Using the Media Pool to Import and Organize Assets
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Overview
- - Navigate the relevant pages of DaVinci Resolve and skip the rest
- - Create projects, timelines, and media bins that stay organized
- - Use J and L cuts, b-roll, music, and sound effects to shape compelling edits
- - Work inside Fusion to design your own motion graphics
- - Build a simple, repeatable approach to color correction and basic grading (and learn the difference between the two!)
- - Streamline your workflow with adjustment clips, compound clips, power bins, and proxies
- - Download DaVinci Resolve, either the free version or Studio (paid)
- - A computer that meets DaVinci Resolve minimum system requirements, with at least 16GB of RAM recommended
- - Enough storage space for exercise files and included footage, either on your computer or an external hard drive
- - Headphones strongly recommended to properly hear dialogue, music, and sound effects
- - A mouse can be helpful for precise timeline and Fusion work, though a trackpad also works
- - Beginners who want to learn DaVinci Resolve from scratch
- - Self-taught editors who feel stuck clicking buttons without understanding the process
- - Content creators and small business owners who want better video for their brand
- - Designers and creatives who need to learn basic editing for client projects
- - Anyone who has opened Resolve, panicked, and wants a clear, structured path forward
- - How to download, install, and set up DaVinci Resolve
- - Setting up frame rates, codecs, and project settings
- - Navigating the Edit, Media, Fusion, Color, and Deliver pages
- - Importing, organizing, and managing media with bins and timelines
- - Editing talking head videos from start to finish
- - Removing ums, uhs, and dead space to improve pacing
- - Cutting footage efficiently with custom keybinds
- - Creating smooth edits using J cuts and L cuts
- - Adding and timing b-roll to support the story
- - Choosing and placing music and sound effects
- - Balancing dialogue, music, and SFX for clean, intentional audio
- - Editing short form and vertical videos for social platforms
- - Using adjustment clips to apply effects across multiple clips
- - Working with compound clips to stay organized
- - Creating and using power bins for reusable assets
- - Using proxies for smoother playback on larger projects
- - Rendering in place to simplify complex timelines
- - Understanding the Fusion page and node based workflows
- - Creating Fusion compositions for motion graphics
- - Working with merge nodes, masks, and transforms
- - Building simple logo animations and motion elements
- - Creating lower thirds and animated text
- - Keying green screen footage
- - Tracking footage and attaching animated callouts
- - Understanding the difference between color correction and color grading
- - Reading scopes to guide color decisions
- - Correcting exposure, white balance, and contrast
- - Working with primary wheels and RGB curves
- - Handling skin tones accurately
- - Applying basic color grading to shape mood
- - Creating and saving color correction presets
- - Exporting and delivering videos for YouTube, social platforms, and clients
- - Completing multiple real world class projects you can add to your portfolio
- - Downloadable exercise files and professional footage to follow along
- - Quizzes and hands-on projects to reinforce key concepts
- - Practical workflows and techniques used by working video editors
Brandon Baldovin
Editor & Creative Engineer
I am a video editor, content strategist, and educator, and my mission is to help creators understand not just how to edit, but why video editing works.
I hold a Master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering and have taught at the college level as an engineering instructor. Over the past three years, I’ve also taught video editing to beginner and intermediate creators, helping them build a stronger foundation and how to edit with more intention.
My engineer’s mindset strongly influences how I approach creative problem-solving. I focus on breaking down complex editing concepts into clear, practical techniques that creators can confidently apply. Over the past five years, my work has centred on visual storytelling, with a deep emphasis on DaVinci Resolve.
I was born and raised on California’s Central Coast, and I create educational resources designed to help others create more.
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Downloads & Exercise files
Transcript
The next step is to add in assets to the video,
meaning music, sound effects, and B roll.
And the art of choosing your assets is almost as big
of a skill as learning how to edit itself.
I think a lot of editors will tell you
that the procurement process of acquiring footage and music
and sound effects can be
more time consuming than actually coming up with the edit.
But lucky for you guys, I've already gone through
and acquired the music
and sound effects that
we're gonna use throughout the course.
Now, with all that said, I'd like to introduce you guys
to the media page inside DaVinci Resolve.
We're not gonna spend too much time on it,
but it is nice to know where it is and how to use it.
So thus far, we have been living over here in the edit page,
but don't you forget we've got all these other tools
here inside Da Vinci Resolve.
So let's go ahead and meander on over to the media page.
Now, depending on you and your workflow,
you might not spend a lot of time in the media page,
or you might spend a ton of time in the media page.
The media page is essentially set up to sort through
and bring in footage, audio assets, images,
et cetera, et cetera.
The bottom half here is our media poll.
So this is everything that we have currently imported into
our working project.
So we can cycle through our folders just like we
could on the edit page.
And if I wanted to, I could double click on some
of the footage and we can preview it here in our media pool.
Quick aside, I have the audio muted here so
that it doesn't I get in the way of me speaking.
If you do ever wanna mute and unmute stuff, you can uh,
just click little speaker icon or you can right click.
