DaVinci Resolve BEST Export Settings Explained! 18.6 UPDATE

[@orangespill]

Brilliant. Finally someone making an export video with some genuine knowledge behind it. Thanks so much...

[@kikiLafleurGlam]

THIS WAS AWESOME. I Watched a million videos and not one person gave the these export setting in such a way that made you feel like you understood the what and why for most of the features.

[@ShravanParthasarathy]

As someone who just transitioned from Premiere to Resolve, this video is SUPER useful. Thank you!

[@mystifyingentity]

Hey, I was checking out Davinci Resolve again after using it a few times before. I didn't really know what all the extra settings did, but your explanation was super clear! I realize now that I wasn't using the export features to their full potential.

[@davidpikedesigns]

I was working on a video for my KZbin channel, and I wanted to say thanks for creating this video. It is so easy to just click the EposVox preset I created in DaVinci Resolve when I'm ready to export my video. Your video was so helpful. Thanks again!

[@adam_tarantino]

Looking forward to using these suggestions on my next video! Definitely interested in the audio normalization. I typically would upload a test render and compare the content loudness dB to more popular creators so I know my loudness is on par with those.

[@TwinzEdiTz]

if you find it easier, in resolve, you can export everything on your timeline, in the fairlight page, as one audio file, once that file is rendered then you can right-click, analyze audio, to get the respective LUFS and Truepeak you are looking for, which youtube is -14 LUFS and -1 dbTP

[@tobiascrow2792]

The Holy Grail of DaVinci Exporting. Without any doubt, the BEST tutorial on the whole damn internet.

[@EposVox]

What an amazing comment. Thank you.

[@oslthom]

All great points. I'll note one point where I'll dare to disagree, specifically exporting final audio in 24bit. 16bit for masters is perfectly sufficient and indistinguishable in audio quality from 24 bit. On the raw recording and processing side you always want 24bit or more for maximum headroom and flexibility, but for the master 16bit is plenty, because everything already sits where it needs to. Please disagree if I'm missing a good reason to export in 24bit.

[@no_categories]

oh wow. I've been jonesin' for an easier way to normalize audio for KZbin for EVER! I never even knew that feature was added and I'm so happy to have it now. Thanks for the demo of all these good settings.

[@Losliving]

I feel like I leveled up watching this. Appreciate you!

[@livinghero]

Thank you! I always look forward to your deep dives on programs I use!

[@frozennorthproductions]

All of my videos are .mov h.265 with pcm audio and I noticed none of them had audio when uploading to patreon, so I actually had to render them again using .mp4 with aac audio due to compatibility. The same applies for Plex, not all devices can stream PCM so to avoid constant transcoding, it's worth noting that even though .mov with pcm is far better, .mp4 with aac is basically guaranteed to work on every single platform and every single device that exists.

[@ZachToupin]

Great video! Exports for KZbin - some say not to go full audio/video bitrates and color depth because then you are letting KZbin do the heavy lifting when it comes to compressing to their platform. Instead, they recommend having Resolve compress slightly higher over KZbin's recommended upload encoding settings. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this or if any testing has been done. I guess it can be hard to find out exactly KZbin's algorithm when it comes to these things.

[@EposVox]

I can explain in more depth in a different format better suited to long-form discussion sometime (comes up a lot on stream etc often) but short answer: those recommendations are incredibly misinformed about basically everything regarding video compression

[@ShishaWG]

Unfortunately i dont have the AV1 on my Mac but i am able to export Quicktime h265 with Main 4:2:2 10 - going to try that - Thank you for all the work you put into this :)

[@NurseLee]

You are the man! I'm currently switching to Davinci Resolve from Adobe. thank you so much EposVox!

[@michellemartincreative]

Thank you for this! I just made my first ever KZbin video and this was so helpful to understand the export settings and get my video out there. Thanks for sharing!

[@steviehowie]

This is GREAT info! Thank you thank you :) I might suggest turning down some of your film grain and the extreme blue hue on the video, but tons of great knowledge in here.

