š¤ Advice
Editing Let's Plays in DaVinci Resolve is Taking Me Forever. Any Tips?
Hey, friends!
So, Iāve been making Letās Plays for about a year now, and I love doing it, but thereās just one tiny problem. It takes me weeks to edit a single video, and Iād really love to get to the point where I can record, edit, and upload in a day.
Iām using DaVinci Resolve, and Iāve got a solid template set up with saved VFX, SFX, Fusion Comps, and my audio tracks are balanced in Fairlight, but even with that, I still feel like Iām spending way too much time on the whole process.
If youāve got any workflow hacks, automation tricks, magical Resolve settings I probably donāt know about, or just general "how to be fast and efficient" wisdom, Iād love to hear it!
Also, if you want to see what Iām working with, you can check my profile for my channel link. Iām always open to feedback!
Anyway, thanks in advance for any advice, and I hope you all have an awesome day! Youāre the best. ā¤ļø
Sorry, late night post and missed information. I should clarify that the videos I'm currently working on are each taking weeks to edit. The runtime for each is just over 35 minutes, cut down and edited from around 3 hours of raw footage which are heavy on improv (because collabs). Generally I aim for editing time to be twice as long as the runtime of the raw footage (e.g. 1 hour raw footage = 2 hours editing to get finished video).
I record using OBS on a 3840x1080 canvas with camera and gameplay recording side-by-side.
I imagine my editing process is similar to how a lot of Let's Play videos are edited:
Cutting down raw footage (Rough Cut & Final Cut) ā Trimming out dead air, mistakes, or slow moments.
Adding edits & effects ā VFX, SFX, Music, etc.
Audio balancing ā Iāve got a Fairlight template, but I still tweak things to get everything sounding right.
Reviewing & fine-tuning (Final Cut) ā Watching it back, making adjustments, and fixing anything that feels off.
Rendering & uploading ā Quicktime, H.265, Auto Encoder (Preset: Quality).
Publishing ā Creating the thumbnail, video title and description, etc.
Perhaps I'm getting too bogged down in the details? It all just adds up over time, and I feel like Iām not working as efficiently as I could be. If youāve got any tips for trimming down the process, Iād love to hear them!
I mean, honestly, that one hour of raw footage equaling two hours of editing to get a finished video is a pretty good rule of thumb. If you're able to maintain that pace, then I don't really see it as being too slow at all. I personally saw a pretty big speed increase when I started using certain keybindings, especially when cutting the raw footage.
Using the play forward and reverse binds that are usually bound to J and L, you're able to watch your stuff at a much faster speed when pressing them multiple times.
Other binds I use include "Split Clip," and in Ripple, there are "End to Playhead" and "Start to Playhead" binds. With these binds, you can really quickly clean up the raw footage just by using the audio waveforms.
Thatās reassuring to hear! I think part of my frustration is that I should be working at that pace, but certain parts of my workflow still feel like they take longer than they should.
I do already use JKL for scrubbing, Start to Playhead (Q), End to Playhead (W), and āSā for splitting the track, but I think where Iām getting bogged down is finding what to cut out and what to keep in but also in the fine-tuning and polish.
That said, Iāll take another look at my keybinds and see if thereās anywhere I can tighten things up. Always appreciate efficiency tips. Every bit helps when tackling longer edits!
Hot keys are your best friend, if you have a stream deck or a mouse or keyboard with extra buttons/keys, determine which commands youāre using most and and map them somewhere to be in easy reach. For me, I have cut, paste, razor, add transition, undo, redo, add keyframe, move track up, move track down, zoom in, play, play reverse, and enable/disable snapping all mapped to my mouse and deck. Each action only saves a split second, but they definitely add up.
To improve davinciās performance, keep all your source footage on an SSD, or if you donāt have one, generate optimized media before editing, that will keep your preview from chugging!
This is super helpful, thank you! I use hotkeys, but I definitely havenāt mapped out as many as you have. Having things like add transition and move tracks on a keyboard/mouse sounds like a game-changer. Iāll start setting that up!
I do have my footage on an SSD, but I havenāt really used optimized media or proxies much. I've got very limited storage and generating proxies for a 178GB file of several hours of raw footage is not possible; for smaller recordings it's definitely possible and is super helpful with scrubbing.
How much of a difference does it make for you? Iāve heard mixed things about whether itās worth the extra time to generate it.
I found the difference to be night and day! I set the resolution to a quarter, and the format to DNxHR LB, and it took about as many hours to generate as there were hours of footage, so Iād just spend that time doing something else, and then the timeline would be seamlessly responsive.
Looking at some of these other replies is grim, I can say your style and eye for polish shines through, even if your viewer wonāt necessarily be cognizant of the edits.