And now you have a volume bar.
But I'm gonna go ahead and keep this muted.
Something else that's kind of a fun tool,
and you might have seen this on the edit page,
is this little, uh, circle
with two arrows on the the left and right side of it.
This is your jog wheel. So you've seen me grab my playhead
and move it left and right here
to quickly scrub through the footage.
But if you wanna do a little bit more fine tuning,
you can click and hold the jog wheel
and move your mouse right and left.
And now you have a little bit more fine control,
I guess I should say in your preview here.
This is what, what I really wanted to show you guys.
In the top left corner here, this is where we can preview
and import footage.
In the upper left here are all your connected drives.
You can see I've got a few including, uh, Mr.
Burger, who is somebody I am working with right now.
And if you click on one of these drives,
so if I click on my D drive, which is my media drive,
and I have this nice juicy folder over here in my D drive,
it's called my Stock Media Folder.
And inside this folder is everything I've ever downloaded
to work on a video ever for the most part.
So I've got music, stock footage, uh, visual effects,
whatever, if you can think of it.
And it goes in a video. It belongs right in here.
So just like a file explorer on Windows or Mac can go ahead
and open up your various folders
and I can go find my audio folder
and then we can even click on something like,
uh, sound effects.
And I can go to my save sound effects over here.
And I've got a bunch of folders of
random various sound effects.
And one of the fun ones to look through is the whooshes.
So if I click on my Whooshes folder, we can begin
to preview some of the whooshes that I have saved here.
So if I unmute my audio here,
I can drag my mouse over to preview it.
If you don't like the mouse dragging preview,
Which for me sometimes gets in the way of me just kind
of scrubbing through stuff in your preview window,
there's three dots in the upper right hand corner if you
click those and then uncheck live media preview.
Now you can kind of scrub through things without it
instantly playing, but I can double click on any one
of these to preview it.
And where this is nice is if I have something that I find
that I'd like to use.
So let's say I click here
and I like that little whoosh, what I can do is go
to my pre-created sound effects folder
that we already created.
Click there and I can drag and pull it in.
And so a lot of times in the beginning of edits,
what we'll end up doing is we'll come up with a rough cut
and then we might sort through some of our assets
that we have that we've either been provided
or that we've gone and downloaded ourselves
and try to procure, which we want to use in our video.
Now you guys aren't gonna have access to the sound effects,
so I'm gonna hit Control Z so
that we're all working with the same stuff.
And the last thing that I'd like to call out here
that is personally my favorite feature
of the media pool is there's this little section over here
in the left where it says, favorites.
If I grab this middle bar
and bring it up so you guys can see it a little better,
you can see I have four folders saved here
that I call all the time.
And so for you, you know,
if you have your stuff saved on the C drive, you can see
that sometimes it can be a little bit of a nuisance
to find the right folders.
So if there is one that you use all the time,
you can always right click on that folder
and add folder to favorites,
and then it'll locate it over here.
So now what I can do is I can go over to my audio tab
and then I have all my music and sound effects right there.
So then I can quickly go through, find some
of the different music tracks that I have saved
and preview them on the fly.
Pretty neato, right?
And so again, if I, this is a track that I'd like,
I can just drag and select it
and pull it down into our media pool.
And so the next steps that we're gonna take is we're gonna
introduce some of these audio items into our video.
How do you import music, sound effects and footage into DaVinci Resolve?
Open the Media page, browse your connected drives in the upper-left area, and preview the assets you want to use. Select the destination folder in your Media Pool, then drag the chosen files into it. Add frequently used source folders to Favourites so you can find them quickly next time.
DaVinci Resolve Media Pool: Preview, Import and Organise Your Assets
Key Takeaways
Understand the difference between browsing files on your drives and organising imported project media.
Preview footage and audio before bringing them into your project.
Use the jog wheel for finer control when scrubbing through footage.
Turn off Live Media Preview if automatic playback gets in your way.
Save your most-used asset folders to Favourites for quicker access.
Once you have a rough cut, the next step is often to bring in music, sound effects and B-roll. Choosing those assets is a skill in its own right. Honestly, finding the right footage or music can take longer than figuring out the edit itself.
That is where a useful browsing and importing workflow comes in. DaVinci Resolve’s Media page gives you a place to sort through your options, preview them and bring the ones you actually want into your project.
Get Familiar with the Media Page
If you have been working on the Edit page, use the page navigation along the bottom of DaVinci Resolve to switch to Media. Depending on your workflow, you might spend a lot of time here or only drop in occasionally. Either way, it is worth knowing your way around.
The Media page is designed for browsing and importing footage, audio, images and other assets. For this workflow, there are three areas to understand:
The upper-left browser: Browse connected drives and the folders containing your source files.
The preview area: Inspect a selected video clip or listen to an audio file before deciding whether to use it.
The Media Pool in the lower half: Access the media already imported into your current project.
