10 Lesser-Known DaVinci Resolve Features I Actually Use

Most lists of "features you need to know" in DaVinci Resolve talk about the timeline, transitions and export. Useful on day one, but you would have found them on your own.

Here, I'm sharing 10 lesser-known DaVinci Resolve features that I actually use in my projects, in editing, color grading, Fusion and audio. Some have saved me hours, others have changed the quality of my images. For each one, I'll tell you where to find it, how to use it and whether it requires the Studio version.

1. Magic Mask to track and blur a license plate

For years, I blurred license plates by hand: a mask animated keyframe by keyframe, or a Planar Tracker when the shot allowed it. It works, but it's slow, and as soon as a car or a pedestrian passes in front of the plate, the tracking breaks.

Magic Mask does this job much better. It understands what you want to track: when the plate is hidden for a few frames, it finds it again right after instead of drifting off into the background.

1. On the Color page, create a node and open the Magic Mask palette.
2. Choose object mode and draw a stroke over the plate.
3. Run the tracking forward and backward.
4. In the same node, apply a blur (Blur palette) or a mosaic: it will only affect the plate.

Magic Mask is only available in DaVinci Resolve Studio.

2. Purge the Fusion cache when everything slows down

If you work through heavy Fusion compositions one after another, for example a dozen plates to track across several compositions, the Fusion cache eventually fills up. The result: the software slows down to one frame per second, and you think your computer is running out of steam.

Before restarting everything, simply clear the cache: on the Fusion page, go to Fusion > Purge Cache. Magic Mask doesn't need this cache to work, so you can run it again right after and get all your speed back.

3. Node Cache to smooth out a single heavy node

One noise reduction or heavy effect in a node, and the whole shot plays back choppy. Rather than pre-rendering the whole shot, right-click that specific node and choose Node Cache > On (the project's render cache must be set to Smart or User).

Resolve only caches that node and what comes before it. You keep grading the following nodes in real time, without recalculating the noise reduction with every change. When the node's small indicator turns blue, the cache is ready.

4. Do your white balance with Offset, not Temp and Tint

Everyone's reflex to fix a color cast is to reach for the Temp and Tint sliders. The problem: their corrections don't apply the same way across the whole brightness range. Shadows and highlights don't move the same, and you fix a cast in the midtones while creating another one elsewhere.

Use the Offset wheel in the Primaries instead. Its color shift is the same in the shadows, midtones and highlights. Your white balance stays consistent across the whole image, and you keep Lift, Gamma and Gain for fine adjustments afterward.

5. Subtractive saturation with a node in HSL

For a more cinematic look, many colorists prefer "subtractive" saturation, denser, which slightly darkens saturated colors instead of making them look neon. In DaVinci Resolve, you can sculpt it very precisely with a little-known trick:

1. Create a dedicated node.
2. Right-click the node, then switch its Color Space to HSL or HSV, depending on your preference.
3. Disable channels 1 and 3 of the node: only the saturation channel remains.

From there, all the brightness tools act on saturation: Gamma, Gain, Offset, and even the curves. You can saturate the midtones without touching the highlights, for example. Go easy: changes that are too abrupt quickly degrade the image.

6. Set exposure in stops with the HDR palette

To change the brightness of a shot, people often grab Offset or Gain. The HDR palette does better: it adapts to the color space and color science of your footage, and its exposure control works in stops, exactly like on a camera.

Drop one stop, two stops: the light behaves as if you had closed the aperture on set, and the highlights react naturally. For it to work well, check that the color space of the HDR palette matches that of your timeline. The HDR palette is available in the free version.

7. Pre-clip and post-clip groups to grade an entire scene

When several shots come from the same camera or the same scene, don't redo the same correction on each one. Select them, right-click and choose Add into a New Group.

In the node editor, two new levels appear: Group Pre-Clip, applied to every shot in the group before its individual grade (ideal for LOG conversion or a base correction), and Group Post-Clip, applied after (ideal for the scene's look). Change the look once, and the whole scene follows. My color grading course (in French) shows this workflow in detail.

8. Shared Nodes to change several shots at once

Shared Nodes are less well known than groups, and more flexible. Right-click a node and choose Save as Shared Node: it appears in the list of shared nodes, and you can add it to any shot, wherever you want in its tree.

Change this node on one shot, and it instantly changes on every shot that uses it. It's perfect for a common look or a camera correction, while keeping an individual grade before and after it.

9. Normalize audio in LUFS in one click

Voices too quiet on one shot and too loud on the next is one of the flaws that looks the most amateur. Rather than setting each clip by ear, select them in the timeline, right-click and choose Normalize Audio Levels.

Choose the mode based on the loudness standard (ITU-R BS.1770) and enter your target, for example -14 LUFS for YouTube. Resolve adjusts the gain of each clip so they all have the same perceived level. You then fine-tune the mix on the Fairlight page.

10. Render in Place to lighten a heavy shot

A shot loaded with effects, noise reduction or a Fusion composition can make playback choppy across the whole timeline. Right-click the clip and choose Render in Place: Resolve renders the shot with its effects and replaces it with a new file that plays back effortlessly.

Nothing is lost: right-click the rendered clip, then Decompose to Original, and you get the original shot back with all its settings so you can change it.

Bonus: a Text+ that wraps on its own

You type a slightly long sentence in a Text+, and it spills over both sides of the frame. Almost every beginner's reflex: go back into the text box and add line breaks by hand. It works, until you change a word or the font size. Then you have to start all over again.

There's a much simpler method:

1. Select your Text+ and open the Layout tab in the Inspector.
2. Set Type to Text Box and check Wrap to Text Box.

3. Below the viewer, open the overlays menu and choose Fusion Overlay (shortcut F4).

A frame then appears around your text in the viewer. Drag its edges to resize it: the text wraps on its own to stay inside, and it reflows every time you edit it. For a precise setting, use Width and Height in the same Layout tab.

No more manual line breaks: you handle a block of text like in a layout program. If you want to go further with your titles, here are 7 text effects in DaVinci Resolve.

My takeaways from these lesser-known features

DaVinci Resolve is full of tools most editors never open, because they're tucked away in a menu or behind a right-click. The biggest time savers rarely come from a new plugin: they come from a feature that was already there and that you had never tried.

Pick two or three from this list and use them on your next project. And if you want to know which ones require the paid version, it's all in my comparison DaVinci Resolve free vs Studio. To discover the latest features, here is also what's new in DaVinci Resolve 21.

FAQ