DaVinci Resolve Speed Editor Review and Tutorial | Can It Replace Your Mouse & Keyboard For Editing?

this is The DaVinci Resolve speed editor from Blackmagic design it is basically a small editing keyboard for the cut page of DaVinci Resolve primarily I posted a short form video about this when I got it and a lot of people wanted a full video about it so this is it I've had it for about two weeks and I've used it for every single video that I've made since the unboxing video of this so let's talk about it firstly the reason why I got the speed editor isn't because I'm an editor and I want to speed up my editing workflow yes I do want to speed up my editing workflow but the main reason that I got it is because it came with DaVinci Resolve Studio so it was actually barely more expensive to buy this than to just buy the software in Australia the software is 495 dollars for DaVinci Resolve Studio I paid 575 for this if you include shipping I paid 90 more than it would cost to just get the software license and I also got this and I think this is worth more than ninety dollars so for me I think it was sort of worth it to get the speed editor rather than just buying the software because I also get this sort of extra Hardware now at the end I will talk about the editors keyboard which actually has a lot of similarity to this but we've got to go through this device first so what you get in the Box The Adventures of Speed editor obviously Adventures of Studios is just a card in here that has your license key on it you can have the license active on up to two devices at a time so if you have two PCS or a laptop and a desktop or something like that you can have Studio on both of your devices I currently only have it on one also it comes with a USB C to C cable now this one works fine other cables also work fine I have tested another cable and it works just as fine so you don't need this specific cable it's just USBC and the USBC is to charge and connect because it does have Bluetooth connectivity so you don't have to have it plugged in it also didn't come with a physical manual I mean like I don't really care about that but just might be a thing to note you have to like go to the website and download the digital manual there's just a QR code on one of the documents in the box so the build quality of the speed editor is pretty good like it is plastic but it's very stiff it's not going to flex at all it it doesn't really move it's very solid but it's also quite light so I think they do sort of ADD because it is like travel friendly like you could just put this in a backpack and go if you need to for whatever reason but it is very solid the keys feel like just linear mechanical switches like that red switches or something like that they feel decent they're obviously nothing special but they're mechanical keys so if you have a mechanical keyboard you're going to sort of know what they feel like the one thing I did notice is the stop play button seems to have a little bit of a click to it I don't know why I don't know if it's a different switch or it just happens to be like that or maybe there's something wrong with mine I don't know it has Bluetooth built in so you can just Bluetooth it to your computer and as I mentioned before it has that USBC Port right here you've also got probably the most interesting thing is the scroll wheel jog wheel search dial whatever you want to call it it basically is a free spinning wheel and bearing so it just sort of goes it'll do a few laps and then sort of slow down and stop it does have an indent in the top of the scroll wheel which is nice and then rubber around the outside so you know you never really have issues with grip even if you missed the indent with your finger you can still spin it a fair bit if you have to like scrub pretty fast through the timeline but we'll talk about sort of how that works as well when we get to actually using it on the bottom it does have just sort of like a thin rubber feet on both ends it's just the entire length of the device so you know it's not going to slide around I haven't had any issues with it moving on my desk pad and it like not that I use it on just the bare wood of my desk but it's fine on that as well so some of the keys have LEDs underneath them so basically that means that if it's toggled on or off you'll know I'm just gonna plug it in now because it does actually work a bit better with the USB plugged in compared to with Bluetooth and I will talk about sort of what that actually means later but I'm also just going to quickly rearrange my desk so I can get my keyboard out here because this is actually how I edit when I'm using this I have a speed editor in the middle the keyboard off to the side then I have my mouse off to the other side if I need to use all three which I usually do to some degree anyway here on the screen we just have some footage for the next YouTube video that'll be coming out next week and I'm basically just going to go through and show you how everything on here works and hopefully also try and maybe make some selects for that video so firstly we're going to go over the scroll wheel and the different behaviors that it has okay so the first function and the most common function of the scroll wheel is going to be the jog function which basically means as as fast as you scroll it is as fast as it'll go through so if you want to go really slowly frame by frame you can you want to just sort of send it it'll you know Skip through but if you have a really good machine and it's going really well all the footage is really easy to deal with by the computer then you could probably just do it faster it'll actually just scrub through really fast without it skipping too many frames but this is the one that I use the most and the one that most people would probably use the most as well and with the jog mode according to the DaVinci Resolve website if you do a half turn that'll