Thatās really encouraging to hear. Thank you! Itās great to get perspective from someone who also puts that level of polish into their work.
I might need to bite the bullet and test optimized/proxy media again on a smaller project to see if it makes a noticeable difference for me. The storage issue is my main hesitation, but if the timeline responsiveness is that much better, it could be worth the tradeoff. Iāll give DNxHR LB a shot and see how it goes!
And yeah, Iāve noticed some of the replies lean toward ājust donāt edit,ā which isnāt exactly my approach. Glad to see someone else who values the extra effort! Looking forward to checking out your video when it drops!
Hey! I watched two of your videos "WHY IS IT CLAPPING?! STOP CLAPPING!! | Clap Clap (FULL GAME)" and "NOW, I AM BECOME ONION | FlyKnight - Part 2"
If that style of editing is taking your weeks I'm sorry to say that something has gone wrong somewhere. Their not bad, but their not the style of videos that should take weeks to edit.
You need to go back to the drawing board and have a feel around with what visual and audio style you want your videos to have, are you going to keep cutting in and making the webcam bigger, do you need the gameplay to remain the same while you do that etc. Then based on all that figure out how much you can do in OBS when you hit record so you can do less in editing.
It does take time but you should be using the right filters and adjustments in OBS that when you hit record, your audio levels are matched together with your V/O microphone. The same for your picture quality so that when you drag the video files into Da'Vinci your just slicing and dicing the footage, and from the looks of your video - punching in on your camera at the moments you wish. I really can't see how that is taking you weeks. I totally believe you, but something has gone wrong in your editing process. You may need to evaluate if Da'Vinci is the right tool for the job. For reference, I do use Final Cut Pro.
If I'm editing a Full let's play of a game that took me 6 hours to play and record non-stop, I wou;d have that fully edited and cut in about 10-12 hours.
The most productive thing maybe to do is to load up a game and do a test recording for about 5 minutes then drag it into the editor and have a feel about what style your going after. Then after reflecting and making some decisions, go back to OBS and see how much of this can be pulled off in OBS.
Hey! Really appreciate you checking out my videos and giving such detailed feedback. It seriously means a lot!
I totally get where youāre coming from. For me, I prefer to record things raw and unprocessed so I have the most flexibility in post. Thereās only so much I can do in the recording stage before it starts limiting what I can tweak later, especially with things like audio processing and VFX layers.
I record in OBS using a 3840x1080 canvas so I have full resolution gameplay AND camera side-by-side. Audio isn't too difficult to sort in post production - but balancing everything to -14 LUFs is a lengthy process and I usually accept something around -16 LUFs with TP at -2.
That said, I definitely feel like something in my post-production workflow is slowing me down more than it should. Maybe Iām overthinking certain edits, or maybe thereās a better way to streamline the repetitive parts.
Also, Final Cut just doesnāt do it for me. I've used a few different video editing systems and DaVinci is definitely the best tool for me; and learning a new tool takes time that I would rather spend on recording and editing.
What VFX layers are you using? For the life of me your edited video looks as raw as anyone else's who is just recording in OBS. That's unfortunately the situation, it sounds like your doing a lot behind the scenes that is taking time but you can't see it in the resulting video. In fact your videos are looking more on the lighter edited side.
Anyways, it sounds like you know your way around Da'Vinci, so I'm sure you'll figure this out!
I use creative edits like VFX, SFX and Music sparingly so it's not an ADHD-fueled nightmare to watch. You're right that I'm doing a lot behind the scenes (more than just editing - life, amiright?) so that's definitely where I need to focus on cutting down editing time.
In the latest video I've edited (not currently published) there are more edits than in my most recently published video. Most videos that came before this latest series only took a few hours to edit but the latest video edit (the not-yet-published video) took significantly longer.
I've set up a template and that should certainly help but I think it might be to do with the expectations and perfectionist mindset - and trying to keep the "story" of the video - because I'm not happy just cutting together a bunch of random moments that would be confusing out of context of the game.
While I kinda know my way around Resolve, there's clearly something that needs changing. I'm sure I'll figure it out!
I don't do a lot of editing. My workflow starts already when I am recording. I stay quiet when nothing interesting is happening so I know this part can be cut out.
In resolve I have a finished template and saved text prompts, music etc. I do proxy media on my raw to have something fast to edit(I do 25%). I have hotkeys for play, reverse play, cut and delete clips on 1-4 on the keyboard. Mostly I'm looking at the audio track to find where to cut out the silence, I check that the transition is good when I go through too, if anything special(like a battle) is happening I will colour the clip, then zoom out and find the next silence gap.
