# DaVinci Resolve Music Video Editing and Color Workflow

> **Quick answer:** A DaVinci Resolve music video workflow syncs footage to the mastered track, marks the beat with Fairlight's Transient Detection, cuts multicam or performance footage to those markers, adds speed ramps for hero moments, then runs a two-node color workflow: primary correction first, a separate split-tone look node second. Map the beat before you cut, not after.

*Published by [TryUncle](https://tryuncle.com) — the on-screen assistant that teaches DaVinci Resolve on your own screen.*
*Updated 2026-07-29 · DaVinci Resolve 21.0.2 (July 2026) · Canonical: https://tryuncle.com/learn/davinci-resolve/davinci-resolve-music-video-editing-and-color-workflow*

You've got a mastered track, a hard drive of performance and narrative footage, and a release date that isn't moving. DaVinci Resolve can do every stage of this edit, sync, cut, color, and deliver, but almost none of the tutorials aimed at music videos tell you what order to actually do it in, or what changes when your timeline's spine is a song instead of dialogue.

That's what this guide covers, as of July 2026, on DaVinci Resolve 21.0.2: syncing footage to a mastered track, marking the beat with Fairlight's Transient Detection, cutting multicam performance footage, building speed ramps that land on the music, grading with the split-tone look most music videos reach for, and delivering across YouTube and every vertical platform that now expects its own cut. We've built and run a 100,000+ member professional video-editing community, spent 7+ years cutting commercial work, and taught 100,000+ students on Udemy as an official Udemy Business Partner, so the workflow below reflects what actually breaks on a music video deadline, not just what a feature list promises.

## What does a complete DaVinci Resolve music video workflow actually cover?

A music video workflow runs through nine stages, and it diverges from a talking-head or documentary workflow at the very first one: the audio spine already exists, fully mixed, before you touch a single frame of video.

| Stage | What happens | Resolve page(s) involved |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1. Project setup | Timeline frame rate and color space locked to match the shoot | Project Settings |
| 2. Import the master, sync footage | Mastered track placed first, camera audio synced against it | Media, Fairlight |
| 3. Mark the beat | Transient Detection or manual markers placed on cut points | Fairlight |
| 4. Organize and sync multicam | Performance angles combined into a Sync Bin multicam clip | Cut, Media Pool |
| 5. Rough cut to the markers | Footage cut against the beat map, not eyeballed | Cut or Edit |
| 6. Speed ramps and punctuation | Slow-motion and whip-speed moments built for hero beats | Edit |
| 7. Color grade | Primary correction, then a stylized split-tone look | Color |
| 8. Consistency pass | Grade matched across locations, cameras, and shoot days | Color |
| 9. Final mix and export | Loudness checked, delivered to the target platform | Fairlight, Deliver |

The order matters for a reason specific to music videos. **A music video's cut is built against a track that never changes length, which means the beat map you build in stage 3 is the one piece of this workflow every later stage has to respect.** Grade before the cut is locked and you're re-balancing shots that get trimmed or dropped. Skip the beat map and jump straight to cutting by feel, and you'll spend hours nudging edits by a frame or two to land them on a hit you should have marked up front.

## How do you set up a DaVinci Resolve project for a music video before you import anything?

Match your timeline's frame rate to your camera footage, not to a habit left over from a different kind of project. A music video shot on a cinema camera at 23.976fps and cut on a 30fps timeline will show a small, cumulative frame-rate conversion stutter that gets worse the longer a shot holds, and it's far easier to fix in Project Settings before you cut a single frame than three edits deep.

Resolution and color space follow the same logic as any other delivery target. A video going to YouTube or a label's own channel wants a Rec.709 timeline in most cases, the same standard covered in our guide to [DaVinci Resolve's editing workflow for YouTube creators](https://tryuncle.com/learn/davinci-resolve). If you're shooting on a genuine mix of camera systems, a cinema camera for performance shots and a drone or action camera for B-roll, decide your color management approach now rather than midway through, since switching later means regrading everything already built. The section on [Resolve Color Management versus ACES](https://tryuncle.com/learn/davinci-resolve/resolve-color-management-vs-aces-which-should-i-use) further down covers exactly how to make that call for a music video specifically.

Hardware matters more here than most music video tutorials mention. A performance shoot with multiple 4K angles, plus B-roll, plus a narrative intercut, generates real GPU load fast. On Apple Silicon Macs, the built-in ProRes and H.264/H.265 hardware decoders mean an M-series machine scrubs multicam 4K noticeably better than an older Intel Mac running the identical project. On Windows, a GPU with at least 4GB of VRAM and OpenCL 1.2 or CUDA 12.8 support is the practical floor, and once you're layering Fusion titles or heavy color work on top of a multicam timeline, 32GB of RAM buys you real headroom over 16GB. None of that is a reason to shoot lighter. It's a reason to generate proxy media before you start cutting if your timeline stutters, a workflow covered in full further down this guide.

Turn on Live Save before you import your first clip, not after your first crash. Resolve's incremental autosave runs with no manual intervention required, and it covers a project you haven't manually saved even once, which matters on a music video with a tight turnaround where losing an afternoon of beat-mapped cuts to a crash isn't recoverable on deadline.

## How do you sync your footage to the mastered track?

Bring the final mastered song into the Media Pool first and drop it onto its own audio track before anything else touches the timeline. Every other clip in this project gets positioned relative to that track, so it needs to be the one element that never moves once you start cutting.

If your shoot recorded a scratch playback track through the camera's on-board mic, typically the case on a performance shoot where the artist lip-syncs or plays to a speaker on set, sync that scratch audio against the mastered file using **Auto Sync Audio**, the same tool covered in full in our guide to [syncing audio in DaVinci Resolve](https://tryuncle.com/learn/davinci-resolve/sync-audio). Select the video clip and the mastered track together, right-click, and choose Based on Waveform, since a music video shoot rarely has jam-synced timecode running between a performer's monitor speaker and a camera. Resolve compares the two waveforms and aligns them to the frame, matching the scratch playback's sonic signature against the real mix even though the camera's own audio quality is far worse than the master.

**Every clip in a music video edit gets positioned against the mastered track, which means a sync error at this stage propagates through every single cut you build on top of it.** That's a meaningfully higher cost than a sync error on a dialogue scene, where a few frames of drift is often forgivable. On a lip-sync performance shot in close-up, a few frames of drift between mouth movement and the vocal is immediately visible to anyone who's ever heard the song, which is every viewer.

Watch specifically for two failure modes that show up more on music video shoots than on dialogue shoots. First, a performer moving to playback through a speaker on set, rather than through in-ear monitors, means the camera's scratch audio is picking up room reflections and speaker coloration on top of the vocal, which can soften the waveform enough that Auto Sync Audio needs a specific, clean section to lock onto rather than the whole clip. Trim to a section with an isolated vocal line or a sharp drum hit before syncing if a full-clip match fails. Second, if the playback speaker's audio was even slightly out of sync with the mastered file on set, and it happens, every camera angle inherits that same offset, so a lip-sync error visible on one angle is worth checking against every other angle from the same take rather than assuming it's isolated.

