If you've been introduced to DaVinci Resolve, Blackmagic Design's NLE/color correction program, liked what you saw, and want to know how to work faster, better, and—just—super good, then you might want to take a look at this video by editor Casey Faris. In it, he gives you a ton of tips that'll help you complete your editing projects from start to finish.

Faris shares a lot of sweet, gooey knowledge in the video—too much, too gooey, and too knowlede-y to provide any kind of list. So instead, here are a few that might be of particular interest to those just starting out.

Project settings...better get 'em right!

Just like with everything in life, you want to start off on the right foot, and the same goes with opening a new project in Resolve. The first thing you'll want to do is open your "Project Settings" and make sure everything is optimized and correct for your specific project, namely your timeline frame rate, video format, and timeline resolution. If you don't get these settings right when you begin your project, you might be looking at some problems later on—trust!

Optimize your media

Sometimes Resolve doesn't play very well with certain media. If you're working with file formats that make the program work overly hard or that it just has a hard time playing back, Resolve gives you the option to optimize it for playback. To do this, select the files you want, right click, and choose "Generate Optimized Media". This will render versions that put less stress on the program, meaning playback will be a lot smoother. (It may take a while to render, so be prepared.)

Take shortcuts! Remap your keyboard

If you're spending a lot of time trimming, deleting, and moving clips around in your timeline, Faris suggests adding shortcuts to make the process more efficient. Resolve gives you the option to remap your keyboard shortcuts, so if you go to "Keyboard Mapping" in your Project Settings, you'll be able to assign pretty much any function to any key you want.

What are some helpful tips you could share with new DaVinci Resolve users? Let us know down in the comments.

Source: Casey Faris

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Editing & Post-Production