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Editing with DaVinci Resolve

Here we'll look at editing in Resolve, primarily cleaning up your audio.

DaVinci Resolve 16 is the world’s only solution that combines professional 8K editing, color correction, visual effects and audio post production all in one software tool! You can instantly move between editing, color, effects, and audio with a single click. And it’s FREE.

Editing

Editing in Resolve is pretty much the same as in Premiere, Avid or any other editing software. It would be unnecessary to explain all of it here. You can watch following video to learn basics and I’ll explain you how to improve your voice over audio and then how to export final video.

Audio (Fairlight)

Resolve’s audio processing plugin is called Fairlight. It can be a bit overwhelming at first sight if you’re not audio expert. However we will do just few steps to improve our audio quite a bit.

We will do most adjustments on a track basis, meaning that all effects etc. will be applied to a whole voice over track to make it easier to maintain.

Clip Volume First

When you drop a clip to your timeline, it’s recommended to immediately adjust audio level. You can do that by dragging a white line on the clip up or down. As you play the video, maximum audio levels for voice over should be between -5 and -10 dB. (this can be done in Edit workspace).

Compressor (reducing peaks)

Now in Fairlight workspace. We will activate compressor dynamics on our voice over track to get rid of extreme audio peaks which are pretty annoying when listening to tutorials.

  1. Double-click Dynamics ‘icon’ for your track in the Mixer.
  2. Turn the Compressor on by clicking the label.
  3. Turn the Ratio knob all the way to the max on 20:1.

De-Esser (removing ssssssssssssss)

Adding this effect will significantly reduce prominent ess in your speech. Once again making the tutorial nicer to listen to.

  1. Click the + icon next to Effects for your train in the Mixer.
  2. Choose Noise Reduction – De-Esser.
  3. Setting this up could be a bit tricky as every voice is different. My settings are Frequency 6.85kRange Second CurveDe-Esser Amount 64.1Reaction Time Slow.
  4. Listen to your clip now and check if it helped to reduce ess. If not try to play with settings. You can Listen to Ess only by turning that feature on and find a sweet spot settings which isolate your ess.

Main Volume Last

After changing dynamics and adding effects audio volume can change a bit. At the end check your levels and adjust Main 1 (M1) volume in the Mixer to have peaks between -5 and -10 dB again.

Delivery

Exporting final video is very simple.

  1. Switch to Deliver workspace.
  2. In Render Settings (top left corner) choose H.264 Master preset.
  3. Set your Filename and Location.
  4. Change Format to MP4 (Win) or leave it on QuickTime (MacOS).
  5. Resolution and Framerate will be set based on your project.
  6. Set Quality to Restrict to 10000 Kb/s. (or to same bitrate you used when recording).
  7. Press Add to Render Queue and then on the opposite  side of the screen press Start Render.

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