A living set of quick-reference pages for volunteer editors — one topic per page, so each stays short enough to actually check mid-session.
The 7 pages, general shortcuts, Inspector, and our export settings.
Grading order, wheels, scopes, nodes, our house look, and export.
Timeline conventions, trims, transitions — not built yet.
Fairlight basics and our mix standard — not built yet.
Where things live in Resolve, the shortcuts and Inspector basics you'll use every session, and our export standard. For color grading specifics, see the dedicated Color page.
Resolve splits work into pages, selected from icons along the bottom of the app. You move left to right roughly in editing order.
Import and organize footage — browse clips, add metadata and keywords, sync double-system audio. First stop for anything new.
A fast, stripped-down timeline for a quick rough assembly. Handy, but most of our teams work in Edit instead.
The full timeline: trimming, multi-track arranging, transitions, titles, effects. Where most of the session happens.
Node-based compositing and motion graphics — animated lower-thirds, green screen, effects beyond the Edit page's toolset.
Grading — see the dedicated Color page for the full workflow, wheels, scopes, and nodes.
Full audio mixing — levels, EQ, noise reduction. Where to clean up room noise or balance a mic against music.
Export settings and render presets — YouTube, ProRes master, whatever the final format needs to be. See Export settings below.
These hold across Resolve's default keyboard map because they're industry-standard editing conventions, not Resolve-specific bindings.
| Key | Does |
|---|---|
| Space | Play / pause |
| J / K / L | Shuttle backward / pause / forward — tap L repeatedly to speed up playback |
| I / O | Set In / Out point on the timeline |
| ← / → | Step one frame back / forward |
| ↑ / ↓ | Jump to the previous / next edit point |
| A | Selection (arrow) tool |
| B | Blade (razor) tool |
| Cmd/Ctrl + Z | Undo |
| Cmd/Ctrl + S | Save project |
| Cmd/Ctrl + C / V | Copy / paste a clip — or a color grade, on the Color page |
Click any clip on the timeline and the Inspector (top right) shows its properties as a stack of collapsible sections. For a plain video clip, these are the ones you'll actually touch.
| Section | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Transform | Reposition, resize, or rotate the clip in frame — reframing a badly composed shot, or a simple picture-in-picture |
| Cropping | Trim an unwanted edge out of frame — a mic boom, stage rigging, a boundary of a differently-shaped source clip |
| Dynamic Zoom | Automated pan/zoom over a static shot's duration — turns a flat wide shot into something with motion for an intro |
| Composite | Blend mode and opacity — for layering a graphic or b-roll over another track |
| Speed Change | Slow motion, speed-ups, or a freeze-frame on a key moment |
| Stabilization | Smooths shaky handheld or gimbal footage — common on stage/crowd shots |
| Lens Correction | Corrects the "fisheye" bulge from wide-angle stage cameras |
Set on the Deliver page's Render Settings panel. This covers most of what we publish; a few situations call for something different.
| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Resolution | 3840 × 2160 (4K UHD) |
| Codec | H.265 (HEVC) |
| Format / container | MP4 |
| Frame rate | Match the timeline / project setting |
A working reference for volunteer editors — the order to grade in, how to read the wheels and scopes, and what to watch for in worship footage vs. interview footage. Bookmark this page. For the rest of the app, see the Basics page.
Every step builds on the one before it. Grading a "look" before the exposure is balanced means redoing the look later.
Bookend the chain first — a CST node at the very start and another at the very end. Everything else in this list happens between them.
Bring exposure into range, then use Lift / Gamma / Gain (or Shadows / Midtones / Highlights) to add punch — lift the blacks slightly, carve the mids, protect the highlights. Use the Waveform to keep blacks near 0% and whites near 100%.
Use the Vectorscope to check for a color cast — a neutral shot should sit near the center.
Add a parallel node or a Power Window for anything local — one blown-out stage light, an uneven face, a green exit sign in frame. Don't let a spot-fix touch the rest of the image.
Add this at the end of the chain, after the shot is already balanced — a LUT applied first will fight your other corrections. See Our house look.
Small saturation/vignette tweaks last. Before moving on, glance at the scopes one more time — the "final" look can quietly clip or crush what you balanced earlier.
Three wheels, three zones of the image. Newer Resolve versions label them Shadows / Midtones / Highlights — same tool, friendlier name.
Every monitor and laptop screen displays color a little differently. Scopes show you the actual signal. Open them from the button in the top-right of the Color page — laid out as a 2×2 grid like below.
Same signal, split into R / G / B side-by-side — catches a color cast hiding in one channel that an overlapped waveform can mask.
Overall brightness (luma) across the frame, 0–1023. Keep highlights out of the amber clip zone and shadows off the floor unless it's meant to be dark.
Color as angle (hue) and distance from center (saturation). Real skin tones — any skin tone — fall near the dashed line, sitting between Yellow and Red, closer to Red.
Distribution of pixel values per channel — a quick read on whether the image is flat, contrasty, crushed in the shadows, or clipping in the highlights.
Never pile every correction onto one node — split them up so you can adjust or turn off one thing later without redoing the grade.
Each node feeds the next. Corrections stack in order — good for the main balance-then-look chain in the workflow above.
Branches apply independently, then recombine — use it to fix one thing (a stage light, one bad qualifier) without touching the rest of the chain.
A typical clip on our timeline, node by node, left to right.
Final LUT choice is still being decided between the options below — everything else here is locked in.
These are specific to grading, on top of the general shortcuts above. Exact key mappings shift between Resolve versions, so these are described by what they do.
| Action | Where |
|---|---|
| Copy a grade from one clip to another | Right-click clip in the timeline strip → Copy, then Paste on the target |
| Add a serial node — after the current one | Option/Alt + S |
| Add a serial node — before the current one | Shift + S |
| Add a parallel node | Option/Alt + P |
| Toggle grade on/off to compare | Click the node's number, or Cmd/Ctrl + D |
| Apply a still/LUT to a new clip | Drag from Gallery straight onto the clip's node |