The important distinction is that browsing a file on a drive is not the same as importing it into your project. You can explore your library and preview potential choices before adding them to the Media Pool.
The folders in the Media Pool work just as they do on the Edit page. Click through them to find your imported assets, then double-click a clip to load it into the preview area.
Control Your Preview Before You Start Browsing
A couple of small controls make the preview area much more comfortable to use, especially when you are sorting through lots of material.
Mute, Unmute and Adjust Preview Volume
Use the little speaker icon beneath the preview to mute or unmute playback. Right-clicking that control opens a volume slider so you can adjust the listening level.
Muting is handy when you want to inspect footage without hearing its audio. When it is time to choose music or sound effects, remember to unmute it.
Use the Jog Wheel for Finer Scrubbing
Dragging the playhead left and right is a quick way to move through a clip. For a little more control, use the jog wheel, the circular control with arrows on either side beneath the preview.
Click and hold the jog wheel, then move your mouse left or right. This gives you finer control over your position in the footage than a broad drag across the playback bar.
Browse Your Asset Library on a Connected Drive
The upper-left area lists your connected drives. Click a drive, then open its folders just as you would in your computer’s file browser.
I keep a central stock media folder on my media drive. It holds the material I have downloaded for edits: music, stock footage, visual effects and sound effects. If it belongs in a video, that is generally where I put it.
Having those assets together gives you a straightforward starting point. For example, to find a whoosh sound effect, I can work through my library like this:
Open the media drive.
Open the stock media folder.
Go into the audio folder.
Open sound effects, then the saved sound effects collection.
Open the whooshes folder and preview the available files.
Your folder names do not need to match mine. The useful part is being able to work through your collection without wondering where everything lives.
Preview Sound Effects Without Importing Every Option
With a sound effects folder open, you can audition files directly from the browser. With Live Media Preview enabled, moving your mouse across an asset can trigger a preview.
That can be convenient, but sometimes it gets in the way when you are simply moving around the browser. If you would rather choose exactly when something plays, switch it off:
Open the three-dot menu in the upper-right corner of the preview area.
Untick Live Media Preview.
Double-click an asset when you want to load and preview it deliberately.
Preview a whoosh before deciding whether it belongs in your project.
Neither approach is better for everyone. Keep automatic preview on if it helps you move quickly, or turn it off if you prefer a more deliberate browsing process.
Import Your Chosen Assets into the Media Pool
Once you find a sound effect you like, bringing it into the project is simple:
Select the destination folder in your Media Pool, such as a sound effects folder you have already created.
Drag the chosen file from the upper browser into that folder in the Media Pool.
The same process works for music. Browse your tracks, listen to the candidates, then drag the one you want into the appropriate Media Pool folder.
A common workflow is to build a rough cut first, then sort through the assets you have been given or downloaded. At that stage, you can make more focused decisions about which music, effects and footage belong in the edit.
Importing prepares an asset for use; it does not place it into your timeline. Once your selections are in the Media Pool, you are ready to start introducing them into the edit.
Add Frequently Used Folders to Favourites
My favourite little time-saver here is the Favourites section on the left of the storage browser. Digging through a drive and several nested folders every time you need a sound effect gets old pretty quickly.
Instead, save a shortcut to the folders you use all the time:
Locate the source folder in the storage browser.
Right-click it and choose Add Folder to Favorites.
Use its entry in the Favourites section whenever you want to return to that location.
If that section feels cramped, drag the horizontal divider above it upwards to give it more room.
I keep a few regularly used folders there, including my audio folder. That puts music and sound effects within easy reach, rather than making me navigate the full drive structure every time.
Quick access to your audio library makes it easier to compare music tracks before importing a favourite.
The workflow stays simple: open a saved location, preview a few options and pull the right asset into the Media Pool. Less time hunting through folders means more time making choices for the edit.
Key Terms
Media page
The workspace in DaVinci Resolve used here to browse, preview and import footage, audio and images.
Media Pool
The collection of media already imported into your current project. You can organise it into folders and access those folders from the Media and Edit pages.
Live Media Preview
The option that allows assets to preview as you move your mouse across them in the browser. Disable it if you prefer to load files with a double-click.
Jog wheel
A preview control you click and drag left or right to move through footage with finer control.
Assets
The materials you bring into an edit, including music, sound effects, footage, images and visual effects.
FAQs
What is the difference between the Media page and the Media Pool?
The Media page is a workspace for browsing, previewing and importing assets. The Media Pool is the collection of imported project media, available within that workspace and on the Edit page.
How do I stop files from previewing automatically?
Open the three-dot menu in the upper-right corner of the preview area and untick Live Media Preview. You can then double-click files to load them for preview.
How can I access my music and sound effects folders faster?
Right-click a frequently used source folder and choose Add Folder to Favorites. Its shortcut will appear in the Favourites section of the storage browser.
Does dragging music into the Media Pool add it to the timeline?
No. It imports the music into your project’s media collection. Placing that music into the edit is a separate step.
Written by Brandon Baldovin — Editor & Creative Engineer