[@meronmountains7052]

Thank you so much for making this video! I'm very new to Davinci. I've spent two weeks learning how to edit my project and now I am finally ready to export it! I've watched soooo many KZbin tutorials on the correct export settings that my head is spinning! I just want to make simple videos for KZbin using Iphone 15 camera. (No ProRes or Raw footage) I am not worried about mega quality, just want it to be decent and keep the file small and render time fast. (I'm using a MacBookPro.) Thanks for the extra tip about Audio Normalization: KZbin Mode....got that box checked! Hoping your setting will work for me.

[@iamdriy]

2:17 The BIG asterisk here is that setting your render cache format to something like DNxHR HQ or ProRes 422 HQ will QUICKLY fill up your drive as Resolve has no real cache management system. As an example, I just finished my first project consisting of about ~30GB of raw 4K footage, using these settings, my cache took up 1.5TB of space by the time I finished my project, and since Resolve has no real cache management system as mentioned earlier, you have to manually delete it. How frequently? Well that depends on how large your drive is. For most people (who aren't doing heavy color grading using cached media) I'd argue that it's better to set the optimized media and render cache to something lower quality like DNxHR LB, and then in the advanced settings (10:33) I would uncheck "Use optimized media" and "Use render cached images" and just bite the bullet of longer render times.

[@jasonzdora]

I was waiting to comment about the lack of PCM audio in MP4. I made a video showing the differences and Im so glad you mentioned that! side note: Why they limit the AAC format to 192kbps on Windows (even on the Studio version) is a mystery to me.

[@GespachoGrande]

I have DR 18.5 Studio on Winbloze and it goes up to 320. Relatively recently though.

[@EposVox]

My Studio still only has 192. Odd

[@Jonathan_Elizer]

same here@@GespachoGrande

[@demon6937]

Thank for this i was using the H264 and the rendering time was 3hrs for a 5hr video once I used the H265 the rendering time was drastically lowered to 30mins

[@theirregular013]

These are good tips. I'm using DaVinci for color grading and Vegas for rendering. I uploaded both a 4k h264 and 4k h265 video to test on youtube and they came back visually identical. Note I'm editing anime and gameplay footage captured in 1440p. Gonna stick to h264 for speed/efficiency tradeoff for the same results. Will however be switching to flac instead of aac for maximum uncompressed input for yt.

[@LetsBFME]

Excellent video! Would you consider doing an updated video on color spaces and ranges in OBS for recording gaming videos? You have a video on this from a few years ago, but I feel like an update on this topic would be very useful. In particular, ideal settings for recording (maybe streaming?) both legacy SDR games and modern HDR game would be very helpful. Thanks!

[@IchBinDerJesko]

This is all I was looking for. Great video...finally I know what to set everything with a good reasoning behind it

[@CharonFaustinus]

Network Optimization is basically faststart option in ffmpeg, it'll move "moov atom" to the beginning of the file. So having moov atom at the beginning of the file have a benefit with no impact of file size and quality. For example, when you upload it to KZbin, your video will get process instantly *while you're still uploading* This is because moov atom contains information about your video such as resolution, frame rate, and other information that require mp4 or mov container to function. (There are a lot of details about how mp4 container works. I'm not going to write it all in here.) This is the same reason why OBS said when you choose mp4 for recording format that the file will corrupt if there's BSOD or power outage. Because moov atom usually write at the end of the file in the finalizing process when you press stop recording. When there's BSOD the moov atom didn't finalize and result in the corrupted file.

[@EposVox]

Yup

[@svenwalter4293]

quality comment

[@AndieNow]

Whoaaaa thank you!!! seeing an instant change upload speed and quality. Subscribed!!

[@ImnotAbelsuni34]

Thank you so much! I just started learning Resolve, and this helped a lot.

[@youtubewatcher6933]

6:41 your face and your beard is just like stoicism statue. Experienced and wise. I like it.

[@EnCoreLabTV]

Thank you very much for your tips. I will apply them right from my nearest rendering.

[@JohnCiber]

The only feature I miss from Premiere is read Wav files cue markers

[@BenjaminBjurstrom]

Hey, just wanted to say thanks for a making the preset available. Just used it and it turned out great!

[@caveman3703]

Such a great video, super in depth and exactly what I need. I am just as obsessed as you are with quality :D

[@AxeRugby]

Mate this was class. thankyou, would pay for your tutorial when it comes out.