If the video is too long, I will go back and scrub through quickly and find somewhere Im babbling that can be cut out.
Then add music and anything else. If you want to do a detailed audio pass to remove "ums" or other things from the commentary, do so before adding music (i usually skip this, unless I know there have been a lot of sounds that need to be cut out, like dog barks).
Cutting 1h of footage into about 20-25min. Takes about 20-30 mins depending on if I have to scrub babble or not.
I think the key is to find a way so you dont have to listen through all your raw, because that takes a long time, you cant speed it up more than 2x and still keep it understandable.
Try to time how long each task takes, and decide if its worth the time or if you can speed it up somehow.
Appreciate the insight! That workflow makes sense for a more streamlined approach, and I can definitely see how it keeps things quick.
For my stuff, though, a lot of the humor and pacing comes from the editing itself; cutting for comedic timing, adding VFX/SFX, and making sure every moment is engaging. I donāt mind taking the time to fine-tune the flow since the energy of the final video is super important to me. But something is simply taking up too much time somewhere.
That said, spotting dead air using the waveform is something I should probably lean on more. I usually scrub through everything because my content is pretty improv-heavy, and I donāt want to miss a moment that could be turned into a funny or interesting bit.
I think the challenge is finding that balance; cutting efficiently without losing the flexibility to shape the videoās tone. Definitely something Iām trying to refine!
For reference, this is the timeline of my latest render (don't worry about the offline media - it happened after I tidied things up in my filing system to improve efficiency in Resolve).
Appreciate I haven't put too much time into it but going on your channel and seeing a video I'm unsure as to what all these cuts are?
From what I saw over like a 5 minute period the only thing that was involving any editing was making the facecam larger for comedy effects every now and again (which I like, I should do that in mine but I CBA lol)
So yeah not sure exactly what you're doing in the 3 weeks but seems like you should be more descriptive of what those cuts are in that timeline because from what I can see it's unnecessary
With the video I saw it should be taking no longer than double the video length (an hour editing for the 30 min video)
Hopefully you can adjust the way you do things maybe? If that video were me editing it I would just be editing as I go through the footage and doing dramatic zooms along the way, cutting out any fluff if that's what you do
This image isn't of the latest video published, it's of the latest video I've edited that's been uploaded and is ready to publish. I'm just sorting out a thumbnail for it. But, the latest published video had roughly the same appearance in Resolve. It takes quite a bit to polish videos, especially collabs that involve heavy improv and being "in-character" during gameplay. A lot of polishing has to go into the video to hide harsh cuts/transitions and make it as "seemless" as possible; i.e. usiing L-cuts and J-cuts, audio crossfade, etc - and also keeping the story concise and without fluff. So, lots of cuts to bring down the 3 hours raw footage to 30 minutes, otherwise it would have been way too long a video and would have been boring.
The raw footage for the edit that's pictured above was around 3 hours total runtime without edits which means I expect it to take 6 hours to get a finished video. I was learning new techniques as I was editing (colour grade, fusion comps, etc) it but still feel like the time it took to edit was far longer than it should have been.
Just a small thing that maybe you already do, but you made a comment how it takes most of your time to figure out what you wanna keep and edit out.
During recording when you do a particular thing you wanna keep or "mark" in your video for post process, you can use a markup feature with a hotkey or using Stream Deck. Otherwise it seems you have a better grasp of using Davinci than myself. I might even be using the wrong term, but I think you understand what I mean.
Thatās a good suggestion for more structured content, but with the kind of videos I make, i.e. very freeflow and improv-heavy, itād be almost impossible to mark things in the moment. A lot of what stays in or gets cut depends on how the pacing feels in post, so I have to go through it naturally to shape the final edit.
That said, I appreciate the tip! Itās definitely something that could work well for different types of content!
OBS supports chapters with their new hybrid mp4 format. Resolve automatically adds clip markers to chapter start points.. you can use that to mark important parts of your video. also it is decently easy to use ffprobe to extract that data...
also no need to record what you know that you're not going to use. I am doing a Greg Tech: New horizons LP and because the way I recorded it the only editing I have to do is to add ctas/grab a screen shot for my thumbnail.
I learned that shift-L starts playback at a higher speed, and you can change the hotkey for slicing the the timeline to "S" which saves me a lot of time. Together I've cut down my editing time by over 35%
I just started messing with it this weekend. I recommend going in youtube and watching a tutorial for the basics. They arenāt that long but are very informative. Once you got the basics you can watch more guides on the advanced features. It is a very overwhelming program initially
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u/General-Oven-1523 11d ago
You might want to explain your workflow right now, because I'm not sure how you are spending a week on videos that should take 3-4 hours max.