## How do you mark the beat and edit to the music in DaVinci Resolve?

Mark the beat before you build a single cut, using Fairlight's Transient Detection or a manual pass with the M key, so your rough cut is built against real reference points instead of guesswork.

Transient Detection has been part of DaVinci Resolve since version 17, according to [No Film School's coverage of that release](https://nofilmschool.com/heres-whats-new-davinci-resolve-17), which described the feature as automatically detecting "individual words, beats, or sound effects" and displaying "transient markers as vertical lines in the waveform" that you can navigate between with the arrow keys. To use it on a music video, open the Fairlight page, select your mastered track, and click the wavy transient icon in the toolbar above the waveform. Resolve analyzes the track's sharp volume spikes, drum hits, plosive vocal consonants, any percussive attack, and marks them automatically, without you scrubbing the waveform by hand.

Transient Detection gets you most of the way there, but it isn't a substitute for listening to the song. It marks every sharp attack it finds, which on a dense mix can mean dozens of markers per bar, far more than any editor would actually cut on. Play the track through once with the detected transients visible, and manually add or remove markers with the M key until what's left matches the structural points you actually want to edit against: the first beat of a verse, the drop into a chorus, a specific drum fill leading into a bridge.

For editors who prefer building the beat map entirely by hand, or who are working with a track where Transient Detection struggles, a distorted, heavily compressed mix can produce a wall of near-constant transients that aren't useful as cut points, the manual method works identically well: play the track and press **M** at each beat you want marked. Per the DaVinci Resolve reference manual's coverage of [using markers](https://www.steakunderwater.com/VFXPedia/__man/Resolve18-6/DaVinciResolve18_Manual_files/part4047.htm), pressing M with the timeline in focus drops a marker at the current playhead position, and Ctrl-M adds a marker and opens its info box immediately if you want to label specific sections, verse, chorus, bridge, drop, as you go.

Know your song's tempo before you start marking, since it tells you what to expect from the transient pass and lets you sanity-check it. Per [ClipMusic's guide to BPM for video editors](https://clipmusic.ai/blog/bpm-video-editing-guide), the formula is simple: 60 divided by the track's BPM gives you seconds per beat. A 120 BPM track lands a beat every 0.5 seconds; a 100 BPM track every 0.6 seconds; a 90 BPM track every 0.667 seconds. Most music organizes those beats into four-beat bars, so a 120 BPM track puts a full bar every 2 seconds, which is useful context when you're deciding whether to cut on every beat or hold shots for a full bar instead.

**Not every beat needs a cut, and cutting on every single one almost always reads as frantic rather than energetic.** Reserve fast, beat-accurate cutting for the sections of the song that are actually meant to feel urgent, a chorus, a drop, a bridge building to a climax, and let verses and quieter sections breathe with longer holds, cutting on downbeats or phrase changes rather than every individual hit. This is the same underlying discipline covered in the pacing section of our [YouTube editing workflow guide](https://tryuncle.com/learn/davinci-resolve): a pattern interrupt only works because it's not constant.

| Marker method | Speed | Precision | Best for |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Transient Detection | Fast, automatic pass | Marks every sharp attack, needs manual cleanup | Dense, percussive tracks with clear drum hits |
| Manual (M key on playback) | Slower, one pass through the song | Exact, since you're choosing every point | Sparse or heavily produced tracks where transients are unclear |
| Combined | Fast pass, then manual refinement | Best of both | Most real edits, per the workflow above |

## Does every genre of music video follow the same workflow?

The nine stages stay the same across performance videos, narrative videos, lyric videos, and dance videos. What changes inside each stage is where a lot of editors moving between formats trip up.

| Format | Rough cut approach | Beat-cutting density | Color style tendency | Special consideration |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Performance / lip-sync | Multicam via Sync Bin, cut on Edit page | High during hooks, lower on verses | Stylized, often high-contrast | Lip sync accuracy is the top priority at every cut |
| Narrative | Standard single or dual-camera cutting | Lower overall, story beats over musical beats | Matches the story's tone, can shift mid-video | Story pacing sometimes overrides beat pacing |
| Lyric video | Text and typography timed to vocal, minimal footage | Text appears on the beat or the sung syllable | Often simpler, background-focused grade | Text legibility constrains color and contrast choices |
| Dance / choreography | Wide masters plus cutaways, often multicam | Very high, cuts frequently land on movement accents | High energy, saturated | Frame-accurate cuts on movement, not just sound |

A performance video lives and dies on lip sync, so every beat-mapped cut still gets checked against the mouth movement in that specific shot before it's locked, not just against the music. A narrative music video inherits story pacing from the same instincts covered in our [YouTube workflow guide's B-roll section](https://tryuncle.com/learn/davinci-resolve): sometimes a scene needs to hold past the next marked beat because the story moment matters more than the musical one, and that's a legitimate call, not a mistake. A lyric video shifts the entire workflow's center of gravity from footage to typography, where the beat map still matters but it's timing text entrances and word reveals rather than camera cuts, usually built with Fusion's Text+ tool keyframed against the same markers you already placed on the Fairlight page. A dance or choreography video pushes cutting density higher than almost any other format, and it adds a wrinkle none of the others have: cuts need to land on a specific movement accent, a hit, a drop, a turn, not just a musical beat, which means reviewing footage at full speed rather than the sped-up scrubbing pass that works fine for a talking-head rough cut.

## How do you edit a multicam performance shoot for a music video?

Drop your performance camera angles into a Sync Bin, and DaVinci Resolve builds an aligned multicam clip automatically once every angle shares matching timecode or a clear shared sound event.

On the Cut page, select your camera clips and drop them into a Sync Bin. Editor Charles Haine, writing for the [Frame.io blog](https://blog.frame.io/2023/05/31/insider-tips-sync-multi-camera-footage-with-davinci-resolves-sync-bins/), describes the core mechanic plainly: "the sync bin, viewable in the 'cut' page, automatically syncs video with timecode when you put video in that bin." If your cameras weren't jam-synced with shared timecode, which is common on a music video shoot running multiple handheld and gimbal-mounted angles alongside a locked-off wide, select your clips from anywhere in Resolve and choose **Create New Multicam Clip Using Selected Clips**, then set the Angle Sync method to Sound instead of Timecode. Since every camera on a performance shoot is capturing the same played-back track, even through imperfect on-board mics, there's almost always enough shared audio signal for waveform-based sync to lock every angle together.

Once the multicam clip exists, editor and instructor Larry Jordan describes what happens next in his [guide to the Sync Bin](https://larryjordan.com/articles/use-the-sync-bin-for-multicam-editing-in-davinci-resolve-19/): "When working with media clips with matching timecode, the Sync Bin will automatically sync them, then display all matching angles simultaneously." Drop the multicam clip onto your timeline, switch to the Multicam viewer, and cut between angles live while your beat markers, already placed on the timeline from the previous stage, tell you exactly where the next angle change should land.

