has a famous free edition, while this browser studio is free to explore, with plans that pay for rendering and team features.

The slow part of a video job was never the timeline; it was the handoff: a drive in a courier bag, a review email with three attachments and a question about which cut is newest. Collaboration in the browser replaces the handoff with a project that everyone opens.

A YouTube channel is a small factory: one video a week means ingest, story, sound, graphics and export all fit inside the same days the next video is being planned. The workflow below is built for that cadence, in the browser, on whatever machine is free.

Most vertical clips start life as part of something longer. The trick is to cut them from the same project instead of spinning up a parallel edit: duplicate the timeline, reframe, and keep one story in one place.

Every editing application looks like a cockpit the first time. The way through is not to learn the whole cockpit; it is to import one clip, cut it and export it, then add one new skill on every job after that.

A Chromebook is the machine people assume cannot edit video, and for installed applications that is true. The browser studio routes around the assumption: the timeline runs in the tab and the heavy processing happens on the other side of the connection.

On Windows the studio is a tab: Windows 10 or 11, a current Chrome or Edge, and a sign in. Nothing lands in Program Files, nothing needs a driver update, and a locked down work laptop is a first class editing machine.

On a Mac the studio is a tab in Chrome: no installer, no licence server, no admin password. macOS 12 or later runs it, Apple Silicon runs it comfortably, and the projects follow the account between every Mac you sign in on.

Speed in editing is rarely about typing fast; it is about not reaching for the mouse. A dozen keys cover most of a cutting session, and the browser studio keeps the same key family as the desktop app, so habits transfer in both directions.

Every heavy project has the same shape: beautiful camera files the machine cannot play. Proxies replace playback, not quality, and in a browser workflow they are the difference between a slideshow and a working timeline.

Export is the one page where every earlier decision becomes visible to the audience. The settings that matter are fewer than the form suggests: container, codec, bitrate, loudness and colour tags.

A chroma key succeeds on set, not in the keyer: even lighting, clean separation and a subject not wearing the background colour. The software side is then a short checklist, whether the composite happens in a browser tab or a suite.

Post production runs on shorthand, and most of it compresses cleanly into one line per term. What follows is the vocabulary used across this site, written the way colleagues explain it to each other.

A LUT is a lookup table: colour in, colour out, one mapping step. Understanding that sentence well is the difference between a useful shortcut and footage that looks washed out because two conversions were stacked by accident.

Heavy footage humbles every machine eventually, and a browser adds its own variables to the list. The good news is that choppy playback has five common causes, and you can rule most of them out in a minute each.

Captions went from accessibility checkbox to default reading mode. Doing them properly is a short workflow: transcribe, correct, style once, then choose whether they burn into the picture or travel beside it.

Almost every stall has one of a short list of causes, and the order you check them in matters more than the length of the list. What follows is that order, grouped by where the trouble shows up.