A Quick Guide to the Layout in DaVinci Resolve 18, for Beginners

Learn to color correct like a pro with our free course, DaVinci Resolve Color Grading for Beginners. You’ll learn how to use each color tool in Resolve, including how to set up your project using scene cut detection, how to get clean skin tones with noise reduction, and how to create cinematic looks.

In this lesson, you’ll see how DaVinci Resolve 18 looks when you open it up, and where you can find all the tools you’ll need. There’s a comparison to Adobe suites, so if you’re used to those, it’ll make it easier for you to get started with Resolve.

Let’s get started. At the bottom of the screen, you’ll see:

This is basically the equivalent of an entire Adobe suite in one program. Here’s a quick look at each one.

Media is the equivalent of your Assembly tab in Premiere, where you bring in your clips, audio, graphics, and other assets.

Cut is where you do assembly edits, similar to Premiere.

Edit is where you actually put your edits together, very similar to Premiere, Final Cut Pro, or any other non-linear editor.

Fusion is the compositor and VFX software. Fusion is node-based, whereas After Effects and other compositors are generally layer-based. You can do a lot of great things with Fusion, but it can be a bit of a learning curve going from layout to node.

Next is the Color tab, and you’ll learn a lot more about this screen in upcoming tutorials.

Fairlight is the audio application, a very powerful tool if you’re editing in DaVinci Resolve. In this lesson from our course on processing voice audio in Fairlight, André Bluteau gives a short tour of the interface:

Deliver is where everything is rendered and then exported for whoever it’s being passed along to. This is very similar to Adobe’s Media Encoder.

Those are the screens that make up DaVinci Resolve 18. It looks as if there’s a lot going on, and that can seem overwhelming, but remember that this one program is essentially taking the place of a whole suite of different editors. It’s just a case of knowing which tool is right for the part of the job you’re working on, and with a little patience and practice, it will start to feel like second nature.

Tom Graham created the video course that includes this lesson, and Marie Gardiner wrote the text version. This tutorial was edited and published by Jackson Couse.