[@tailaihaha]

thank u sir! Very informational! Helps me a lot on what these settings exactly are! Appreciate it!

[@TheHeruJourney]

Man, that was so helpful. Subscribed and liked, highly deserved! Keep'em coming please.

[@EposVox]

Thanks, will do!

[@TheHeruJourney]

@@EposVox Can I ask what settings do you recommend for KZbin, in Project Settings > Color Management? Thanks!

[@__Nicholas__]

Could you make a video that slightly enhances the quality of the video? For instance, Microsoft Edge has a feature that you can find when you hover over a video that you're watching called 'enhance' that slightly makes the video better, where the colors/sharpness/clarity/etc. all gets slightly improved.

[@randomcontent2625]

Thanks for the settings. Resulted in my best quality upload to YT so far.

[@ChipLovesCoffee]

I tried this on my first upload and i still get really bad artificting and blockiness :( I uploaded multiple unlisted videos as well trying out various codecs. Still get this weird blockiness.

[@randomcontent2625]

@@ChipLovesCoffee Your video looks good. Actually looks clearer than mine. I just used this guys settings for the free version of Davinci, using the 265 codec as he recommended. I record with OBS at 1080p.

[@ChipLovesCoffee]

@@randomcontent2625 Thanks :) I have the paid version though but i did try both his video steps and his template with similar results. I appreciate the compliment again but i still think my video looks kinda bad in dark scenes/fast motion which is what cod zombies/cod is :( Maybe its ok for now though especially since I'm brand new :)

[@steivene2hot915]

From Adobe Premiere Pro to Davinci Resolve Studio, will look into this. Sucks Adobe does not support AV1 but they Davinci is way better!

[@timothybolden9955]

Thanks for the vid! In the transition from premiere to Davinci. This helps a lot!

[@CrashGame]

Thank you! These give me great results!

[@jmurray2018]

Great video where’s the export settings located ?

[@rickclise.creative]

Wow! Excellent content and tutorial. Thanks very much for sharing.

[@motionblurgamer]

My experience with the Automatic Best profile in DaVinci Resolve is completely different from yours. The export quality has been so much better for me if I restrict bitrate myself. It seems that the "Best" don't select a high enough bitrate to preserve details properly. Maybe a difference between Mac and PC? Different Hardware encoders?

[@EposVox]

Well I've gotten identical results on PC and Mac, having only just switched to Mac within the past month or so.

[@infernalreapers]

@@EposVox @motionblurgamer I had the same issue with automatic bitrate while exporting HDR color graded files. Maybe in SDR or not spuer high quality projects Auto works fine.

[@anyadunstone7548]

Thank you 🙏 this has been super helpful. very appreciated 🙏

[@bsv01]

Thank you for this settings. I am not only make better video quality but alsow make faster render because it starts utilising my graphics card for free Davinci!

[@jeromelightbody5155]

This is such a beautiful video definitely, will be sharing this

[@MaxTeste]

Very informative and like the retro style you're going for but man... That title at 4min literally hurt my eyes when it popped up... Thanks for giving us all this infos for free.

[@chaliics]

I do use 18.5 Free version. It seems HW acceleration is used when exporting h264/h265 to h265. But if the source file is in AV1, HW acceleration is not used even if exporting to h265.

[@EposVox]

Well that means you're probably reading the HW *decode*, not encode metrics

[@chaliics]

@@EposVox i thought that too at first. but it is using GPU Encode in task manager. tried to post a imgur link to screenshot, but KZbin seems to delete comments with links. Dunno if Resolve bug or undocumented test feature, but thats the reason why i am staying on 18.5 as free user for now.

[@EposVox]

Huh. Interesting. Thanks for sharing

[@chaliics]

@@EposVox imgur "link": "kVLeKrO" From encoding speed, and task manager, i am convinced i am seeing what i think i am seeing 🤔

[@SpitfireSpud]

This was a great video. When you say Automatic for best results etc... Is this the same for HDR content too?? As I normally set my Encoding Profile to Main 4:4:4 10 or Main 4:2:2 10, I can't remember off the top which one. Cheers! Also, when you are not using the inspector, you normally have 2 preview windows, which one is the best for getting an idea of what it will look like after render? or is the Render/Deliver page the best place to get a real preview of what it will look like. Thanks.