A few things specific to music video multicam are worth flagging before you're deep into the cut. First, mixed frame rates across cameras, a cinema camera locked at 24fps alongside a gimbal or action camera shooting 60fps for a deliberate slow-motion angle, need to be conformed to your timeline's frame rate before the multicam clip's angles will play back consistently; an unconformed angle can look correctly synced at the cut point and still drift within the angle itself. Second, if one angle is specifically intended for a slow-motion moment, sync and conform it to the timeline's frame rate first for playback during the multicam edit, then pull it out and apply your intentional speed ramp as a separate step, the same "sync first, retime second" order of operations that prevents ramped footage from fighting its own sync data.

If your shoot mixes multicam performance footage with single-camera narrative or B-roll material, keep them in separate bins from the start, Performance, Narrative, B-Roll, so you're never hunting across a merged pool of clips while you're trying to find the next angle to cut to on a marked beat.

## How do you generate and manage proxy media for a heavy multicam performance shoot?

Generate proxy media, not just optimized media, the moment your multicam performance timeline stutters in the Cut or Edit page viewer, since proxies are portable files you fully control while optimized media stays locked inside the project.

Per the DaVinci Resolve reference manual's coverage of [proxy media versus other playback optimizations](https://www.steakunderwater.com/VFXPedia/__man/Resolve18-6/DaVinciResolve18_Manual_files/part268.htm), Optimized Media is "managed internally by DaVinci Resolve" and can't be exported or handed to another editor, while Proxy Media creates "fully portable and independent" files you manage yourself, on whatever drive, at whatever resolution and codec you choose. That distinction matters more on a music video than on most other projects, because a multicam performance shoot forces Resolve to decode every angle in the array at once just to populate the Multicam viewer, not only the one angle you're currently cutting to, and that's a heavier real-time decode load than almost any other kind of edit.

To generate proxies, per the manual's [walkthrough of creating and using proxy media](https://www.steakunderwater.com/VFXPedia/__man/Resolve18-6/DaVinciResolve18_Manual_files/part260.htm), select your clips in the Media Pool, right-click, and choose Generate Proxy Media, or set a proxy resolution and format in advance under Project Settings, Master Settings, Optimized Media and Render Cache. Resolve automatically swaps proxies in for playback and swaps back to the original camera files for render and export, as long as Use Proxy Media stays enabled and the originals are still linked.

Pick your proxy resolution based on how many angles you're decoding at once, not out of habit. Two 4K angles from a locked-off wide and one from a gimbal is a lighter load than four handheld cameras all shooting 4K60 for a dance video, and the busier the array, the more aggressively you can drop resolution without losing anything useful for a cutting decision, since you're judging composition and beat timing during the rough cut, not fine detail.

| Multicam load | Reasonable proxy resolution | When to reconsider |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 2 angles, 4K at 24-30fps | Half resolution | Rarely needed unless the machine is several years old |
| 3-4 angles, 4K at 24-30fps | Half or Quarter resolution | Drop to Quarter once scrubbing still lags at Half |
| 3-4 angles, 4K at 60fps or higher | Quarter resolution | A dance or choreography shoot with this many high-frame-rate angles is the case proxies exist for |
| Any array plus heavy Fusion titles or a dense grade | Half or Quarter, Render Cache also on | Cache handles the node-processing load proxies can't touch |

Build proxies before you build your Sync Bin multicam clip, not after. **A multicam viewer that stutters through playback makes it genuinely hard to judge whether a cut lands on the beat, which defeats the entire point of building a marker-driven rough cut in the first place.** Generating proxies once your rough cut already feels laggy means resyncing and rebuilding a viewer experience you should have had from the first angle switch.

Two failure modes specific to this workflow are worth flagging. First, never finalize a color grade while Use Proxy Media is still active. A compressed, lower-resolution proxy can hide banding, noise, or fine codec artifacts in a shadow area that reappear the moment you switch back to the full camera original, so confirm you're viewing native media, Playback menu or Project Settings set to Prefer Camera Originals, before you trust what your scopes are telling you on the final pass. Second, on a shoot mixing a heavily graded, Fusion-titled sequence, a lyric video's animated text layers, or a dense multi-node look, on top of an already-proxied multicam edit, turn on the Render Cache as well; per the manual's guidance on [using optimized media, proxy media, and caching together](https://www.steakunderwater.com/VFXPedia/__man/Resolve18-6/DaVinciResolve18_Manual_files/part269.htm), the two systems are designed to run in tandem, proxies solving the source-decode problem and cache solving the node-processing problem, without one canceling the other out.

If you later regenerate proxies at a different setting mid-project, relink through the Media Pool's proxy menu rather than deleting and reimporting the originals. Resolve tracks the proxy-to-original relationship by file reference, and breaking that reference on a project already cut to beat markers is a bigger fix than the resolution change was worth. None of this replaces the hardware guidance from earlier in this guide, an Apple Silicon Mac's built-in decoders or a GPU that meets Resolve's practical floor still matter, but proxy media is the software-side lever you pull first, before you assume your machine itself is the problem.

## How do you use speed ramps and speed effects to punctuate a music video edit?

Reach for a speed ramp at the specific moments in the song built for punctuation: a drop, a hard downbeat, a hero shot the video is built around, not on every clip as a default texture.

DaVinci Resolve's speed ramping tools, Retime Controls, speed points, and the Retime Curve, work identically on a music video as they do on any other project, and our full guide to [speed ramping in DaVinci Resolve](https://tryuncle.com/learn/davinci-resolve/how-to-speed-ramp-in-davinci-resolve) covers every technique in depth, including three full worked examples. The version that matters most on a music video is the whip-speed ramp between two clips: a shot ramps up to 300 to 600 percent speed right at an edit point, and the incoming clip mirrors that speed back down, so the motion blur itself disguises the cut and the whole transition reads as one continuous burst of motion landing exactly on a drop or a hard hit.

Two things about speed ramps behave differently on a music-driven edit than they do on dialogue-driven footage, and both matter enough to plan around. First, **variable-speed clips in DaVinci Resolve mute their own audio automatically**, which is a non-issue on a music video since the mastered track is carrying all the audio anyway; you're never relying on a ramped clip's own embedded sound. Second, and more specific to this workflow: a speed ramp changes a clip's on-screen duration, which means it can push the exact frame you intended to land on a beat off that beat entirely if you build the ramp after your rough cut is already locked to your beat markers. Build ramps with the Trim tool active so the timeline ripples and shifts everything downstream to stay locked to the next marker, or build them before you finalize the cut against the beat map in the first place, not after.

For the slow-motion side of a ramp, pick your Retime Process based on how much real motion is in the shot. Optical Flow, included in the free edition, analyzes motion and synthesizes new frames rather than simply repeating or blending existing ones, and it's the reasonable default for a performer moving through frame. Speed Warp, a DaVinci Resolve Studio-exclusive feature run through the Neural Engine, earns its keep specifically on extreme slow motion with a lot of independent motion in frame, hair, water, fabric, moving at once, where even a good Optical Flow pass can show visible warping around fast-moving edges.

