What you'll learn
This guide walks through every stage of building an Edit inside DaVinci Resolve — from configuring the workspace for Edit efficiency, through scene splicing and Fusion-based transitions, all the way to final compositing with grain and flicker. Each section maps directly to the techniques demonstrated in the video.
1 — Software Configuration & Workspace Setup
Custom Keybind Mapping
DaVinci Resolve's default shortcuts are built for film editors, not AMV editors. Remapping the most-used actions to single keys removes the most common bottlenecks in the editing loop. Go to DaVinci Resolve → Keyboard Customization and set:
| Action | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Compound Clip | C |
| Open in Timeline | T |
| Open in Fusion | X |
| Split Clip | H |
| Delete Gaps | Ctrl+Backspace |
Standardized Durations
By default, generators and transitions can drop into the timeline at whatever duration Resolve feels like. To prevent that, go to Preferences → User → Editing and set both Standard Generator Duration and Standard Transition Duration to exactly 1 second. Any adjustment clip or effect you drag in will now land at a consistent, predictable length.
Playback & Cache Optimization
Fusion compositions are GPU-heavy and can tank playback in real time. To keep the timeline responsive:
- Go to Preferences → System → Memory and GPU and set the Render Cache codec to DNxHR SQ or DNxHR LB. Never use Uncompressed — the file sizes will stall your drive.
- In the Playback menu, set Render Cache to Smart or User. Smart caches any clip Resolve identifies as complex; User lets you right-click individual clips and force them to cache manually.
2 — Media Management & Scene Splicing
Bin Organization
Before importing a single clip, set up three bins in the Media Pool:
- Footage — raw anime episodes.
- Comps — Compound Clips you build during editing.
- Twix — clips designated for frame interpolation.
Keeping these separate prevents the pool from becoming an unsearchable pile when your project grows past twenty source files.
Unlinking Audio and Video
Drag your raw footage onto the timeline, then immediately select it and press Ctrl+Alt+L to unlink the video track from the audio track. The music track must remain untouched while you cut the video — unlinking is what makes that possible. If you skip this step, every video cut will also slice your music.
Frame-by-Frame Splicing
Use the Left/Right arrow keys to step through footage one frame at a time. When the frame matches the scene change you want to cut on, press your custom H shortcut to split the clip. Cutting on the exact frame of a scene transition — rather than just near it — is what separates a clean AMV cut from one that reads as slightly off.
3 — Dynamic Transitions (Zooms & Slides)
Zoom Ins / Zoom Outs
Spatial transitions live in the Fusion page. Press X (your custom shortcut) to open the clip in Fusion. Add a Transform node between the MediaIn and MediaOut nodes.
Keyframe the Size parameter:
- For a zoom in: start at
1.0and end at a value above1.0(e.g.1.3). - For a zoom out: reverse the values.
A mechanically linear zoom looks wrong. Open the Spline Editor (shortcut: Shift+S), select your Size keyframes, and flatten the easing curve so it runs parallel to the bottom of the graph. This gives the zoom natural acceleration at the start and deceleration at the end — the difference between a zoom that feels physical and one that feels like a spreadsheet animation.
Directional Sliding
Slides follow the same node setup but keyframe the Center X or Center Y parameter on the Transform node instead of Size.
The critical rule for seamless slides is momentum matching: the outgoing clip must slide in the exact same direction and at the exact same apparent speed as the incoming clip enters. If the outgoing clip moves right at 0.1 units per frame, the incoming clip must also start moving right at 0.1 units per frame. A mismatch — even a small one — creates a visual stutter at the cut that breaks the flow.
4 — Temporal Manipulation (Time Remapping & Twixtor)
Time Remapping
Right-click a clip on the timeline and select Retime Controls. This reveals the speed handles beneath the clip. Drag the handles to ramp the clip's speed up before a drum hit and slow it down sharply on the hit itself. The ramp-up builds anticipation; the sudden deceleration after the hit lands the beat visually.