[@Sopotastic]

Best video ever super informative 🎉🎉🎉 thanks man

[@AGuyCommenting]

Right on! That’s pretty cool how much ya can do to ensure your videos are in best quality. For the exporting in 10-bit, I’m curious to wonder if there’d be any quality difference if the source footage was recorded in 8-bit? Other than that though, really nice tips!

[@goshorts]

There won't be any quality increase since the original clip was 8-bit. 10-bit export will only create a larger file.

[@alexmm01]

Free version here. The AV1 hw encoder has always showed up using an ARC GPU. The software AV1 encoder does not show up on either of my computers (both with different GPUs).

[@BrandonBurch]

This is super useful 🎉 DR 18.6 FTW!

[@Eddy04tv]

I will definitely going to try this out. Thank you Adam.

[@imniallg]

@eposvox KZbin doesn’t recognise your subtitles because your timeline started at 1 hour. Set it to 00 and it should work perfectly.

[@EposVox]

Are you sure? I've tried with a bunch of different containers now and KZbin never recognizes the included subtitles, only delivers auto-generated ones.

[@stormsofevermore]

The PCM Linear is awesome. I'm recording my music at 24/96 so this keeps everything perfect. Question though... as a musician/mixer I would think that in my case (music videos) selecting normalization of audio) would mess up any automation in the song such as adding a few dbs making the song pop here and there for choruses etc., Unless you're saying KZbin is going to do that anyway automatically? Thanks, mate! I owned the Lewitt 640 when it first came out... nice mics. Now I'm all about the Vanguard Audio V13. I've owned roughly 40 to 50 mics. Take care

[@NatLifeSounds]

I'm using your settings, really helpful. But one thing I can't change is bitrait. I'm still using 80000kb/s for my 24fps video from BM 6k Braw, I just afraid that automatic can change it somehow

[@Drakoviche]

First off great video very informative! Just wondering for my case I am doing gaming content / live streams and I was wondering if when I edit it, should I do 4k 30 fps or 2k 59.9 fps or 60 fps? Mostly high motion action style games through obs

[@HeyImJanC]

My guy, good tutorial but my color grading changed to everything more red in the export which looked horrible. How do I fix that?

[@arielshpitzer]

Multi-pass actually do both micro and macro compression. first it check where are the parts of the video that needs most information than it compresses everything in a progressive approach using a variable bitrate. this way you can achieve greater quality using the same file size.

[@BigThingsTour]

Thanks Heaps Great Video Lots of great info!!

[@zombecreative]

thank you for explaining 18.6, I've put it off until now

[@flare6030]

I currently only have 1 SSD and 1 HDD, what would be the best workflow for recording clips, cache, and exports? If I buy another SSD should I use the HDD and what for? Is it better to use the HDD for exports or recording clips? Right now I just have everything on an SSD. Thanks

[@Redfoetus]

Thank you so much for this video dude ! 🔥

[@НИИВВ]

thanks for audio tips its useful for noobs who dont know how to work with sound!

[@FloydVDocDeVore]

Thank you very much for making a useful video about export. I recently upgraded to DR19 Studio and I see under Audio Normalization a checkbox "Output Track1" that was not in 18.6.x. Should I check that box for KZbin (or other platforms)?

[@rollvideo]

Unless I'm mistaken; I think a lot has changed to the Preferences and Project Settings. I changed some of your suggested settings but I get the impression that BMD has deleted some of them due to recent efficiencies inside DR. Would it be worth making an updated video on this subject so its easier to follow along?

[@EposVox]

Nothing has changed from this video to now o_O

[@RandomPatDunn]

awesome tips with the storage locations! SUBBED UP!

[@EposVox]

Thanks for the sub!

[@ESBKLife]

Thx for this!! However, the "Network Optimization" feature doesn't work for me for some reason. When rendering, it will get to 99% then stall and never finish. This only happens when "Network Optimization" is selected, so I just don't use that feature. Everything else works great!!!!

