Mini-Project 2: A 60-Second Highlight Reel in DaVinci Resolve (Free)

DaVinci Resolve’s free version is a full professional editor, color grader, and audio suite at zero cost, which makes it ideal for a budget FRC media team. This project takes you from raw clips to a published 60-second reel.

Step 1 — Project setup. New project, then in Project Settings set the timeline to 1920x1080 at a frame rate matching your camera (FRC field footage is usually 30 or 60fps). If your footage is 60fps, a 30fps timeline lets you do clean 50% slow-motion on climbs.

Step 2 — Organize on the Media page. Import all match clips, your photo gallery (Resolve can pan stills), and one music track you have the rights to use. Use only licensed music — the YouTube Audio Library or Pixabay (and Incompetech with attribution) avoid the copyright claims that mute, block, or demonetize your video.

Step 3 — Build the cut on the Edit page. Structure for a 60-second reel:

• 0:00-0:05 cold open: your single best scoring clip, no intro.
• 0:05-0:45 montage: 8-12 clips of 2-4 seconds each, cut on the beat of the music.
• 0:45-0:55 the payoff: your highest-scoring match or a clutch endgame, in slow motion.
• 0:55-1:00 outro card: team number, sponsors, social handles.

Use the blade tool (B) to trim, drag clips to reorder, and add a simple cross-dissolve only at the open and close — hard cuts on the beat feel more energetic.

Step 4 — Color and audio. On the Color page, use a manual lift/gamma/gain pass (or Resolve’s automatic color tools) to make the field’s washed-out footage pop. On the Fairlight (audio) page, duck the music under any natural crowd sound and aim for an integrated loudness around -14 LUFS, which is YouTube’s loudness reference — mastering louder just gets turned down on upload.

Step 5 — Add captions. Use Resolve’s Text+ or a subtitle track to caption any spoken audio. Captions are not optional polish — they make your video accessible and dramatically improve watch time on muted autoplay feeds.

Step 6 — Export. On the Deliver page:

• YouTube (16:9): H.264, 1920x1080, roughly 10-12 Mbps, AAC audio. The free version exports up to 4K, so 1080p is no problem.
• Instagram Reels / TikTok (9:16): duplicate the timeline, re-frame to 1080x1920, export H.264.

Render, upload, and cross-post the same reel everywhere with a caption tailored per platform. Keep the .drp project file in your team drive so next year’s students can reuse your template.

Key takeaways

• DaVinci Resolve’s free tier is a full editor that exports 1080p/4K H.264 — no paid software needed.
• Structure a 60s reel as cold open, beat-matched montage, slow-mo payoff, and a sponsor/handle outro card.
• Only use licensed music (YouTube Audio Library, Pixabay) to avoid muted, blocked, or claimed uploads.
• Caption spoken audio and target ~-14 LUFS (YouTube’s reference) for accessible, consistent-volume video.

This lesson was adapted from learnfrc.com.