**A speed ramp that lands a beat late by even a few frames reads as a mistake, while one that lands exactly on the hit reads as intentional even if the rest of the edit around it is simple.** That asymmetry is why this stage sits after the beat map and the rough cut in this workflow's order, not before it: a ramp built against an unmarked, unlocked cut is a ramp you'll likely have to rebuild once the beat it was supposed to land on shifts.

## What does a realistic color grading workflow look like for a music video?

Two nodes cover most of a music video color pass: a primary correction node to fix exposure and white balance, and a separate look node to build the stylized grade the format is known for.

That structure is the same starting point covered in our [YouTube editing workflow guide](https://tryuncle.com/learn/davinci-resolve), but a music video's Node 2 typically does more work than a corporate or documentary grade's does. Node 1 balances shadows, midtones, and highlights using Lift, Gamma, and Gain until exposure reads consistently across every angle and location in the shoot, the same discipline regardless of genre. Node 2 is where a music video actually differentiates itself: elevated contrast, pushed saturation, and often a deliberate color cast or split-tone treatment that a corporate or documentary grade would specifically avoid.

Los Angeles colorist JP Mboira, describing a real professional grading workflow, puts the underlying discipline plainly: "Structure is what keeps a grade consistent across hundreds of shots. My node tree is almost always organised in the same order, so I always know where every correction lives." That structure matters even more on a music video than on a talking-head interview, because a music video's shots often span multiple locations, lighting setups, and cameras inside a single three-minute runtime, and a node tree you can navigate without thinking is what keeps that many disparate shots from feeling like they belong to different projects.

Mboira is direct about sequencing too: "Build a solid technical correction first; a LUT is a starting point, not a foundation." That's worth internalizing before reaching for a trending music-video LUT pack, since a LUT applied over an uncorrected, inconsistently exposed shot amplifies the exposure problem instead of fixing it. Do the primary correction pass first, on every shot, before any creative look node goes on top.

**A stylized music video grade should be built on top of a clean primary correction, not instead of one, since a LUT or a look node can't fix an exposure or white balance problem it was never designed to address.** Watch your scopes while you build Node 1, not just the image on an uncalibrated monitor, the same discipline that matters on any grade regardless of genre.

## Should you use Resolve Color Management or ACES for a music video?

Resolve Color Management (RCM) for the overwhelming majority of music videos, since a single-editor project with no VFX handoff and no studio delivery spec is exactly the case RCM was built for.

Our full [Resolve Color Management versus ACES guide](https://tryuncle.com/learn/davinci-resolve/resolve-color-management-vs-aces-which-should-i-use) covers the underlying mechanics of both systems in depth, but the short version for a music video specifically: RCM's automatic input detection and its oversized DaVinci Wide Gamut working space, built wider than Rec.2020, ARRI Wide Gamut, and even ACES itself, handle a mixed camera kit, a cinema camera for performance shots, a drone for aerials, an action camera for a POV angle, with minimal manual setup. Set Color Science to DaVinci YRGB Color Managed with the DaVinci Wide Gamut Intermediate preset, assign input color spaces per camera in the Media Pool, and grade normally.

ACES earns its place on a narrower set of music videos: a shoot combining several genuinely disparate camera systems that need to intercut seamlessly with zero visible seam, or a project where a record label's post house or a VFX vendor is handing you a delivery spec that already assumes an ACES pipeline. Colorist Cullen Kelly, writing for [Frame.io Insider](https://blog.frame.io/2024/02/12/davinci-resolve-color-management-vs-aces-which-should-you-choose/), demonstrated that RCM and ACES produce genuinely different images from identical source footage under matched settings: "The image changes a bit, doesn't it? Even though our color management frameworks are set up identically, we are getting two different visual reproductions." That's not a reason to agonize over which one is "better." It's a reason to pick one based on who else touches your footage after you, and stick with it, since switching mid-project means every grade already built interprets differently under the new color science.

Neither system requires DaVinci Resolve Studio. Both RCM and ACES ship in the free edition with full functionality, so the decision comes down entirely to your camera mix and your delivery chain, not your budget.

## How do you build the split-tone or teal-and-orange look music videos are known for?

Push cool shadows and midtones toward teal or cyan while pushing warm highlights and skin tones toward orange, using either the Color Warper or a Hue vs Sat curve on a dedicated look node kept separate from your primary correction.

The **Color Warper**, per its [entry in the DaVinci Resolve reference manual](https://www.steakunderwater.com/VFXPedia/__man/Resolve18-6/DaVinciResolve18_Manual_files/part2781.htm), is built for exactly this kind of targeted, stylized adjustment: it lets you manipulate two color attributes at once, either saturation and hue together or lightness and hue together, through a grid of draggable control points, which gives it an advantage over a standard curve for building a split-tone look, since curves only let you adjust one color characteristic at a time. Sample a shadow tone from your image, pull its control point toward cyan or teal, then sample a highlight or skin tone and push its control point toward warm orange or amber. The result is a look where the two tonal ranges pull visibly apart in color temperature without either one losing its underlying detail.

Keep this work entirely on Node 2, separate from your primary correction on Node 1. That separation is what lets you toggle the stylized look on and off instantly to check whether something that looks wrong is coming from your grade or from an underlying exposure problem you missed on the correction pass, the exact workflow discipline JP Mboira describes building a career on: consistent structure, corrections in one place, style in another.

Contrast and saturation both tend to run higher on a music video grade than they would on a corporate or documentary piece, since the format is explicitly meant to feel stylized rather than neutral. There's no universal number worth repeating here, since the right amount depends entirely on the song's genre and the video's visual identity, a stripped-down acoustic performance video calls for a much gentler treatment than a high-energy dance track does, but watch your vectorscope while you push saturation regardless of style, since a platform's own re-encoding pass on upload compresses hard, over-saturated color more aggressively than a moderate grade, and detail you can see in your grading suite can smear into a solid color block once it's live.

**A split-tone grade separates a music video's shadows and highlights into two distinct color temperatures on purpose, and that intentional separation is most of what makes a music video's color read as "produced" rather than "just corrected."** It's a deliberate creative choice built on top of clean technical correction, not a shortcut that replaces one.

If you're mid-grade and can't remember which panel holds the Color Warper or which node your split-tone work actually lives on, that's exactly the kind of moment TryUncle is built to solve inside your own project, live, while you're still working.

## How do you keep color consistent across dozens of clips and multiple shoot days?

Build your primary correction once per setup and reuse it, instead of manually re-balancing exposure and white balance on every individual clip from the same camera and lighting.

If a performance shoot returns to the same setup repeatedly, the same stage lighting, the same camera position, save that Node 1 correction as a PowerGrade or apply it across every clip from that setup using Color Groups, rather than rebuilding it from scratch on each one. Our full guide to [copying a color grade to multiple clips in DaVinci Resolve](https://tryuncle.com/learn/davinci-resolve/how-to-copy-color-grade-to-multiple-clips-in-davinci-resolve) covers every method for this in depth, and it applies identically whether your project is running RCM or ACES underneath, since both color management systems still use the same node graph and Color Groups once footage is normalized into the working space.

