Common Tasks in Movie Studio Platinum and DaVinci Resolve

13 August, 2022. 822 words.

A reference for myself of common tasks I do in video editors.

I do basically the exact same video editing tasks every time I edit a game video.

First, I try not to edit video at all, and use the raw recorded video as-is. That’s the best-case scenario and works 90% of the time for my game videos.

Second, if I can, I use Avidemux to trim the start and end of videos, or cut out sections in the middle. If you cut on keyframe boundaries, you don’t have to re-render the video, and it’s instantaneous. Second-best-case scenario.

But when I need to open an honest-to-gosh video editor, I’ve used Sony-now-Magick Movie Studio Platinum for years and years. It works like an audio editor, so it’s very intuitive to me, a person who is very comfortable editing audio waveforms.

Unfortunately it’s also slow and antiquated. So I’ve been working to migrate to DaVinci Resolve in the hopes that I can use it for everyday video editing. It’s a bit of a bear to use, one of those “it’s intentionally so complicated that it’s a marketable job skill to know how to use it” kind of applications, like all those Adobe products I abhor, but it’s a snappy interface. Mostly. (It’s also plagued with little fit and finish bugs.)

Anyway, here’s a list of the common tasks I do in Movie Studio Platinum and the equivalent process in DaVinci Resolve, at least what I’ve worked out so far.

This is probably going to be an ongoing list, updated from time to time. (It isn’t yet complete.)

Split Video, No Transition

Most common thing I do in any video editing software.
Movie Studio Platinum:
- Press S
DaVinci Resolve:
- Press CTRL-B
- Can be done in the Cut tab or Edit tab
- Adjust position by clicking and dragging split point
- Alt-/ might also work
- Key can be customized to S

Fade to/from Black

I do this at the start and end of every rendered video so I know it was rendered and isn’t the original OBS video.
Movie Studio Platinum:
- Click and drag envelope from the corner of any video clip
- Works on video or audio clips (to fade to silence)
DaVinci Resolve:
- The same:
- Click and drag envelope from the corner of video clip
- Also works on video or audio clips

Crossfade Two Clips

Rarely used to crossfade adjacent video clips (usually to denote lots of time passing), heavily used to crossfade adjacent audio clips to avoid jarring audio transitions.
Movie Studio Platinum:
- Drag clips over each other, crossfade is automatic on video or audio clips
DaVinci Resolve:
- Seems excessively complex so far.
- 1
  - Right-click split point
  - Select Add 24 frame crossfade
  - Click and drag the edges of the crossfade box to adjust time
  - Can’t figure out how to customize that menu
  - Very fussy and annoying to do, sometimes clicking selects many tracks, sometimes it selects just the one I want
- 2
  - Shift-T
  - Creates an audio-only transition between selected clips
  - Have to select the two adjacent clips first it seems

Overlap Audio onto Adjacent Video Clip

A new technique I’ve been using in 2022 to overlap the audio track from a previous clip over the video of the next clip.
Movie Studio Platinum
- Hold Shift and Drag audio clip edge earlier or later to extend over the adjacent clip.
- Can also ungroup video and audio clips and drag audio earlier or later.
DaVinci Resolve
- In Cut or Edit or Fairlight tab, disable linked clip selection and drag edges of clips

Add Text Overlay

Movie Studio Platinum
- Generate Text Media
DaVinci Resolve:
- In Cut tab, select Titles in the upper left
- Drag a title template onto the timeline and edit the settings in the Inspector in the upper right
- Don’t know how to make my own templates yet

Render Video and Audio

Movie Studio Platinum
- Click Make Movie
- Click Save to Hard Drive
- Select Preset (I have customized presets with the encoding settings I want)
DaVinci Resolve
- Click the Deliver tab at the bottom
- Select Preset (YouTube seems okay for 1080p but I have no idea what the actual encoding settings are… it’s about 3GB for an hour video).

Render Audio Track Only

Movie Studio Platinum:
- Use mute/solo to select audio tracks to render
- Click Make Movie
- Click Save to Hard Drive
- Select WAV Preset
DaVinci Resolve
- ???
- There might be a Deliver preset for this?

Insert a Slideshow of Still Images

Only recently started doing this for very lengthy boss fights.
Movie Studio Platinum:
- Insert Slideshow Menu
DaVinci Resolve:
- ???

P.S. Yeah, it’s another last-second, “oh crap I forgot to write anything for Blaugust today and now it’s late and I’d rather play a game than write a post” scramble for anything that might look anywhere close to finished in the drafts folder, kind of post.

UPDATED: 1/28/2023.