be 30 frames now we'll go over to the left mode and as you can see the light changes on that when we select that this is the shuttle mode so if it's straight up and down it's not going to do anything if we start tilting it to the side it's going to start playing at normal speed and we cut start tilt to get more it's going to start playing at Double speed and then the more we turn it the faster it's going to play so if I just sort of leave it there it's just going to play really fast now computer's kind of struggling playing it and then same thing with backwards it's going backwards because it's slightly to the left and so you can just sort of play it at different speeds by tilting that wheel because the wheel doesn't have much resistance if you let it go it sort of it can move a little bit if you don't let it go right or if you are trying to hold it there and you don't have tension on it it can sort of move on its own a little bit so I don't really use the shuttle mode too much but then when we go to the scroll mode scroll is pretty much exactly what you sound it just goes a lot faster and basically how it works is half a turn is 30 seconds so it should be roughly 30 times faster so if you do need to get from one end of your timeline to the other end or if you have like a long clip you want to get from one end to the other you can scroll through that really quick then change back over to jog to be a bit more refined and then moving up on the speed editor we have the source and timeline buttons and these are good obviously to switch between your source and your timeline but one thing that happens with this source button is as you can see on the screen right here we have all these sort of what look like Cuts in the source now this is the source tape which is all of the Clips in the media pool or at least in the bin that they're in so this is One Clip and as I keep scrolling through I'm going to cut and it'll just automatically go to the next one so this can be good if you just want to see all your clips and you want to scroll through them get your in and out points and just sort of add them in as you go and then if you want to look at your timeline let's let's maybe add that add that in and then let's add another one add that in and then I'm going to switch over to my timeline and then I can then see my timeline which just has the clips that I just added and back to the source tape here and now as you can see I've got some in and out points for this clip here so I click the in and out button and then I'm going to click append which will then add everything between that in and out point to the timeline and there's a bunch of different ways to add things like that append is just added to the end you can for example place on top so let's say I scroll through to find let's say I like this clip I'm gonna go in scroll through that a little bit out and then I'm going to place it on top but because I was at the end of the timeline because my playhead was at the end of time it's just going to add at the end because there is nothing for it to get on top of but if I maybe scroll back to here then go back to my source and then hit place on top it's going to add that on top of the other clip you know makes sense and as you can see every time I insert a new clip it stays on the source tape so I don't have to keep switching back and forth between the timeline and the source I can just keep on the source and just add stuff to the timeline and just keep going through it and then we can come back to the timeline later but the next one we're going to go through is the Smart insert which is pretty pretty much exactly what year what you think let's get an in and out Point here and out there I will go to my timeline and go back a bit so I can sort of show you now I'm not actually going to go to the edit point because I'm going to show you how this sort of works and then if we go back to the source we've got it in and out points and hit smart insert as you can see there it didn't smart insert where the playhead was it inserted on the nearest edit point I think that's why they call it smart insert because it inserts where there's an edit Point not where the playhead is I think that's how it works and then it just sort of ripples the timeline ahead so it pushes everything out of the way next one we've got here are source and ripple overwrite so if I hit Ripple overwrite it's going to replace the clip that was on the timeline with this new clip and it's going to Ripple the timeline to fit that new clip whatever the duration is and then we can do the same thing with Source overwrite again we're going to test this I actually don't know what source over at does so Source override seems to add the clip onto whatever from that clip is already in the timeline that's what I've gathered from that and then the last one in this little section is the close-up so if we hit close up it actually just duplicates that clip and Zooms in a little bit so it just sort of makes a bit of a punch in so if I go to my timeline you can see that one is now zoomed in and then if I actually delete that the exact same clip at the same time it's just a bit zoomed out okay and the next one we have is this area up the top obviously you got your full view which is going to do exactly what you expect you have your Audio Level which is if you hold that you can actually increase or decrease the audio you can see the sort of waveforms going up and down there now I don't like doing this because you can't actually control the actual level of it you can't say I want it to be at this many DB it's more just maybe if it's too loud or too quiet and you just want to be able to hear it you can adjust it and then you can actually set the actual level where you want it later so that's there we've got the sync bin which will open up the sink bin so if you do have multiple cameras that you can sync together either by time code or