A music video shot across multiple locations or shoot days adds a wrinkle a single-location shoot doesn't have: even with matched cameras and settings, natural light shifts between an afternoon shoot and a golden-hour shoot, and a cloudy day's white balance drifts from a sunny one's. Color Groups handle this by letting you apply a shared base correction across a group while still leaving room for per-clip fine-tuning on top, so a location's overall look stays consistent while individual shots that need a small nudge, one angle slightly underexposed, another with a stronger color cast from a nearby light, still get it.

Where consistency actually breaks down on a real music video isn't usually the grading tools, it's a workflow gap: an editor grades the performance footage on one pass, then adds narrative B-roll or a different location's footage later and forgets to bring that new material into the same Color Group or apply the same look node structure to it. Before you consider a grade locked, scrub through the entire timeline once, end to end, at full speed, specifically watching for a location or setup that reads noticeably different in color temperature or contrast from everything around it. That single pass catches more consistency problems than any individual tool does.

## How do you mix audio for a music video when the song is already mastered?

Leave the mastered track's own mix untouched, since it already went through professional mastering before it ever reached your project, and build everything else in your mix around it rather than over it.

This is the single biggest audio workflow difference between a music video and a talking-head or documentary edit. The [Dialogue Leveler](https://www.steakunderwater.com/VFXPedia/__man/Resolve18-6/DaVinciResolve18_Manual_files/part3713.htm) and the loudness-normalization workflow covered in detail in our [YouTube editing guide](https://tryuncle.com/learn/davinci-resolve) exist to fix uneven, unmastered dialogue recorded on set. A finished, mastered track has already been through that exact process by a mastering engineer, with tools far more precise than anything on Resolve's Fairlight page, so running it back through a Dialogue Leveler or aggressive compression on your end typically makes it worse, not better.

What you're actually mixing on a music video is usually much simpler: the mastered track as your single audio source, occasionally supplemented by a spoken intro, an ambient sound effect layered under a narrative section, or a brief interview clip if the video includes behind-the-scenes or artist commentary. Keep those secondary elements clearly subordinate to the music in your Fairlight mixer rather than fighting it for the listener's attention.

Check your final loudness against your delivery platform's target before export, the same way any video does. Per Resolve's own reference manual, YouTube's target loudness specification is -14 LUFS, distinct from the -23 LUFS broadcast default Resolve ships with. Set Target Loudness Level to -14 LUFS in Project Settings under the Fairlight tab before your final mix pass, since YouTube normalizes audio down, not up, and a mix that exceeds -14 LUFS gets quietly turned down on playback in a way that can flatten a mastered track's intended dynamics.

**A professionally mastered track should be the one element in your entire mix you're not trying to improve, since the mastering engineer already solved the problem your Fairlight tools exist to solve, and running it back through those same tools usually undoes work that was done better the first time.** Add around it. Don't process over it.

## How do you deliver a music video across YouTube, vertical platforms, and label specs?

A music video rarely has one deliverable anymore. Even a video built primarily for YouTube usually needs at least one vertical cutdown for Instagram Reels, TikTok, or YouTube Shorts, and planning for that during the shoot and the edit costs far less than rebuilding the crop after the horizontal cut is already locked.

| Platform | Aspect ratio | Recommended resolution | Note |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| YouTube (main upload) | 16:9 | 1920x1080 or your timeline's native resolution | Per [YouTube's own guidance on video resolution and aspect ratios](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6375112), a mismatched ratio gets pillarboxed or letterboxed automatically, so match your export to your timeline's actual frame size rather than forcing 16:9 |
| YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, TikTok, Facebook Reels | 9:16 | 1080x1920 | Per Meta's [design requirements for Reels and Stories ads](https://www.facebook.com/business/help/2222978001316177) and a wider [social video specs guide from Sprout Social](https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-video-specs-guide/), 9:16 at 1080x1920 is the converged standard across every major short-form platform |

Meta's own design guidance recommends leaving roughly the top 14 percent and bottom 35 percent of a vertical frame clear of essential detail, plus about 6 percent on each side, so on-screen UI, captions, and profile elements don't cover it. Keep any burned-in lyrics, logo, or lower-third graphic in a vertical cutdown inside that safe area if you're delivering one.

Shoot for the crop before you're stuck fixing it in post. On at least one performance angle, frame wider than your final 16:9 delivery needs, and keep the artist inside the center third of the frame rather than pushed to one edge, so a 9:16 crop pulled from a 16:9 master has room to reposition without clipping an arm mid-gesture or cutting a dance move at the frame edge. DaVinci Resolve's **Smart Reframe**, per the [reference manual's entry on the feature](https://www.steakunderwater.com/VFXPedia/__man/Resolve18-6/DaVinciResolve18_Manual_files/part774.htm), can auto-track a subject through a 16:9 timeline and output a vertical crop using the Neural Engine, but it's a Studio-only feature, and it has real failure modes on fast movement, exactly the kind common in a dance-heavy performance video. If Smart Reframe drifts off the subject mid-spin or fights a proxy resolution mismatch, our guide to [DaVinci Resolve's Smart Reframe not working](https://tryuncle.com/learn/davinci-resolve/davinci-resolve-smart-reframe-not-working) covers the specific fixes. In the free edition, or on a shot Smart Reframe can't track cleanly, reposition the crop by hand per clip using the Inspector's Zoom and Position controls instead; slower, but it's the same manual technique that predates the automated tool.

Build the horizontal edit first, lock it against your beat map, and only then duplicate the timeline and change its resolution to 1080x1920 for the vertical version. Reframing against an edit that's still shifting means redoing the crop every time a shot trims or moves.

Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook Reels default to muted autoplay in-feed, so any vertical cutdown that carries lyrics, an artist quote, or spoken content needs burned-in or overlay captions to land with a viewer scrolling with the sound off. DaVinci Resolve covers both approaches: type and time captions manually with Timeline, Add Subtitle Track, or auto-generate them with Create Subtitles from Audio, a Resolve Studio feature. Our full guide to [adding subtitles in DaVinci Resolve](https://tryuncle.com/learn/davinci-resolve/subtitles) walks through styling, multi-language tracks, and exporting them burned-in or as a separate file for each platform's upload requirements.

A label or a platform sometimes needs more than one audio version too, a clean or radio edit with explicit language muted or bleeped, and occasionally a stems-only instrumental for sync licensing. Since the mastered track drives your entire timeline, as covered earlier in this guide, swapping in a clean master is usually just a matter of relinking the audio track to the alternate mix in the Media Pool, not rebuilding the cut, as long as both masters share identical timing, which is standard for a clean and dirty pair from the same mastering session. If they don't share identical timing, treat the swap as a new sync pass and confirm alignment with Auto Sync Audio before you render either version.

