From the course: DaVinci Resolve Fundamentals

Navigating the Cut page - DaVinci Resolve Tutorial

From the course: DaVinci Resolve Fundamentals

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Navigating the Cut page

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- If you have access to the project files and are following along, then feel free to import the DRP named 02_02_organizingend. This allows you to pick up precisely where I left off in the previous movie since you probably organized your footage differently than me, and that's perfectly fine, we all have our different ways of organizing footage. But the point is, if you're following along and want to do what I'm doing step by step, it'll probably be a little bit easier if you're working off the same organization that I created, but it's your choice. Now that we've organized our footage in bins, and maybe even added some markers or in and out points, it's time to put together our first rough cut. I usually call this an assembly. We just want to pull together our various takes in script order. In a commercial like this, all I really want to do is get down the audio track from start to finish. I am not worried about making the video look good. I'm not worried about reaction shots or establishing shots or black holes, working with all that comes later. We just want to get the basic timing down. And in most pieces, it's the audio track that drives our timing. You might hear professional editors call this type of assembly the radio edit. But before we start this process, we're going to need to spend a movie or two understanding how to work with timelines in DaVinci Resolve, And also, how does the Resolve cut page work? Let's start there. By default, the cut page is the page that opens up every time you create a new project in DaVinci Resolve, it's designed to be a streamlined interface. In the upper left, the media pool is open and ready for adding media or creating bins using these icons up here. You can view bins you've created by using this fly-out menu. The icons in the upper right of the media pool pallets have four different views, which we'll explore throughout the next few movies. By default, the viewer is in the upper right, but you can open the inspector pallet to the right of that. Transport controls are where you expect below the viewer and the mute button, which has this tendency to move around depending on the page you're in, is up here above the audio meters. You can use this little divider icon to click and drag to change how much room you want to give the bottom half of the cut page, which is the timeline. On this divider bar above the timeline are various buttons. Since I have a large screen, these shortcut icons are arranged in groups. On smaller displays, they'll just be arranged in one continuous row. You can hover over these icons to pull up tool tips, although frequently, these tool tips won't display until you have a timeline with media in it, which we don't. To the left of the timeline are another series of shortcuts for changing how the timeline looks, adding markers and a few more options we'll explore in this chapter. The key to understanding the cut page is that it's supposed to offer a quick streamlined interface for putting together your story. The edit page has lots of advanced functionality, but also more complexity and that can be intimidating, but don't let the cut page fool you. It's got a whole suite of tools for you to explore. They just aren't immediately open. As you get comfortable with the cut page and start pressing more buttons, you'll see there's a lot to keep you busy here and many of you will likely find you can edit an entire piece from start to finish without ever needing to jump to the edit page.

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