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Newbie - DaVinci Resolve


charles meyer

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I'm a newbie to video editing except for 5 - 6 videos I edited in OpenShot. It was good to learn at least some video editing jargon. I really need to learn DaVinci Resolve as my library job (not in a video dept.) but for program we video record and then offer to the public for free. We spend time teaching people skills which will hopefully position them as better employment candidate and to help people save money who've lost jobs. Maybe this is not the best forum for newbies like me? I suscribed to the "official" DR forum but all I ever got in the Beginner sections was views, no replies. Reddit seemed to be a bad for for a newbie like me and the YT tutorials are so hard to read - they're recorded so badly you can't even see the words Fusion, Fairlight, Inspector, etc. on screen. If this isn't the best forum for a DR newbie, could you please kindly share any you've found to be a better fit when you were learning DR? I don't have an educational budget so I have to learn DR Free on my own for free. Thank you.

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Resolve is an idiosyncratic beast.

It's based on a very long-established piece of software deriving ultimately from the hardware colour correctors of the 1990s. While Blackmagic have done an absolutely vast amount of work on it, improving it out of all recognition, it comes from the days when making software behave in a slightly bizarre manner was a good way of ensuring that everyone could charge lots and lots of money for an operator.

Sometimes - less, now, but still - those rather particular beginnings rear their ugly head. Last I checked you still couldn't drag-and-drop files into it, and there was still a two-stage import process which was an absolute dance of destruction and entirely unnecessary. Perhaps someone can tell me if those things have changed.

In the end it's extremely affordable, pretty fast, has a massive amount of capability, and the benefits of not having to round-trip to some other piece of software are huge. It's still a bit of a beast, though.

P

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15 hours ago, charles meyer said:

I really need to learn DaVinci Resolve as my library job

Hi there,

I also moved to DaVinci Resolve last year, mostly because of the built-in chroma-keying capabilities, and now it's the only NLE I use, both for clients' projects and our mixed reality channel.
As for learning its basics, I can't recommend this thing enough:https://documents.blackmagicdesign.com/UserManuals/DaVinci-Resolve-16-Beginners-Guide.pdf

My fiancée has just gone through the first two lessons and she definitely picked up the Cut page much quicker than I did the learn-as-I-go way. 

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Hi Tom,

Everyone learns differently so I'm  glad that pdf worked for your wife.

I startled there but right from t he start I don't see what's on screen once I upload the .mp4s into the Media Pool.

Once I drag any video down to the Timeline in the Edit or the Cut page I see a blue bar for V1 and another colored bar for A1 but I never see the subject in the video on any Timeline in either page.

Since A1 is already occupied I can't drag an .mp3 (music) file down to the Timeline.

I see the actual person in the video on the Timeline in YT videos so I suspect there must be a setting that's being skipped in instructions. I can see the person on the video in the Timeline in OpenShot and other editors, not DR 16.1

Thanks.

 

 

 

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7 hours ago, Phil Rhodes said:

Last I checked you still couldn't drag-and-drop files into it, and there was still a two-stage import process which was an absolute dance of destruction and entirely unnecessary. Perhaps someone can tell me if those things have changed.

I've been using resolve for 6 years now and never once had an issue dragging and dropping files into the program or onto the timeline. I think you maybe referring to the pre-Blackmagic DaVinci suite OR Avid, which only added drag and drop functionality in around 2016. 

Currently Resolve is the most intuitive and easy to use editing programs on the market. It doesn't have the horribly unintuitive media management (based on pre-tagging media) that FCPX has, but nearly all the same tools otherwise. 

I've been using resolve as my only editor for the last 2 years and where some media management features are missing and accessing the 3D tools is way too challenging for most people, I do think the program at it's core, is the best over-all tool available. Avid is a better cutting tool, but has no other functions. FCP is faster to cut with, IF you have someone pre-tag your media, but the finishing tools are garbage. Resolve does everything and it does it to the level of the professional applications in each arena; cut, effects, audio mix, color and export. 

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1 hour ago, charles meyer said:

I startled there but right from t he start I don't see what's on screen once I upload the .mp4s into the Media Pool.

What computer are you trying to run Resolve on? It needs a minimum of modern 4gb video card, 32gb of ram and a very fast cache drive, generally  spinning boot drives will not run resolve. Also and this is critical, some codecs don't work without a license key. It will simply show no video. This is a huge problem for people who use Panasonic and Sony cameras as they use the "license only" version of the .h264 and .h265 codecs. So if you have one of those cameras, that could very well be the issue. If you can figure out exactly what the codec spec is, we can determine if it should work with the free version or not. 

