User Manual

Audio in the Edit vs. Fairlight Pages
While the Fairlight page provides dedicated audio editing and mixing capabilities that are
suitable for sweetening the audio of your program once it’s been edited, the Edit page has
extensive audio capabilities of its own. This enables editors to edit and refine audio clips, set
levels, and do simple mixes as they assemble the program in the first place. However, once
things have been edited together, you’re meant to go freely back and forth between the
Editand Fairlight page as you refine your work, using whichever environment is most suitable
for the task at hand.
Compatible Audio Formats
DaVinci Resolve is compatible with WAVE, Broadcast WAVE, AIFF, MP3, AAC (M4A), CAF, iOS
Voice Memo (macOS only), both MTS and QuickTime containers that use the AC3 audio format,
and Enhanced AC-3 (macOS and Windows only). DaVinci Resolve is compatible with audio at
sample rates including 32, 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, and 192 kHz.
Assigning Audio Channels
in the Media Pool
When you first import audio into the Media Pool, it’s a good idea to make sure that whatever
channels those files contain are assigned correctly before you start editing clips into the
Timeline. In other words, you want to make sure that stereo files are set to be stereo clips, that
5.1 and 7.1 files are set to be surround clips, and that multi-channel files are set to expose
however many tracks you want to edit separately in your program. Clip channel assignments
are made in the Audio panel of the Clip Attributes window.
This is particularly important when clips have more than two channels of audio. For example,
production sound recordists might record three, six, or even more audio channels,
corresponding to multiple microphones used on set to simultaneously record different actors
plus a mixdown track. In this case, you need to define how many of these channels you want to
play (or mute), and how many audio items you want to appear in the Edit and Fairlight
pageTimelines.
Mono, stereo, 5.1, and 7.1 clips are handled automatically, but multi-channel clips needing
custom assignments in the Media Pool should be remapped as necessary using Clip Attributes,
so that DaVinci Resolve can more easily place incoming audio clips into the correct track of the
Timeline. You can alter the clip attributes for clips one at a time, or for multiple selected clips at
once. For more information on these settings, see Chapter 14, “Modifying Clips
and Clip Attributes.”
Chapter – 36 Working with Audio in the Edit Page 741