Apply easing to the retime curve in the Retime Curve editor (Ctrl+click the speed indicator) so the speed change feels organic rather than mechanical.
"Twixting" — Optical Flow Slow Motion
Anime is typically animated at 8, 12, or 24 frames per second. Slowing it down without interpolation produces a choppy, stuttering result because frames repeat rather than blend. The solution is to generate artificial in-between frames:
- Native option: Right-click the clip, go to Retime Process → Optical Flow and set the algorithm to Enhanced Better or Speed Warp. Resolve mathematically calculates what the missing frames should look like based on pixel motion.
- Plugin option: Use Twixtor for more control over the interpolation, especially on clips with complex overlapping motion. See the dedicated Twixtor guide for the full workflow.
Move clips that need optical flow into your Twix bin to keep them organized and easy to identify later.
5 — Camera Emulation (Shakes & Blurs)
Impact Shakes
In Fusion, add a Camera Shake node to the node tree. Connect it after your Transform node. Trigger the shake on major beat drops by keyframing its Strength parameter — spike it to your target value on the exact beat frame, then keyframe it back to zero two to four frames later.
If a shake overlaps a zoom-in transition, the X/Y positional offsets of the shake will fight the zoom's direction. Manually sync the shake's starting vector to align with the zoom's trajectory — they should read as a single unified movement rather than two conflicting ones.
Motion Blur
Without motion blur, fast slides, zooms, and shakes look like clean digital compositing, not physical camera movement. In the Transform node settings in Fusion, enable Motion Blur and adjust:
- Quality — higher values produce cleaner blur at the cost of render time. A value of 2–4 is a practical starting point.
- Shutter Angle — 180° matches a standard film camera shutter. Higher values (up to 360°) produce heavier blur on fast movements.
Motion blur should be applied to every transition node. It is one of the highest-impact details for making an AMV feel cinematic rather than digital.
6 — Aesthetic Lighting & Color
Exposure Flashes
To visually punctuate a kick or bass hit, add a Brightness/Contrast node in Fusion (or a Gain adjustment in the Color page). Keyframe the Gain or Brightness to spike to a high value on the exact beat frame, then keyframe it back to normal within 2–4 frames. The flash is a visual accent — keep it short and sharp. A flash that lingers more than 5 frames stops reading as a beat hit and starts reading as a mistake.
Color Grading
Anime scenes pulled from different episodes or lighting environments will not match each other in color or contrast. On the Color page, use the Color Wheels and Curves to bring each clip into a shared palette:
- Normalize the contrast so no clip is noticeably brighter or darker than its neighbors.
- Unify the saturation level and overall color temperature across clips.
- Shift the mood to match the song — cooler and desaturated for melancholy sections, warmer and punchy for high-energy drops.
Group clips with similar source material and grade them together using Shared Nodes to avoid re-doing the same correction on every individual clip.
7 — Final Compositing & Aesthetic Texturing
Aspect Ratio Framing
In Fusion, press Shift+Space to open the node browser and add a Crop node. Set the Y Size to 1080 and enable Keep Centered. This forces a 1080×1080 square crop — the standard format for Instagram Reels and TikTok. Add this node at the very end of your node tree, after all transitions and effects, so every element gets cropped consistently.
Procedural Grain
Add a Filter node set to Grain. Recommended starting values:
- Strength:
4 - Blend:
3
Grain breaks up the perfectly flat fills of 2D animation and gives the image a raw, tactile quality that reads as intentional rather than sterile. Keep this node disabled during the editing process — it adds CPU overhead on every frame and will slow down real-time playback while you are still making cuts. Enable it only for the final render.
Ambient Flicker
Add a Flicker node as the last node in the tree (after Grain). Set:
- Gamma:
0.7 - Speed:
6
The Flicker node introduces a subtle, continuous brightness modulation that gives the video organic life during static scenes. Without it, a motionless shot feels artificially frozen compared to the kinetic sections around it. The Gamma value controls how far the brightness dips; the Speed value controls how frequently it oscillates.
