How to Edit Gaming Videos For Beginners [2024]

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In this tutorial, I'll be explaining how you can use a free tool, DaVinci Resolve, to edit your gaming videos.

I'll explain how to bring in your footage, cut the footage up, how to add titles, and music, and how to make it all look good so that it's ready to be uploaded. This will help you get more views and subscribers so that you can grow your stream. 

Getting Started

The first thing you're going to want to do is download DaVinci Resolve. You can download this here for free. You'll put in your information and you can download this on a Mac, Windows, Linux, or even on your iPad. Once you've selected this, press 'Download'. 

Once you've downloaded this for the first time, it'll bring you to a dashboard like the one below. 

On the bottom-right side, select 'New Project' and you'll give this a name. I'll be doing an NBA 2K25 video, so I'll put that here. Now, press 'Create'. 

Now, you'll have the dashboard for where you'll be editing

In order to get to the 'Edit' tab, you're going to come to the bottom and select 'Edit'. This is where we're going to do everything that I'll mention here today. By the end of this tutorial, you'll have an edited video that's ready to be uploaded. 

Getting Ready to Start Editing

How you record your gaming content is extremely important. It makes a big difference with how easily and well you'll be able to edit your footage.

The easiest way to be able to edit your content is to have your video, audio, and gameplay all together. Typically, you'll grab this at the end of your stream, by your VOD, or if you use OBS Studio to record your streams. If you have your video, audio, and gameplay all recorded separately, it'll be more complex to edit since you have to sync everything together. 

Again, this tutorial's goal is to give you the basics of how to edit. Over time, you can watch more YouTube videos to learn even more about how to use DaVinci Resolve and get a bit fancier with it. 

For example, I'm going to take my VOD which has my video, audio, and gameplay. I'll bring this footage into my DaVinci. If you're following along, I would encourage you to add everything you can now and then add other elements later as you need. 

The first thing I'm going to do is drag my footage from my computer to where it says 'Master'. 

This is going to ask if you want to "Change Project Frame Rate". I would encourage you to select 'Change' as this will give you a smooth experience. 

Now, I'll also add in a few other videos and images that I have already by just dragging and dropping these into the same spot. 

Once you have all of the clips and images that you want to use uploaded, you can begin to piece them together. 

Piecing Together Your Clips

To start piecing these together, you're going to drag the clips into the center, which will create your 'Timeline'. This is where you're going to add your video, gameplay, titles, edits, and everything else that we need to make this video look professional. 

Once we have this in here, the first thing I would encourage you to do is go through the video and start cutting out the parts that you do not want. The easiest way to do this is to select the 'Blade' tool and you can click anywhere on the timeline to make cuts to the video. 

You can also make the timeline larger by using the + and - slider on the toolbar. 

At the start of my video, I'm not really talking much so I can cut this out. You want your video to start with you getting right into the action so that your viewers get hooked. Once I make the cuts, I'll select the clip and press the 'Delete' button on my keyboard to get rid of it. Then, I'll drag the rest of the clip to the start of the timeline. 

I would then go through and find where my intro stops in the video. It's super important that you have an intro so that you have people getting excited about the video or so you can showcase the most exciting parts of the video upfront. 

Adding Images and Other Videos to the Timeline

In my video, I mention the Legend Dimer which is a badge in NBA 2K25. Anytime that you can show what it is that you're talking about, you should as this will make the video more interesting to the viewer. So, I'll take the image of this badge that I uploaded and drag it right above my video on the timeline. 

I don't need this photo to be as long as it is, so if I click on the clip and go to the end, I can drag the bracket inwards and it will shorten the length of time that the image is on the timeline for. 

After this, I started to talk about the shooting badges, so I have a video where I go through each of the different badges since I didn't show these in the initial video. I'll just drag it into the timeline, above the first video. 

For this video, I don't need the audio that's attached to it, so I can get rid of this. When you select the audio, you'll also see the video highlight since these are linked together. To unlink these, right-click on the audio and select 'Link Clips'. Then, you should be able to delete the audio and be left with just the video showing the badges. Then, you can adjust where you need the clip to be. 

Once I have this clip at the right starting point, I need to find where it ends. To shorten this clip, you can either drag the end bracket inwards or you can use the 'Blade' tool. 

After this clip is where my intro ends. To mark this, I'll use the 'Blade' tool and splice the initial video where the intro ends. 

Making your intro good is where you'll want to spend most of your time editing. This is what keeps the viewer invested for the rest of the video. You really want to make sure that the intro is exciting and draws the viewers in. 

Adjusting Your Intro

The first thing I want to do to make my intro even stronger is to make my camera larger in the clip since I'm not showing any gameplay and want the attention to be on me. To do this, you'll select the clip on the timeline and go to where it says 'Video' on the right-hand side. 

I'll start by zooming in using the 'Zoom' option and then moving the clip over by adjusting the 'Position'. I'll want to adjust this some more and get this as close as I possibly can since this portion is just me talking anyway. This will only affect the intro section since we spliced the clip at the end of the intro. 

I'll also do this with the video of the badges that I added since there's other information in the clip that isn't important. I'll adjust this the same way as the other clip to show just what I want the viewer to see. 

Adding Transitions

Once I get done with the intro, I'll jump into editing the rest of the video. The start of the clip after the intro shows me pressing play on the clip and not talking, so I'll cut this portion out. Then, I'll delete the portion I don't want and move the rest of the clip over to the end of the intro. 