waveform you can do that that'll open that and then you can sort of you know painted on like that using the multicam buttons which I'm not going to talk about a whole lot because I don't really do much multicam stuff but it is there that's how that works you got Escape which will you know Escape if you're for example in full view it'll Escape so we can add add a transition but I had no transitions selected so you know you've got different transitions down the bottom here so if you hold transition you can then select kind of transition you want so let's do a cross dissolve it's not wanting to put that there I don't know why you can also select which type of transition you want here if you want to do a cut a dissolve or a smooth cut that also should work I don't know why it's not right now and then to some more useful ones at least for me you have your split which let's say we want to make a cut here and we want to delete this last part I can go split which will just make a cut in that clip then I can go Ripple delete and it'll just get rid of it move the timeline across very useful between them then you also have your snap which just turns on your snapping which doesn't work quite the same as snapping normally if you're using a mouse what it basically when using the wheel snapping it'll like slow down it'll stop there for a couple of frames but when you sort of unlock from there it only moves one frame whereas if you're using your mouse okay I'm here and then if I unlock it it jumps like three frames whereas with here it'll stay there for a little bit but then it'll unlock to one frame off which is nice so you can be a little bit more precise with the wheel under the in and out buttons we have Trim in trim out which is exactly what you'd expect it it'll take the nearest edit point if you want to trim in which will trim the front of the clip you want to trim out it'll take that same edit point so whichever one the right headers playhead is the closest to not the clip that you're over so it'll trim the out point of the clip before that whereas let's say if I go closer to the end of the clip here my in will be the next clips and then the amount will be the clip that I'm on so it takes the closest edit Point not the clip that you're hovering over we then have our roll which again taking the closest edit point and then you can basically you keep everything the same duration and you just move the basically it's a trim in and trim out at the same time just moving that edit point across between those two clips and then it'll show you sort of what what the new ones are so if you want to time it with you know something going in or out of frame or if you're doing a match cut or something that can be kind of useful you have your slip source button which is basically moving the clip without moving the edit points so if I go to my second clip I'm actually going to go to this one slip Source here so the top left is the first frame the top right is the last frame and then the bottom left is the Fret the last frame of the previous clip and the bottom right is the first frame of the next clip so then you can sort of match it up to the frames if you're trying to do match cards or you're trying to time it with something you know out of frame and then slip destination is basically the same thing but with the next clip transition duration basically just hold that and then you can adjust the the duration of the transition I don't know why I couldn't add transitions before but I feel like that's simple enough to understand and then I talked about these buttons already and then finally we have our multicam section which I did use before so if I go into my sync bin let's pretend I had two cameras here I don't but let's pretend I did and I want to add some camera one right here I'm gonna hold camera one and I'm just gonna paint it on the top of that all right you can go video only you can go audio only you can go live override I actually don't know what live over it does anyway another thing that the multi-cam buttons do because if you're not shooting multi-cam they kind of don't do much but they're basically a track selector so let's say we have you know we've got these three Clips stacked on top of each other let's uh get out of the sync bin so we've got these three Clips stacked on top of each other if I want to only adjust the clip in track two if I hold two you can see that's highlighted on track two so then I can maybe go Trim in and then I can trim that or if I want to go three then I'll hit three and then I want to roll that one even though there's no other clip to roll so let's go let's go one and we'll roll it so then we can adjust one so you can adjust each track using those buttons we which can be helpful if you do have you know multiple layers of clips and as you can see a lot of these buttons actually have things written on the front of them and basically that means either holding or double tapping or double tapping and holding will do sort of a secondary action so with the full view if we double tap that we got review which will basically do full View and then start playing from the most recent edit point if you want to add a marker double click the Audio Level if you want to double click and hold you can adjust the color if you double click it again you can you know add your details obviously you can't type on this you're gonna have to go to your keyboard but it's handy if we double tap the escape button we've got undo we double tap transition it does nothing apparently it's meant to add a title I don't know oh okay now I can add a transition what all right there's some there's some weird things going on let's take this clip here and then I'm gonna go double tap the split button which is move and if I want to move whatever Clips I have selected this that actually split them first and then I guess you don't have to split them hey by the way if you click split again on