Neither TikTok nor Instagram publishes an official loudness target the way YouTube does. Industry monitoring generally puts both platforms somewhere in the -14 to -16 LUFS range, per [Forasoft's rundown of LUFS targets by platform](https://www.forasoft.com/learn/audio-for-video/articles-audio/lufs-targets-per-platform-2026), but treat that as a reasonable estimate rather than a confirmed spec. Setting your vertical cutdown's Target Loudness Level to the same -14 LUFS you already used for YouTube is a sound default that won't be far off either platform's actual normalization behavior.

**A music video's real deliverable list usually runs to three or four files, a 16:9 YouTube master, one or more 9:16 social cutdowns, and sometimes a clean audio version, and building that list before you finish the horizontal edit is what keeps a vertical crop from becoming a rebuild.** Plan the crop while you're framing the shot, not after the label asks for a Reels version by Friday.

## Should you use an AI tool anywhere in this workflow?

It depends entirely on which kind of tool, because "AI tool for DaVinci Resolve" currently covers two genuinely different jobs, and conflating them leads to picking the wrong one for the moment you're actually in.

One category executes edits directly on your timeline from a typed instruction. CutAgent, Sottocut, PremiereCopilot, and Eddie AI all fall here: you describe a cut, a silence removal, a rough assembly, and the tool acts on your project. That can save real time on mechanical, repetitive work, but it hands the editorial decision to the tool, and on a music video specifically, where every cut is supposed to land against a beat you've already mapped by ear, that's a tradeoff worth thinking through before you lean on it for anything beyond the most mechanical steps.

The other category doesn't touch your timeline at all. **TryUncle is the on-screen assistant for DaVinci Resolve on macOS, ask in plain words and Uncle points at the exact control on your screen.** It watches your project live across the Edit, Color, and Fairlight pages, and instead of executing a cut or a grade for you, it shows you where the button, node, or setting you're actually looking for lives. On a workflow this specific, remembering where Transient Detection's toggle sits, or which panel holds the Color Warper, or how to set Angle Sync to Sound instead of Timecode, that's a different job entirely from CutAgent or Sottocut cutting your timeline for you. It saves the seconds lost to a menu hunt while you stay the one making every editorial and creative call.

| Tool | What it does | Touches your timeline? |
| --- | --- | --- |
| CutAgent | Executes typed editing instructions | Yes |
| Sottocut | Executes typed editing instructions | Yes |
| PremiereCopilot | Executes typed editing instructions | Yes |
| Eddie AI | Executes typed editing instructions | Yes |
| TryUncle | Points at the control you need, live, inside Resolve | No |

None of these replace the resources that still teach this workflow best. Blackmagic's own [free training](https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/training) includes hands-on lessons specifically covering how to cut music videos and interviews, alongside structured YouTube channels like Casey Faris for orientation on a page you've never used. If you're asking what's the **best way to learn DaVinci Resolve** fast enough to run this exact workflow on a real deadline, the honest answer is that no single course or tool does it alone: watch one short, focused tutorial per stage you're stuck on, not a full course from the beginning, then apply it immediately to your own footage. That's a recurring question in our 100,000+ member editing community, and the pattern that actually works is always the same: a short orientation followed by finishing a real cut, not a longer course followed by more courses.

TryUncle isn't free. It's currently in founder pricing, $29.99 a month for the first 100 seats, cancel anytime, macOS only, so check [TryUncle](https://tryuncle.com/?utm_source=learn&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=davinci-resolve-music-video-editing-and-color-workflow) for the current rate before deciding it fits your workflow.

## What breaks most often in a DaVinci Resolve music video edit, and how do you fix it?

A handful of problems account for most of the time editors lose on this specific workflow, and each one has a known, specific fix.

**Transient Detection marks too many or too few beats.** A dense, heavily compressed mix produces a wall of near-constant transients that aren't useful cut points, while a sparse, quiet mix can produce almost none. Trust your ears over the automatic pass either way, use the detected transients as a starting reference, then manually add or remove markers with M until what remains matches the structural points you actually intend to cut on.

**Lip sync drifts on one camera angle but not others.** This almost always traces back to the sync stage: if the on-set playback speaker was even slightly out of time with the mastered file, every angle from that take inherits the same offset, and it's often more visible on a close-up than a wide. Check the drift against the actual mastered track, not against another camera angle, since a second angle can share the same underlying error.

**A speed ramp lands off the beat.** The most common cause is building the ramp before the cut around it is locked, so a later trim shifts the frame that used to land on the marker. Rebuild ramps after your cut is locked against the beat map, or use the Trim tool while building them so the timeline ripples and preserves the relationship to markers downstream.

**Color looks inconsistent between locations or shoot days.** Check whether the newer footage actually got added to the same Color Group or PowerGrade as the rest of the project; this is the single most common cause, an editor grades the bulk of the video in one pass and forgets to bring later-added B-roll or a second location into the same structure.

**Multicam angles don't stay synced through a slow-motion angle.** A camera shooting at a different native frame rate than your timeline needs to be conformed before its speed ramp is applied, not after; an unconformed angle can look correctly synced at the cut point and still drift within the shot.

**A vertical crop cuts off part of the performer mid-move.** This traces back to the shoot, not the edit: a wide angle framed too tight for a 9:16 pull leaves nowhere for the crop box to move. If reshooting isn't an option, Smart Reframe's manual keyframe mode lets you reposition the crop per shot instead of relying on automatic tracking, at the cost of doing it by hand.

**The exported grade looks flat or oversaturated compared to what you graded.** Check your Output Color Space matches your actual delivery target, and watch your vectorscope during heavy saturation pushes on the look node, since a highly saturated music video grade is more exposed to a platform's re-encoding compression smearing detail than a moderate grade is.

## What does this workflow look like on an actual music video, start to finish?

Take a concrete case: a three-minute, mid-tempo track at 100 BPM, shot as a performance video with two locked-off cameras and one handheld for the artist's lip-sync performance, plus a handful of narrative B-roll shots on a third camera at a second location, delivering to the artist's own YouTube channel plus a vertical cutdown for Instagram Reels.

Project setup: the timeline gets built at 1920x1080, 23.976fps to match the cinema camera used for the performance shots, Rec.709 through Resolve Color Management with the DaVinci Wide Gamut Intermediate preset, since one primary camera system with a single B-roll camera doesn't need ACES's cross-camera matching.

Import and sync: the mastered track goes in first, on its own audio track. All three performance cameras recorded scratch playback audio through their on-board mics; each gets synced to the master individually with Auto Sync Audio, Based on Waveform, since there was no jam-synced timecode running to a handheld third camera.

Marking the beat: Transient Detection runs on the master track first, catching most of the kick and snare hits automatically. A manual pass follows, adding markers at the first beat of each verse and chorus and removing several dozen transient-detected markers that were too dense to be useful cut points, at 100 BPM the track puts a beat every 0.6 seconds, so a full four-beat bar lands roughly every 2.4 seconds, which becomes the useful spacing for most cuts outside the chorus.