Whenever you jump from one part of the video into the next, you're going to want to add a transition. This is an effect where the clip will either slide in, slide out, or dissolve. You can add this by coming over to the left-hand side to where it says 'Toolbox' and then going to 'Video Transitions'. 

If you don't see this toolbox, simply go to the top of the screen and toggle on 'Effects'. 

Now, you'll be able to see all of the different transitions that you can choose from. You can grab one of these and just simply drag it on top of the cut that you made between the intro and the rest of the video. Then, you can press play and watch the transition play out. There are tons of different options for you to select so you can go through these and decide which one you want to use. 

Adding Titles

The next thing we're going to do is add some titles. To do this, you'll go back to the 'Toolbox' and go to 'Titles'. Now, you can scroll through these and see which ones you like and would want to use. 

I'm going to go ahead and grab 'Fade On'. I'll drag this onto my timeline. I'm also going to change the text to say "All Legend Shooting Badges", but I'll press enter between "legend" and "shooting" so that it creates a line break. I'll also have this playing over me talking right before the video with the shooting badges begins playing. 

On the right side, where you change what the text says, you can also adjust the font, color, size, and other elements that change how the text looks. 

Just like that, you've been able to add in your clips, images, cuts, transitions, and titles. Now, you need to continue doing this for the rest of the video, cutting out parts you don't need and cleaning it up. 

Adding Music

One thing that you're definitely going to need to do is add music. You don't want this to just be you talking the whole time. Adding music goes a long way in helping the viewer stay entertained and invested in your video. If you have a longer video, you're also going to want to have more than one song in the video. 

You also don't want to be using just any music; you want to be sure that you're using royalty-free music. This will allow you to post your videos across multiple platforms without receiving any copyright strikes that could potentially cause the video or your channel to get taken down, getting rid of all your hard work. 

This is why I use Epidemic Sound.

They have over 90,000 royalty-free sound effects and over 50,000 songs to choose from for all of your streaming and video needs. You can currently get a free 30-day trial so that you can make sure that you like this before committing to their subscriptions.

One of my favorite features that Epidemic Sound has is the 'Safelist'.

This means that I can add my different accounts and then be able to post their music to any of these without receiving any copyright strikes or claims. This makes the whole process worry-free since they have all of the licensing for the music. 

As you go through the Epidemic Sound library, you'll see that they have all kinds of genres and types of music. The more that you use and download songs from Epidemic Sound, the more it understands what you're looking for and can recommend songs it thinks you would like. 

If you're on the DaVinci Resolve Studio, you can get access to the Epidemic Sound Plug-in which allows you to integrate Epidemic Sound directly into DaVinci. This way, you don't have to leave DaVinci Resolve and you can just drag-and-drop the music directly into your timeline. 

For this example, I'm going to go ahead and add a song. If you're listening to a song and want to find ones that are similar, you can press the button that says 'Find Similar'. However, I'm just going to go ahead and download the song by pressing the down arrow button. 

You can then decide whether you want to download the full mix, just the melody, just the bass, or just the drums depending on how you want this to sound in your video. 

You can do this with the Epidemic Sound plug-in. You can also decide if you want to make the track shorter or longer, but for now, I'm just going to go ahead and download this song as an MP3. 

Once that's downloaded, I'll go back to DaVinci and drag and drop the song from my computer into my media. 

Again, I'm using music that I know will not leave any copyright claims or strikes against my account. 

Now, you can drag the music right into the timeline at the beginning. When you first add this in, it's going to be really loud, so you'll want to click on the audio, go to 'Volume' on the right-hand side, and bring this down to about '-30'. 

As mentioned earlier, you're going to want to switch up the music throughout the video, so you'll want to go back to Epidemic Sound to find similar songs that you can use as well. 

Once I find a song that sounds similar and that I like, I'll download it as an MP3, and add it to DaVinci the same way as before. You'll want the two songs to be matched in terms of volume, so you'll also lower this song to about '-30'. 

If you want the next song to start playing a little bit faster, you can use the bracket at the start of the song and move it into where the song actually begins, cutting out the space before. What this does is it creates a different vibe and causes the viewer to tune back in, especially during a longer video. When the music changes, it makes people get re-engaged. 

Downloading Your Video

Now, we've added in our music, images, titles, graphics, and videos, and everything is cut together, so it's ready to be downloaded and then uploaded to YouTube. 

At the bottom of the screen, click on the button that says 'Deliver'. This is going to be where you download the video.

In the top-left corner, you'll find some presets that will give you the best quality settings for wherever you're going to upload this. 

I would highly encourage you to use the 'YouTube' preset as it will already utilize the best settings for your video. 

Once you have this selected, you'll scroll down and click 'Add to Render Queue'. Then, you'll choose where on your computer you want this to download to and you'll name the download. I'm going to name mine "NBA 2K25 Video". Then, you'll hit save and this will save. 

Unless you press 'Render All', the video will just be saved but will not download. So, you want to select 'Render All' and it will begin to piece the video together and tell you how long this is going to take. 

Once that's done, the video will be downloaded onto your computer and can be uploaded to YouTube from there. 

If you are going to be uploading this to YouTube, it's super important that you have a good thumbnail. If you don't have a good thumbnail, then it will erase all of the hard work you've just put into editing your video since people won't be clicking on your video.

Go ahead and check out this video here to learn how to create a gaming thumbnail that will have people clicking on your videos. In turn, this will also get you more views.