a split in a clip it just fuse it back together so move will jump it between edit points so you know if I want to move this clip I'll hold it and then they'll just sort of swap with the next lot of Clips so if I want to slide this clip across double tap and hold and then I can just sort of drag it across so if you want to move it up to something if you want to sort of move it out of the way to add something else that you don't want to like do smart insert or whatever then you can for your transitions let's go back to this transition I'll uh I'll adjust it a little bit so let's say with that and it's like okay I want that to be my new transition duration double tap and then if I add another transition let's see if this works then it adds it at the same duration oh yeah and I missed this one too if you double tap and hold the snap button you can also adjust the size of your viewer so you know if you if you do that and then let's actually just go back to where we did this close-up now which one was close up is this a close-up let's say this was a close-up we added a close-up there right so we got a close-up and then if we want to adjust the Y position then we hold the button and then we can just sort of scroll it up or down if you need a frame it a certain way there is no X position so you can't move it left or right you'd have to do that in the edit page all right so now let's get off the cut page and we're going to go to the edit page and we're just going to look at this massive a timeline that we have because I I haven't actually been doing anything because I've been focusing on actually just trying to show you the buttons don't actually do anything good with it but basically we're just going to quickly go through what does and doesn't work because this is designed for the cut page so not everything works on the other Pages now the scroll Wheel Works the same shuttle jog scroll all work the same very nice source and timeline works almost the same but you don't have that Source tape so you're only going to go to the source that you have selected but you know you can easily switch back to the timeline same thing like let's say if I go to my source I want to do my in and out points and I can still you know I can append I can you know I'll go back to my timeline here let's go back here sauce and then let's go it's my insert so that's sort of interesting how it'll do the SMART insert but it won't find that nearest at a point it'll just insert it where the playhead is so that's sort of one of the differences between the cut page and the edit page is the edit page would just sort of take everything literally whereas the cut page it knows what it's trying to do and it'll add it'll go by the edit points not by the playhead but you know it's still quite useful and it's easy enough to just get to you know the at a point between the clips if you want to insert something so it's not a huge deal it's just a little bit more work the trim buttons work pretty much the same as well except no yeah pretty much the same roll all right let's go let's go back to a clip that are actually like up against each other let's roll roll does the same Slide the same slip destination doesn't do anything for some reason but slip source does and one thing also that is kind of useful for using the speed editor because you don't have a mouse and you can't select anything whereas on the cut page you don't really need to select things because it's whatever the play heads on or the edit Point that's closest to it it'll just use that or you can use the you know the multi-count buttons which by the way don't work in the other page but what can be useful is if you go into timeline and then you set the selection follows playhead so that means that whatever the playhead is over that will be selected so then if you need to if I want to cut just this clip it'll only cut the top one or if you want to you know Ripple delete it'll delete that one clip not anything else also the audio and video only buttons don't work in the outer page I think that's pretty much it let's try and transition let's see if a transition Works we're gonna go here we're going to add a transition it does work transition but we don't get options oh and another button that doesn't do what it should do it works but it doesn't work like it should the move button so if I hold split it'll just slide it won't move so I don't know what the point of that is and let's get back onto here so slide and move do the same thing on the other page for some reason and if we go into other Pages like Fusion or color page it's really really you're only going to use this for scrolling the timeline if you need to so it does work on the other pages but it's really just going to be for on the timeline you're not really going to be doing any editing but you know like I said it's for the cut page primarily and it about half works on the edit page all right so what do I think is missing there's a few things I personally don't use ever and there's a few buttons that I kind of wish were on there for example we have Ripple delete and I don't know why we couldn't just you know maybe hold is non-ripple delete or something having a delete without the Ripple is Handy sometimes if you just want to delete a certain clip but not move the rest of the timeline that would be good to have along with some way to select the track like I was saying before using the Multi-Care buttons works fine on the cut page but it doesn't work at all on the edit page that would be good to have as well especially when you have you know stacked up Clips like this not that this is really realistic but if you do have multiple clips I have no way of selecting the clip on track one I can't do anything to that unless I use my mouse and sort of link to that you know track select it would be good if there was some way to select a clip without needing to have the selection follows playhead setting