Insider Tips: Easy Punch-Ins Using DaVinci Resolve’s Adjustment Clip

Insider Tips: Easy Punch-Ins Using DaVinci Resolve’s Adjustment Clip

Every week, Frame.io Insider asks one of our expert contributors to share a tip, tool, or technique that they use all the time and couldn’t live without. This week, Charles Haine shares best practice for creating punch-ins with DaVinci Resolve’s Adjustment Clips.


Punching in with DaVinci Resolve’s Adjustment Clips

If you’ve got a long continuous shot, with either a speaker to camera or an interview, punching in is a great way to break up the shot into chunks. This is a very common workflow for YouTube videos and fits the “voice” of YouTube. You could go through and do an “add edit” for each shot you want to punch in, but that can make shifting the edit around more complicated if you want to make quick and dirty changes on the fly.

Instead of adding edits to a clip a better way to do it in Resolve is to use an adjustment clip. Adjustment clips work by adding a new clip to the timeline that affects all the shots underneath the adjustment clip.

Adding an adjustment clip to the timeline is quicker than adding edits to a clip.
Searching for “Adjustment” in Effects to find Resolve’s Adjustment Clip.

If you’ve got a long interview to break up with punch-ins, add a punch-in to that adjustment clip. Then you can slip, slide, and adjust the punch-in to your heart’s content much faster than with traditional edits.

Adding a punch in to an adjustment clip is a great way to break up a long interview.
Adding a punch-in to an adjustment clip is a great way to break up a long static interview.

You can also turn it off whenever you want by toggling Enable Clip off (hitting D while the clip is highlighted) which is a faster way to see the shot in its entirety.

Removing the Enable Clip allows you to see the shot in its entirety.
Disabling the Enable Clip option lets you to see the shot in its entirety.

Insider Tips are helpful weekly posts brought to you by Frame.io’s awesome writers and industry experts. Come back for a new Insider Tip every Wednesday, or subscribe to our newsletter to get a reminder each week.

If you’re looking for tips on getting the best out of your Frame.io account, check out Shawn McDaniel’s playlist on our YouTube channel.

Thank you to Charles Haine for contributing this article.

Charles Haine is the Interim Program Director for the Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema at Brooklyn College. He has been a filmmaker and entrepreneur working in the motion picture industry since 1999, and received his MFA from USC in 2006. Haine founded the Academy Award and Emmy nominated production company Dirty Robber in 2008, directed the feature film Angels Perch, the websites Salty Pirate, and countless shortform projects including a music video for Fitz & The Tantrums.

Interested in contributing?

This blog relies on people like you to step in and add your voice. Send us an email: blog at frame.io if you have an idea for a post or want to write one yourself.