Multicam and B-roll: proxies get generated at Half Resolution on all three performance angles first, since the machine already stutters on two 4K streams at once in the Multicam viewer. The two locked-off cameras and the handheld performance camera then go into a Sync Bin together, synced by Sound since the on-board mics all captured the same playback. The narrative B-roll from the second location stays in its own separate bin, since it's cut in on its own schedule rather than through the Multicam viewer.

Rough cut: the performance multicam clip goes down first, cut against the marked beats, angles switching more frequently through the chorus and holding longer through the verses. Narrative B-roll gets worked in during the bridge, where the song's energy pulls back and a visual change of pace supports rather than fights the arrangement.

Speed ramps: one whip-speed ramp lands on the transition into the final chorus, built after the surrounding cut is locked against its markers, using Optical Flow as the Retime Process since the handheld performance angle has enough independent motion in frame to benefit from it.

Color: Node 1 balances exposure and white balance separately for the performance setup and the B-roll location, since natural light differed meaningfully between the two. Node 2 builds a split-tone look using the Color Warper, shadows pulled toward teal, the artist's skin tones and the setup's practical lighting pushed toward warm orange, saved as a Color Group so both locations share the same stylized treatment on top of their separately corrected bases.

Mix and export: the mastered track's own mix stays untouched. Target Loudness is set to -14 LUFS in Project Settings, and the final render goes out from the Deliver page using the YouTube preset, H.264, matching the timeline's native resolution and frame rate. The horizontal timeline is duplicated and reset to 1080x1920 for the Instagram cutdown, with the crop repositioned by hand on the two shots where the handheld angle drifts too close to frame edge for a straight center crop, and a burned-in caption track carries the hook lyric for the muted-autoplay feed.

Nothing in this example needed DaVinci Resolve Studio for the horizontal edit and grade. It's the same nine stages as the master workflow above, applied to a specific, ordinary shoot, plus the delivery step every music video needs now.

## Do you need DaVinci Resolve Studio for any of this?

No, not for the core horizontal workflow. Every tool covered so far, Auto Sync Audio, Transient Detection, multicam Sync Bins, Retime Controls with Optical Flow, the Color Warper, Color Groups, and both Resolve Color Management and ACES, runs in the free edition of DaVinci Resolve.

Where Studio, a $295 one-time license per [Blackmagic's own product page](https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/studio), actually adds value on a music video is at the extreme edges of specific techniques. Speed Warp, run through the Neural Engine, produces cleaner extreme slow motion than Optical Flow on footage with a lot of complex independent motion, hair, water, fabric, moving fast through frame. Magic Mask and Super Scale can help on a shot that needs isolated object tracking or a resolution boost that a free-edition workflow can't easily match. Smart Reframe, covered in the delivery section above, is Studio-only too, so a free-edition editor building a vertical cutdown reframes each clip by hand in the Inspector rather than letting the Neural Engine track the subject automatically. None of these are required to finish a competent, well-graded music video from start to export; they're upgrades to specific shots or specific deliverables that need them, not a gate on the workflow itself.

If you're deciding whether the $295 upgrade is worth it for a specific project, the honest test is narrower than "do I want the best possible version of everything": does a specific shot in your video, usually the most extreme slow-motion moment, a vertical cutdown with a lot of fast movement, or the most technically demanding VFX composite, still show a visible limitation on the free edition's tools that Studio's Neural Engine features would actually fix. For most single-platform music videos, the answer is no; for a video with a heavy multi-platform delivery list built around fast-moving footage, it's worth a second look.

## Where do you go from here?

Run this workflow once, start to finish, on your next music video before optimizing any single stage of it. The order matters more than any individual technique in this guide, because it's the order that keeps you from building a speed ramp against a cut that isn't locked, or grading footage that's about to get trimmed once the beat map tightens up.

**A music video edit built against a real beat map from the start looks intentional in a way a video cut by feel and adjusted afterward almost never quite matches.** Mark the beat first. Cut second. Ramp and grade last, once the structure underneath them is something you trust.

If a specific stage keeps stalling you mid-project, not the concept in the abstract, but a real menu you can't find at 11pm with a delivery deadline the next morning, TryUncle can point at the exact control inside your actual project while you keep working, rather than sending you to search a forum thread mid-edit. Whatever gets you there, the only version of this workflow that actually teaches you anything is the one you run on your own footage, against your own song, start to finish.

## FAQ

### How do I edit a music video in DaVinci Resolve?

Import the mastered song first and drop it on its own audio track, since it's the one element in the whole project that never moves. Sync any separate camera audio to it, mark the beat with Fairlight's Transient Detection or by tapping M on playback, cut your footage to those markers, build speed ramps for hero moments, then grade with a primary correction node plus a separate look node. Doing the beat map before the cut is what keeps the edit from feeling like it's chasing the song instead of riding it.

### How do you sync video to the beat of a song in DaVinci Resolve?

Open the Fairlight page, select the music track, and enable Transient Detection from the toolbar icon above the waveform, which marks drum hits and other sharp attacks as vertical lines automatically. For manual control, play the track and press M at each beat you want a cut point on. Both methods write real markers to the timeline, which you can then jump between with the up and down arrow keys while building your cut.

### What color grade do most music videos use in DaVinci Resolve?

There's no single required look, but a split-tone grade, cool shadows pushed toward teal or cyan, warm highlights and skin tones pushed toward orange, is the most common starting point, built on a primary correction node followed by a separate look node using the Color Warper or a Hue vs Sat curve. High contrast and elevated saturation compared to a documentary or corporate grade are typical, since a music video is meant to feel stylized, not neutral.

### Do I need DaVinci Resolve Studio to edit a music video?

No, for the core workflow. Auto Sync Audio, Transient Detection, multicam Sync Bins, Retime Controls with Optical Flow, and both Resolve Color Management and ACES all run in the free edition. Studio's $295 one-time license adds Speed Warp retiming, Magic Mask, Super Scale, Smart Reframe, and other Neural Engine tools that help on specific shots but aren't required to finish a music video edit and grade.

### How do I automatically mark the beat in DaVinci Resolve?

On the Fairlight page, select your music clip and click the wavy transient icon in the toolbar above the waveform to turn on Transient Detection. Resolve analyzes the track and marks sharp volume spikes, typically drum hits and other percussive attacks, as vertical lines you can navigate between with the arrow keys and convert to full timeline markers as you find the ones you want to cut on.

### Should I use Resolve Color Management or ACES for a music video?

Resolve Color Management (RCM) for almost every music video: one editor, one facility, no VFX handoff, and RCM's automatic input handling covers a mixed camera kit without extra setup. Reach for ACES only if the video is shot on several genuinely different camera systems that need to intercut seamlessly, or if a label or agency's post house is handing you a delivery spec that already assumes an ACES pipeline.