turned on because if I could I don't know how they would do it but you know maybe just having like you know arrow keys or something where you can select a clip without having to you know keep the playhead over it like if I want to maybe select this clip while my playhead's over there I have to use the mouse and click on it here do my thing but then if I hit play again it'll go back to selecting that or if I like scroll it all it'll go back to selecting that so it can be annoying at times to have that setting enabled so I just wish there would be some way for it to be not enabled but still give me an ability to select Clips because you literally can't select Clips without it on like I mentioned before with the Bluetooth if we go by bluetooth I'm actually just going to unplug this now and it stays connected so it's still going to work but as you can see it is a bit laggy definitely more so than when it's plugged in and then like it yeah it seems to be okay here but it is there is a slight delay now it's not too bad like at the moment but at times it can be a bit not ideal the battery however does last a long time so that's good but there's also no way to see the battery life without having the software open and you can't turn it off too so it'll automatically turn on if it connects to the Bluetooth and DaVinci resolves open so DaVinci Resolve isn't open you're fine but if you open Adventure resolve and this is like you know on the Shelf it'll just turn on the lights will turn on so that's not ideal it would be good if there was an on switch don't I feel like that wouldn't have been hard to add and this last one's kind of a big one so the scroll wheel right you can click it in it works as a button but nothing happens it doesn't do anything so what I wish it did is when you click it in just like the master MX3 from Logitech when you scroll that fast it unlocks and it has that free free spinning scroll wheel but if you do it slowly it'll click so if it had some sort of Click built into that that you could toggle on or off and then each click being one frame I think that would be really useful because sometimes it can be a bit annoying as you can see that as I Let Go it's moved two frames so it's hard to be really accurate with it when you let it go if it just sort of bounces away whereas if you could go all right click click click and leave it that I think would be ideal so having a way that you can have it you know like this or clicked that that I think would be the biggest Improvement to this more than anything else so overall what do I think about it and is it worth it I think for the price if you don't already have resolve Studio yes it is worth it if you already have DaVinci Resolve Studio I don't think it's worth the you know 300 us or 600 Australian than it is so if you already have it don't don't spend your money on this unless you really need it or want it but if you don't have it I think it is a good way to get the software and a little bit of extra hardware for not a whole lot extra money it's really useful for cutting you know sequences of b-roll like this like I was just going to make a little sequence to music and or maybe some sound design something like that and have just a b-roll sequence or maybe have a voiceover and a b-roll Secrets like the series that I'm doing at the moment with my getting up early becoming a morning person series that I'll do a clip which is basically a voiceover and then I'll have all the other Clips on top so I'll just sort of add I'll find the in and outs of all of them put them all in the timeline and then just put them on top of the voiceover so then it all just sort of works so it's good for that sort of stuff or for cutting up you know a long a-roll like this is this is going to the how long been recording for almost an hour are you serious I do think the editor's keyboard would be a better deal if one you don't have studio and maybe you need a new keyboard because it is a full keyboard plus almost all of these buttons and the wheel actually doesn't have a clutch in it so it has a little bit extra functionality but it has a full keyboard with labels on all of the default shortcuts plus a few extra buttons a numpad everything the only thing that this has that it doesn't is this middle section and maybe a couple of the other buttons but other than that I think the editor's keyboard would be better if you know you need a keyboard for editing or you do a lot of editing and you also own the market for a new keyboard and if it wasn't clear already I think the wheel is the best part of this because it is really nice to just be able to scroll through with this rather than using a mouse or like you know hitting play and pause all the time obviously it does have the play pause button you can just sort of play in positively go but rather than you know clicking and trying to find the frame that you need or like you know dragging through with your mouse it is a bit more satisfying to use the wheel and in some cases it is actually more efficient especially with the scroll feature you just like hit a button and just swap across you go right back to the start in a second but that'll be off this one thank you for watching go watch the cine EI video that I did that was the last video that was the first video that I edited using the speed editor And subscribe because the next video is going to be using the clips that I was editing today so subscribe so you don't miss that one okay bye

Channel: Remy Leonard

Views: 9,046

Keywords: videography, editing, unboxing, speed editor, resolve, blackmagic, da vinci, davinci resolve, sony, a7iv, fx30, editor, filmaking, filmmaker, tutorial, blackmagic design, black magic, black magic design, edit, adobe, premier pro, final cut, premier, video editing, davinci, cinematography, videographer

Id: LwDNRrk-RcI

Length: 26min 53sec (1613 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 20 2023