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14 hours ago, David Sekanina said:

Hi David,

 

I started with that editing video but I was told it's fr the Mac and I'm on a PC. When  I tried anything that guy suggested it never worked  on my PC.

Any other sources you found helpful?

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19 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

I answered my questions through YouTube videos, but it's not a hard program to pickup pretty fast. The good videos have 4k resolution, just gotta keep looking around. 

Could you please share the links to the YT videos you found helpful?

I've watched  a bunch and with 20/20 eyesight I have to use a magnifying glass to see the tiny words on screen. I was told by a graphics guy mos of the YT videos are created badly so you can't see the words on screen like Fusion , Inspector, etc.,

Thank you.

 

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3 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

What computer are you trying to run Resolve on? It needs a minimum of modern 4gb video card, 32gb of ram and a very fast cache drive, generally  spinning boot drives will not run resolve. Also and this is critical, some codecs don't work without a license key. It will simply show no video. This is a huge problem for people who use Panasonic and Sony cameras as they use the "license only" version of the .h264 and .h265 codecs. So if you have one of those cameras, that could very well be the issue. If you can figure out exactly what the codec spec is, we can determine if it should work with the free version or not. 

I doubt it's my laptop. I've shared DR videos with others and they say they can't see the tiny words on screen either beuxase the creators recorded them badly. My icore 7 laptop with had  no problem with OpenShot.

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3 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

I've been using resolve for 6 years now and never once had an issue dragging and dropping files into the program or onto the timeline. I think you maybe referring to the pre-Blackmagic DaVinci suite OR Avid, which only added drag and drop functionality in around 2016. 

Currently Resolve is the most intuitive and easy to use editing programs on the market. It doesn't have the horribly unintuitive media management (based on pre-tagging media) that FCPX has, but nearly all the same tools otherwise. 

I've been using resolve as my only editor for the last 2 years and where some media management features are missing and accessing the 3D tools is way too challenging for most people, I do think the program at it's core, is the best over-all tool available. Avid is a better cutting tool, but has no other functions. FCP is faster to cut with, IF you have someone pre-tag your media, but the finishing tools are garbage. Resolve does everything and it does it to the level of the professional applications in each arena; cut, effects, audio mix, color and export. 

I can drag and drop MP4 files from the Media Pool onto the Timeline but all I see is a green rectangular box next to V1 and another color-filled box next to A1 - I don't see the subject  of the video on the Timeline as I do in the Viewer. In the DR YT videos their subjects in the video always displays on their Timelines. So, I'm at a loss right from the start. I can;t edit doesn't display on the Timeline. There must be some step missing between dragging dropping the MP4 on the Timeline and it displaying on the Timeline so I can see the frame(s) I want  to edit? Thanks.

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3 hours ago, charles meyer said:

I doubt it's my laptop. I've shared DR videos with others and they say they can't see the tiny words on screen either beuxase the creators recorded them badly. My icore 7 laptop with had  no problem with OpenShot.

9 times out of 10 it's the system in some way. DaVinci Resolve is the most difficult editing program to run. I had to specifically buy a special laptop to run it properly, in my case a 2019 16" MacBook Pro with 8 core i9 9880H processor, 64gb of memory and the most important part(s); NVME SSD boot drive/storage and 8gb Radeon 5500 GPU, which is very slow, but it does function. If you're expecting a normal PC laptop to work with Resolve, it won't. Launching the program is easy, but doing any work with it, is hard. Also, Resolve has a tremendous amount of requirements for windows, including driver issues with certain codecs. We have many windows edit bays running Resolve, but they are all brand new systems with the latest version of windows 10, built from the ground up to run Resolve with the right CPU's, Memory, Storage and GPU's to go along with it. 

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2 hours ago, charles meyer said:

I can drag and drop MP4 files from the Media Pool onto the Timeline but all I see is a green rectangular box next to V1 and another color-filled box next to A1 - I don't see the subject  of the video on the Timeline as I do in the Viewer. In the DR YT videos their subjects in the video always displays on their Timelines. So, I'm at a loss right from the start. I can;t edit doesn't display on the Timeline. There must be some step missing between dragging dropping the MP4 on the Timeline and it displaying on the Timeline so I can see the frame(s) I want  to edit? Thanks.

Can you capture a few still grabs or shoot with your telephone what's going on? 

Here is an example from my system in high res, just download the dropbox link to see it in full 2k. https://www.dropbox.com/s/3z1ef7gtol6483h/Inport clips to resolve.mov?dl=0

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