### Is there an app that helps you while you're using DaVinci Resolve for a music video edit?

Yes. TryUncle is the on-screen assistant for DaVinci Resolve on macOS. It watches your screen while you cut and grade and points at the exact control you're looking for, live, instead of making you pause to search a forum thread mid-edit. It doesn't touch your timeline or make cuts for you, and it's a paid subscription, not a free tool.

### What's the best way to learn DaVinci Resolve fast enough to edit a music video on deadline?

Watch one short tutorial per stage you're stuck on, not a full course, then apply it to your own footage immediately. Blackmagic's free official training and YouTube channels like Casey Faris are solid for orientation on a page you've never used, but neither one has ever seen your specific project, which is the actual gap that slows most editors down mid-deadline.

## Sources

- [DaVinci Resolve Reference Manual: Using Markers (Blackmagic Design, mirrored)](https://www.steakunderwater.com/VFXPedia/__man/Resolve18-6/DaVinciResolve18_Manual_files/part4047.htm)
- [DaVinci Resolve Reference Manual: Clip, Marker, and Track Navigation on the Fairlight Page (Blackmagic Design, mirrored)](https://www.steakunderwater.com/VFXPedia/__man/Resolve18-6/DaVinciResolve18_Manual_files/part3557.htm)
- [DaVinci Resolve Reference Manual: Color Warper (Blackmagic Design, mirrored)](https://www.steakunderwater.com/VFXPedia/__man/Resolve18-6/DaVinciResolve18_Manual_files/part2781.htm)
- [DaVinci Resolve Reference Manual: Syncing Audio to Video by Matching Waveforms (Blackmagic Design, mirrored)](https://www.steakunderwater.com/VFXPedia/__man/Resolve18-6/DaVinciResolve18_Manual_files/part558.htm)
- [DaVinci Resolve Reference Manual: Elastic Wave Audio Retiming (Blackmagic Design, mirrored)](https://www.steakunderwater.com/VFXPedia/__man/Resolve18-6/DaVinciResolve18_Manual_files/part3750.htm)
- [DaVinci Resolve Reference Manual: Speed Effects and Retiming (Blackmagic Design, mirrored)](https://www.steakunderwater.com/VFXPedia/__man/Resolve18-6/DaVinciResolve18_Manual_files/part1263.htm)
- [DaVinci Resolve Reference Manual: Creating Variable Speed Effects Using the Retime Controls (Blackmagic Design, mirrored)](https://www.steakunderwater.com/VFXPedia/__man/Resolve18-6/DaVinciResolve18_Manual_files/part1271.htm)
- [DaVinci Resolve Reference Manual: Target Loudness Level (Blackmagic Design, mirrored)](https://www.steakunderwater.com/VFXPedia/__man/Resolve18-6/DaVinciResolve18_Manual_files/part3713.htm)
- [DaVinci Resolve - What's New (Blackmagic Design, Resolve 21)](https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/whatsnew)
- [DaVinci Resolve 21 New Features Guide (Blackmagic Design, PDF)](https://documents.blackmagicdesign.com/SupportNotes/DaVinci_Resolve_21_New_Features_Guide.pdf?_v=1776322810000)
- [DaVinci Resolve Studio product page (Blackmagic Design)](https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/studio)
- [DaVinci Resolve product page (Blackmagic Design)](https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve)
- [DaVinci Resolve Training (Blackmagic Design)](https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/training)
- [Here's What's New in DaVinci Resolve 17 (No Film School)](https://nofilmschool.com/heres-whats-new-davinci-resolve-17)
- [DaVinci Resolve 21 final release (Newsshooter)](https://www.newsshooter.com/2026/06/02/davinci-resolve-21-final-release/)
- [New Keyframe and Curves Editor in DaVinci Resolve 21, by Justin Robinson (JayAreTV)](https://jayaretv.com/news/new-keyframe-and-curves-editor-in-davinci-resolve-21/)
- [BPM for Video Editors: How to Cut Your Video to the Beat (ClipMusic)](https://clipmusic.ai/blog/bpm-video-editing-guide)
- [How to Color Grade a Film in DaVinci Resolve: A Colorist's Real Workflow, by JP Mboira](https://jpmboira.com/blog/how-to-color-grade-a-film-in-davinci-resolve)
- [Resolve Color Management vs ACES, Which Should You Choose? by Cullen Kelly (Frame.io Insider)](https://blog.frame.io/2024/02/12/davinci-resolve-color-management-vs-aces-which-should-you-choose/)
- [Insider Tips: Sync Multi-Camera Footage with DaVinci Resolve's Sync Bins, by Charles Haine (Frame.io Blog)](https://blog.frame.io/2023/05/31/insider-tips-sync-multi-camera-footage-with-davinci-resolves-sync-bins/)
- [Use the Sync Bin for Multicam Editing in DaVinci Resolve 19, by Larry Jordan](https://larryjordan.com/articles/use-the-sync-bin-for-multicam-editing-in-davinci-resolve-19/)
- [YouTube Help: Recommended upload encoding settings](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171)
- [YouTube Help: Video resolution and aspect ratios](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6375112)
- [Meta Business Help Center: Design Requirements for Instagram Reels and Stories Ads](https://www.facebook.com/business/help/2222978001316177)
- [Social Media Video Specs: Dimensions, Ratios & File Sizes Explained (Sprout Social)](https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-video-specs-guide/)
- [LUFS Targets Per Platform in 2026: Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Netflix, Broadcast (Forasoft)](https://www.forasoft.com/learn/audio-for-video/articles-audio/lufs-targets-per-platform-2026)
- [DaVinci Resolve Reference Manual: Creating and Using Proxy Media (Blackmagic Design, mirrored)](https://www.steakunderwater.com/VFXPedia/__man/Resolve18-6/DaVinciResolve18_Manual_files/part260.htm)
- [DaVinci Resolve Reference Manual: Proxy Media vs. Other Playback Optimizations (Blackmagic Design, mirrored)](https://www.steakunderwater.com/VFXPedia/__man/Resolve18-6/DaVinciResolve18_Manual_files/part268.htm)
- [DaVinci Resolve Reference Manual: Using Optimized Media, Proxy Media, and Caching Together (Blackmagic Design, mirrored)](https://www.steakunderwater.com/VFXPedia/__man/Resolve18-6/DaVinciResolve18_Manual_files/part269.htm)
- [DaVinci Resolve Reference Manual: Smart Reframe (Studio Version Only) (Blackmagic Design, mirrored)](https://www.steakunderwater.com/VFXPedia/__man/Resolve18-6/DaVinciResolve18_Manual_files/part774.htm)
- [CutAgent (product site: features, pricing, FAQ)](https://www.cutagent.ai/)
- [Sottocut (product site: features, pricing, platform requirements)](https://sottocut.com)
- [PremiereCopilot pricing](https://www.premierecopilot.com/pricing)
- [Eddie AI for DaVinci Resolve (native integration workflow page)](https://www.heyeddie.ai/workflows/davinci-resolve)
- [TryUncle](https://tryuncle.com)
- [TryUncle FAQ](https://tryuncle.com/faq)