Add a background image in DaVinci Resolve

The short answer

To add a background image in DaVinci Resolve, import the image into the Media Pool, place it on a video track below your main clip, and make the main clip's own background transparent so the image shows through. The simplest version is the layering step: whatever sits on the higher video track covers whatever sits beneath it. The image only becomes a visible background if the clip above it has transparent areas, either because it was shot against a green or blue screen that you key out, because it already contains an alpha channel, or because you isolate the subject with a mask.

One condition limits this. Resolve is post-production software, so it replaces the background in a recording after the fact. It does not change your background during a live call. Live background replacement is handled by your conferencing app or a virtual camera tool, which is a separate workflow.

Step 1: Import the image and set up the tracks

• Import the background image into the Media Pool, either by dragging the file in or by using the import option in the Media Pool.
• On the Edit page, drag the image onto Video Track 1 (V1).
• Place your recorded clip on Video Track 2 (V2), directly above the image, so the two overlap in time.
• Drag the end of the image on the timeline to make it as long as the clip. Still images arrive with a default duration that you can change in the editing section of the user preferences.
• If the image does not fill the frame, select it and use the Zoom and Position controls in the Inspector's Transform section. A project setting for mismatched resolution files also controls how images are scaled to the timeline.

At this point you will still see only the clip on V2, because it is fully opaque. The next step depends on how the footage was recorded.

Step 2: Make the foreground transparent

Footage shot against a green or blue screen

Apply a keyer to the clip on V2. On the Edit page, the Effects Library includes keying effects in its Resolve FX section that you can drag onto the clip and adjust in the Inspector. For finer control you can key the clip on the Color page or build the composite on the Fusion page, where a keyer node feeds a Merge node with the background image as the bottom input. Key quality depends heavily on how evenly the screen was lit and on how far the subject sat from it, so expect to adjust the matte and clean up edges.

Footage with an existing alpha channel

If the foreground is a file that already carries transparency, such as a PNG graphic or a video exported with alpha, Resolve can usually display the transparent areas directly, and the image on V1 will show through without any keying.

Ordinary webcam footage with a real background

Without a green screen, you need to separate the person from the room by masking. Resolve offers an AI-assisted subject mask on the Color page called Magic Mask, but its availability has depended on the edition and version you use, so check whether your installation includes it. Manual masks with tracking are the fallback. Either approach is more work than keying a green screen, and results vary with lighting, hair detail and movement.

What this means for the speech you recorded

Changing the background is a video-only operation. Keying, masking and layering an image underneath do not alter the audio attached to your clip, so the voice captured by a webcam microphone keeps the same level, tone and noise it had when recorded.

• Keep the clip on V2 linked to its audio while you move or trim it, so speech stays in sync with the picture.
• The still image has no audio, so it adds nothing to the mix.
• If you rebuild the shot in Fusion, the audio stays on the Edit page timeline rather than inside the Fusion composition.
• A new background does not hide room acoustics. Echo from a reflective room, for example, will still be audible even if the picture now shows a different space, which can make the mismatch more noticeable.

Gaps in this guide

No version-specific documentation was supplied for this article. Menu names, the location of effects and which features are included in the free edition have changed between Resolve releases, so treat the steps above as a general workflow and confirm the exact controls in your installed version. This guide also does not cover troubleshooting audio problems such as missing or low-level sound after import, since no specific symptom was described.