[@Helio4k]

Great Video as Usual, Thank you for the presets :)

[@hdrsiy2132]

What about instagram reels? Do these rule still apply? Is it better to render in 4k instead of 1080p ?

[@outlawkings6133]

Very usefull video. Thanks. What about Format MKV/ Codec AV1/Type Intel - there few options for Rate Control. Which one is the best and what best settings forit if we doing 4k export? We can choose between: - Constant QP/ - Constant Bitrate/ - Variable Bitrate/ -Intelligent Constant-Quality ? I suggest it must Constant QP but there 3 values QP I - 87 QP P - 112 QP B - 134 Do we need to change them if Constant QP is best option for AV1 export with intel ARC graphics cards?

[@ech33]

Im using da vinci resolve studio 19, but my encoding profile has mo other option except main. Why is that? Thanks

[@GastonTheStallion]

Appreciate the video. After having recently moved to DVR, I find it less than intuitive for many reasons.. but already knowing the technical baseline helps. I'd love to see a follow-up on AV1 and hardware accelerated encoding for the free version in general. Little bit of a bummer to get that downgrade in 18.6

[@EposVox]

Seems like both AMD and Intel still show it, just some sort of bug for it not to show for Nvidia

[@GastonTheStallion]

@@EposVox I hope you're right ☺️

[@joshuau.]

Very helpful! Thank you!

[@kylemckenna]

Excellent video! Do you still recommend normalizing audio while editing or just using the export normalize option for youtube?

[@EposVox]

You still need to balance your levels of different tracks and have your overall mix in the right ballpark, but for KZbin videos and such I wouldn't bother trying to perfectly normalize it during edit IMO

[@kylemckenna]

@@EposVox appreciate it!

[@Maxoverpower]

8:55 this is far from exclusive to screen capture content, virtually ALL video uploaded to youtube in 10-bit SDR will have degraded quality compared to 8-bit uploads, so it's not a good idea to recommend it under any circumstances. I doubt anyone is exporting at 5 Mbps where the compression efficiency gain of 10-bit may outweigh the inherent quality drop of youtube's handling of 10-bit. And it's not like most Windows applications or games render gradients with 10-bit precision for it to have benefit in your local "master" anyway. As for the reason this happens, I'm 99% certain it's because youtube dithers down to 8-bit before the compression step, which in theory retains effective 10-bit smoothness in an 8-bit container, but in practice, none of that noise makes it past the encoder, and instead you get terrible blocking. Feels like a feature that was rolled out in the backend with 0 time spent testing how it actually affects the final result in the real world. The reason I know they dither it down is that even when you upload 10-bit HDR and then view their SDR-converted version, it will often show noise that was never in the source, and was never in the HDR encode.

[@Sahn_Productions]

Thank you for this

[@seraphin01]

Thanks for this video is was perfect, got me subbed first try! Although there is one thing I don't get with my resolve studio: whenever I click generate proxies I noticed everything is done by the cpu, not the gpu for some reason, which is a total bummer especially since I upgraded to a 7800xt and was hoping to get really fast encoding but it's definitely not the case Thanks!

[@BrainfulGamers007]

but buddy when i select automatic and best quality for bit rate, the output video quality isn't that good, the visuals feels very much tweaking, kind of flickering with a foggy output... i saw another youtuber recommending restict option and selecting the youtube recommended bit rate, and i use that with a little more addition to that of yt recommended bit rate, and now it works good..

[@sun-man]

Completely WRONG about quality settings! On PC if I leave it on 'best' my files are 3x the size, with no quality advantage!

[@CreateNowSleepLater]

You can't imagine how I boiled the ocean on my new rig with storage locations. I bought 3 NVMe drives but only had dedicated lanes to the CPU. The third is on the chipset. I have an older drive for static assets as well. I have my OS/Davinci on one drive. One Cache drive and 2 assets (1 NVMe / 1 Old Sata). Should I use the slowest to render to? In my head that makes sense.The second slowes would be the NVMe on the chipset but the way I think it works it Davinci will use the cache drive for the project. Does it pull the assets into cache?

[@RogerEngland]

Wow, impressive video! Thank you.

