Tutorials Video

Moving from Premiere Pro to DaVinci Resolve

By Infinite Creation · Intermediate · ~14 min

Overview

Most guides to switching editors are written for someone who has never edited. This one assumes the opposite. You already cut professionally in Premiere, you know what a ripple delete is, and what you actually need to know is which of your habits still work, which quietly do not, and what will cost you a week. The honest summary is that the editing itself transfers in an afternoon and everything around the editing is where the time goes: how projects are stored, how media is managed, how titles are built, and how work leaves the building. Resolve is also genuinely worse at some things, and a migration guide that does not say so is advertising.

What You Need

A working knowledge of Premiere. Nothing here explains what a timeline is
DaVinci Resolve installed. The free version is enough for everything on this page
One real project you have already finished, to move across as a test rather than a deadline
An hour before you need the software, rather than the morning of a deadline

Steps

Understand the one structural difference first

Premiere is a single workspace in which you rearrange panels for the task. Resolve is seven fixed pages, each a separate room with its own layout, and you move between them rather than rebuilding your workspace. Media, Cut, Edit, Fusion, Color, Fairlight and Deliver. This sounds like a cosmetic difference and is not: it means the software has an opinion about what stage you are at, and fighting that opinion is the most common reason people bounce off Resolve in the first week.

Accept that your project file is now a database

Premiere keeps a project file next to your footage that you can copy, email and back up like any other file. Resolve keeps projects in a project library, which is a database. Nothing you do in the Project Manager writes a file you can hand to someone. This single difference changes backup, handover and disaster recovery, and it is where people lose work, which is why it has a page of its own in this series.

Remap the keyboard on day one, and know what the remap cannot do

Resolve ships keyboard presets that emulate other editors. The manual is candid about the limit: shortcuts can only be remapped to commands that functionally exist within Resolve, so where a Premiere feature has no equivalent the key will not be mapped. That sentence is worth reading twice, because the gaps it describes are exactly the ones that will interrupt you mid-edit.

Move a finished project, not a live one

Do the first migration with something you have already delivered. You know what it is supposed to look like, so you can see what arrived wrong, and nobody is waiting. Moving a live project first is how people end up rebuilding a timeline at two in the morning having discovered that speed ramps did not survive.

Find out where the gaps are before you commit a client to them

The honest weak spots are motion graphics and the template ecosystem. Resolve has no equivalent of the Essential Graphics template library or the live relationship with After Effects, and its own title generators carry limitations the manual states plainly. If your work leans on that, find out now rather than on a job.

Keep Premiere installed for a while

Not as a safety blanket but as a practical matter. Archived projects will need reopening, clients send project files, and the round trip is not always worth doing for a two minute change. Treating the move as absolute on day one creates work that has no reason to exist.

Pro Tips

The free version of Resolve is not a demo. It is the full editor with some delivery and hardware limits, and it is enough to make this decision properly.
Resolve is much more sensitive to GPU than Premiere. A machine that edits Premiere comfortably can feel slow in Resolve for reasons that have nothing to do with the edit.
Do not import your Premiere keyboard muscle memory and your Premiere project structure at the same time. Change one, settle, then change the other.

Knowledge Base

Background and Detail

Two things decide whether this migration is comfortable, and neither is the editing.

Why the page model is the real adjustment

Editors describe the move as easy or as maddening and the split usually comes down to whether they accepted the page model or fought it. Premiere lets you build a workspace for the task, which means your habits live in a layout you designed. Resolve decides the layout and expects you to move between rooms. There is no way to partially adopt this. The editors who settle quickly stop trying to see the timeline and the scopes at once and start treating the page switch as free.

What the free version actually leaves out

It is worth being precise, because the free version being genuinely capable is often stated and rarely detailed. Editing, the node based grade, Fusion and Fairlight are all present. The paid version adds specific codec support, certain hardware integrations, some noise reduction and the collaboration features. For deciding whether to migrate, none of those are load bearing, which is why the trial can be a real project rather than a demo.

Where This Fits

Changing editors changes one stage, and Video Production Fundamentals covers the arc that stage sits in.

FAQ

Q: Is the free version really enough?
A: For editing, colour, audio and most delivery, yes. The paid version adds specific codecs, some hardware support, certain noise reduction and collaboration features. None of those change whether the migration is viable.

Q: Can I open a Premiere project directly?
A: No. Nothing opens a .prproj except Premiere. You move work across by exporting an interchange format, usually XML or AAF, and what survives that trip is its own subject.

Q: Should I move at all?
A: If you are moving for colour, the case is strong and well documented. If you are moving to escape a subscription, factor in the time cost of the gaps described here. If your work is graphics led, the case is weakest.

Vocabulary

Page One of the seven fixed workspaces in Resolve, named Media, Cut, Edit, Fusion, Color, Fairlight and Deliver. A page is not a panel layout you rearrange. It is a separate room with its own layout for one stage of the work, and you move between pages rather than rebuilding a workspace.

Project library The database in which Resolve stores projects. It replaces the project file a Premiere editor is used to copying and backing up. Nothing in the Project Manager writes a file you can email, so backup and handover mean exporting a project or duplicating the library.

Interchange format A file such as XML, AAF or EDL that describes a timeline in a form another application can read. It carries the structure of an edit, not the full contents of a project, and it is how work moves from Premiere into Resolve, since nothing else opens a .prproj.

Keyboard emulation preset A set of shortcut mappings in Resolve intended to resemble another editor, chosen in the Keyboard Customization window. It can only map commands that functionally exist in Resolve, so where a Premiere feature has no equivalent, its shortcut may be left unmapped.

Sources

Resolve behaviour on this page is from the vendor manual, read directly. Where a claim is about how a migration feels rather than what the software does, it is written as judgement rather than fact. Checked 2026-09-11.

Blackmagic Design, DaVinci Resolve 21 Reference Manual. Read 2026-09-11, version 21, 4,444 pages. Chapter 4, System and User Preferences, page 125, describes the Keyboard Customization window and states that shortcuts can only be remapped to commands that functionally exist within DaVinci Resolve, so a feature of another editor with no equivalent may not be mapped the same way.