How to make an AMV — Beginner Guide

What you'll learn

The complete beginner pipeline for making an AMV in DaVinci Resolve: navigate the timeline efficiently, mark beats on the audio waveform, splice and trim scenes to the music, and build professional zoom and slide transitions using Adjustment Clips and Fusion's Transform node — with proper easing curves and motion blur on every move.

Phase 1 — Timeline Navigation and Beat Sync

The foundation of any AMV is cutting anime footage precisely to the music. Before touching the clips, learn to move around the timeline quickly.

Timeline navigation shortcuts

These three shortcuts let you jump between a wide overview and a frame-accurate close-up without touching the zoom slider.

Cutting scenes frame-accurately

Use the arrow keys to scrub one frame at a time until you land on the exact first frame of the scene you want. Press B to activate the Blade tool, make your cut, scrub to the last frame of the scene, cut again, then press A to return to the selection tool. Delete the unwanted sections. This frame-by-frame approach is what separates clean cuts from cuts that feel a frame too early or too late.

Preparing the audio

After importing the music track, enlarge the audio layer in the timeline so the waveform is clearly visible. Right-click the clip and uncheck Link Clips to separate the audio from any video. This lets you reposition or trim footage without accidentally slicing the music.

Placing beat markers

Press M to drop a marker at the current playhead position. Scrub through the audio waveform and place a marker every time the waveform spikes — these spikes are your beat hits. Work through the section of the song you plan to edit before touching any footage.

Trimming to the beat

Drag the edges of each isolated anime scene until they snap to the nearest marker. The scene starts on one beat and ends on the next. Cuts that land exactly on markers automatically feel rhythmically tight even before any transitions are added.

Phase 2 — The Adjustment Clip Workflow

Applying transitions directly to footage creates problems when you later swap a clip — the transition breaks and needs to be rebuilt. Adjustment Clips sit above the footage and apply effects independently, so clips underneath can be changed freely.

Adding an Adjustment Clip

Open the Effects Library (Toolbox → Effects) and drag an Adjustment Clip from the list onto a track above your first scene. Size it to cover the last few frames of the outgoing clip and the first few frames of the incoming clip — this overlap zone is where the transition lives.

Resetting the start frame — important

By default, when an Adjustment Clip is placed on the timeline, Fusion calculates its internal frame count from the timeline start, not from the clip's own start. This causes keyframe offsets: a keyframe you set at frame 0 inside Fusion actually fires at a different time than you expect.

Fix this before adding any keyframes:

1. Drag the Adjustment Clip from the timeline back into the Media Pool.
2. Delete the original from the timeline.
3. Drag the newly saved version from the Media Pool back onto the timeline.

The clip now starts at frame 0 internally, and every keyframe you place will fire exactly where you intend.

Accessing Fusion

Place the playhead over the Adjustment Clip and click the Fusion tab at the bottom of the DaVinci Resolve interface. This opens the node graph for this specific clip.

Phase 3 — Zoom Transition

A standard AMV zoom consists of two halves: the outgoing clip zooms in, the incoming clip zooms out. Together they create a single continuous push through the cut.

Adding the Transform node

In the Fusion node graph, press Shift + Space, type Transform, and press Enter. The default graph connects MediaIn → MediaOut directly. Click the line between them to disconnect it, then insert the Transform node in between. Press 1 on the node to display it in the left monitor, or 2 for the right monitor.

Keyframing the zoom in (outgoing clip)

1. Move the playhead to the first frame of the Adjustment Clip.
2. Click the diamond icon next to Size in the Transform inspector to create a keyframe. Leave the value at 1.0 (normal scale).
3. Move to the last frame.
4. Increase Size to zoom in — a value around 1.15 to 1.3 works well depending on the energy of the cut.

Smoothing the curve — Ease Out

Open the Spline Graph panel. Check the Transform parameter to display its curve. Select both keyframes and press S to smooth them into bezier handles. Drag the right handle of the first keyframe downward so the curve starts steep (fast zoom) and decelerates into the cut (slow at the end). This is an Ease Out — the motion has momentum going into the cut rather than a robotic linear ramp.

Keyframing the zoom out (incoming clip)

Add a new Adjustment Clip above the second scene using the same Media Pool reset process described above.

1. In Fusion, add a Transform node.
2. First frame: set Size to a value smaller than 1.0 — around 0.85 — to start already zoomed out.
3. Last frame: set Size back to 1.0.
4. In the Transform node settings, change Edges to Mirror. This prevents black borders from appearing at the frame edges when the scaled image no longer covers the full canvas.
5. In the Spline Graph, create an Ease In curve: the motion starts slow and accelerates toward the end, matching the deceleration of the outgoing clip so the two halves feel like one continuous move.

Motion blur

On both Transform nodes, go to the Settings tab and enable Motion Blur. Increase the Quality and Shutter Angle values. Motion blur blends pixels across frames during the fast scale change, making the zoom feel physical rather than digitally instant. Without it, the zoom looks cheap regardless of how well the curves are shaped.

Phase 4 — Slide Transition

The slide transition uses the same Adjustment Clip setup and the same easing logic as the zoom — only the animated parameter changes from Scale to Position.

Slide out (outgoing clip)

On the first Adjustment Clip, add a second Transform node in Fusion.

1. First frame: keyframe Center X/Y at the default center position (0.5, 0.5).
2. Last frame: keyframe Center X/Y moved to one side — shift X to 0.2 for a left slide or 0.8 for a right slide.
3. In the Spline Graph, apply an Ease Out curve to the position keyframes.

Slide in (incoming clip)

On the second Adjustment Clip:

1. First frame: keyframe Center X/Y at the opposite side from where the first clip exited — if the first clip slid left, this one starts from the right (0.8).
2. Last frame: keyframe Center X/Y back to center (0.5, 0.5).
3. Set Edges to Mirror on the Transform node.
4. Apply an Ease In curve in the Spline Graph.
5. Enable Motion Blur on both Transform nodes with the same settings used for the zoom.

The outgoing clip exits left (or right) as the incoming clip enters from the opposite side — the two movements combine into a single lateral wipe that reads as one deliberate camera move rather than two separate effects.