[@FREEDOMFPV84]

So is it better to leave the setting under h265 on auto or native whats the difference

[@Golden_Harvest]

Hello. How to make a VHS effect in Davinchi like in this video?

[@ObliviousArt]

When I upload to Facebook specifically, I get a huge loss in quality. I am currently exporting pro res 422 since I am in Mac. Should I export H265 for Facebook?

[@HoundDogMech]

At 1:45 where you show youe Project Settings/Working Folders one can not see that each is on a seperate DRIVE because of the Long File Name. Now what does one do when there are only 2 physical Storage Devices (1 PCIe NVMe SSD & 1 SATA SSD) in the Editing Laptop. Witch Working Folder would be cept on an External SSD with a 10 Gb.sec USB-C interface.

[@НИИВВ]

so now i should change sound encoder in obs to FFmpeg PCM 24 bits?

[@itskraz3yivanhere850]

Great video - well informative - enjoyed it. Tweaked a setting or two as a result. One question - if I want Davinci to be part of my projects pipeline i.e. its output is going back to be used by another program ( in this case AVISynth) would I be best served with sticking to mov and ProRes (and equiv) since I know they work? i definitely want no quality loss. I probably need to have a think about the process tbh as its a bit tennis like from those two programs right now. I start from literally pictures (video exported to 16 bit TIFFs) as I need to photoshop some individual frames. Doing AI upscaling work with 90s SD content is a pain - but getting solid results. Also I really hope Resolve get a proper Rec 601 -- Rec 709 path - having to jump hoops to solve that one (yes there is a difference) Its one thing I would like them to add. Cheers again dude

[@EposVox]

Yeah ProRes or just a lossless/uncompressed AVI export would work. Also Resolve has Color Space Transform effects that should do what you need

[@CreateNowSleepLater]

Great video, one thing I struggle with is getting OBS to output in DNxHR, DNxHD is easy but only supports 1080p. What Im doing is outputting in MKV and running the footage through a converter to DNxHR. The plus is less chance of OBS puking on the recording but it would be nice to see someone do a video on how to get DNxHR to work natively in OBS.

[@EposVox]

You can't. There's no hardware acceleration for it, and the FFMPEG implementation is "meh" at best, and requires a buttload of horsepower to encode anything above 1080p.

[@CreateNowSleepLater]

@@EposVox Got it, thanks

[@NoLimitN1ko]

Followed the settings and my file sizes are larger than the initial file while being shorter in time since im clipping gameplay for highlights. any suggestions? im on the free version with a 4080. Thanks

[@MiGzZ_X1]

Like im out right now n ur vid is in 720. But if i watch my vids its only 360-480 ?

[@Reallskovar]

What is the correct way to downsample footage in resolve? example: 4K to 1080p or 8k to 1080p

[@EposVox]

Set your timeline resolution to 1080p, plop your footage on there

[@GreggMcLachlan]

Fantastic video! I've updated to these settings. One question: what setting do you use for Render > Key frames. I set mine to be Every 1 Frame

[@EposVox]

1 is good

[@svenwalter4293]

Do I have any business using other codecs for export when my source files are just h.264 encoded?

[@DarkP1]

mac goes faster cuz their CPUs are really good performers, it's imminent that the new M3 will have a significant upgrade to the gpu and adding AV1 on top, I'm looking into getting final cut pro cuz in the past davinci gave me issues, it would be nice to compare both

[@EposVox]

The point was my Mac going faster *specifically in 18.6* compared to 18.5 lol

[@adimology]

Hi Epos, I have a question Up until now, I use my SSD to store my footage and put the cache/optimized files on the HDD. it's because I never use a cache because I think it's double the storage usage Why using cache if I can directly edit from my footage on my SSD? and why transcode to DNxHQ from my sony 8bit mp4 footage? is it necessary? Thanks before!

[@DOGfighter407]

I was literally about to figure this out this past week, so this is the reason why after export when I watch it back on desktop or mobile it sounds too quiet whilst at a lower youtube volume

[@marcinkochanowski2955]

Thanks, this is very useful

[@MaximoJoshua]

great video, learned a ton. quick question, is the grain added for stylistic reasons, or does it help avoid compression blocks? just curious

[@EposVox]

Both!