Remove a white background in DaVinci Resolve

The short answer

You can remove a white background in DaVinci Resolve by keying on brightness rather than color. Use a luminance qualifier on the Color page, or a Luma Keyer in Fusion, to select the bright background. Then invert the selection so the subject stays, and route the result to an alpha (transparency) output. The main limitation is the footage. This works well only when the background is evenly lit and clearly brighter than every part of the subject. White clothing, bright skin highlights, eyes, teeth or a blown-out window will be keyed out along with the background. In those cases you need masks, a different keying approach or a reshoot against a green or blue screen.

DaVinci Resolve is an editing and finishing application, not a live virtual camera. Keying here applies to recorded footage. It will not replace your background during a live video call.

Why white is harder to key than green

Chroma keying works because a saturated green or blue rarely appears in skin and clothing. White has no hue to separate on, so the key has to rely on brightness alone. Almost every shot contains other bright areas, so the separation is narrower. Webcam footage adds further problems. Automatic exposure can push the background to pure white and clip nearby detail such as hair edges. Compression softens edges and adds blocky artifacts that make a clean matte harder to pull. A bright wall also bounces light onto the subject, which reduces the brightness gap you are keying on.

Method 1: Luminance qualifier on the Color page

This approach works in the node-based Color page and suits simple shots. Menu labels and their exact positions can differ between Resolve versions, so confirm the names in your installed version.

• 1. Place the clip on the timeline and open the Color page.
• 2. Select the clip's node, or add a new serial node for the key.
• 3. Open the Qualifier palette and switch it to Luma mode so the selection is based on brightness only.
• 4. Use the picker on the white background. Then widen or narrow the luminance range until the whole background is selected and the subject is not.
• 5. Turn on the highlight view to check the selection, and look closely at hair, shoulders and any bright clothing.
• 6. Invert the qualifier so the subject, not the background, is the selected area.
• 7. Right-click in the node graph and add an Alpha Output. Then connect the node's key output to it.
• 8. Return to the Edit page. The background should now be transparent, and any clip on a lower video track should show through.

Method 2: Luma Keyer in Fusion

The Fusion page gives more control and is a better choice when the edges need refinement or the key feeds a larger composite.

• 1. Select the clip and open the Fusion page.
• 2. Insert a Luma Keyer node between the media input and media output nodes.
• 3. Adjust the low and high thresholds until the white background becomes transparent.
• 4. Invert the key if the subject disappears instead of the background.
• 5. View the alpha channel in the viewer. Solid white indicates fully opaque areas and black indicates fully transparent ones. Grey areas inside the subject point to problems that need fixing.
• 6. Optionally, merge a new background underneath with a Merge node, or leave the result transparent and composite it on the Edit page.

Cleaning up the matte

A first-pass luminance key usually leaves holes in the subject or a bright fringe around it. These adjustments address the most common problems:

• Holes in the subject: draw a garbage or holdout mask around the subject, such as a Power Window on the Color page or a Polygon mask in Fusion. This forces the area to stay opaque regardless of brightness.
• Leftover background specks: tighten the luminance range, or use matte clean-up controls (often labelled clean black and clean white) to push near-transparent and near-opaque values to their extremes.
• Bright halo around edges: shrink the matte slightly so the outer edge bites into the subject a little.
• Hard, cut-out edges: add a small amount of matte blur or softness. Then judge the result against the actual new background rather than black.
• Flickering edges: these usually come from compression noise or exposure changes between frames. Light denoising before the key can help. A locked exposure on the camera prevents the problem in future recordings.

Paid features and version differences

Newer Resolve releases include AI-assisted subject isolation, such as Magic Mask, that can separate a person without relying on background brightness. These tools have generally been limited to the paid Studio edition. The available keyers have also changed between versions. No version-specific evidence was supplied for this article, so check your edition's feature list before you plan around a particular tool.

Exporting with transparency

If you want the subject on a transparent background rather than a new background inside Resolve, choose an output format that supports an alpha channel. Image sequences such as PNG or TIFF support alpha, as do some intermediate video codecs. In the Deliver page, enable the option to export alpha. Common delivery formats such as standard H.264 files do not carry transparency, and the keyed areas will render as black. Which alpha-capable codecs appear in the list depends on your operating system and Resolve edition.

What keying does to recorded speech

Keying is a video-only operation. Removing the background does not change the clip's audio track, and speech recorded through a webcam microphone stays in sync and unaltered. If the audio has problems such as low level, noise or echo, they come from the recording itself and need to be handled separately on the audio side. The brief supplied no evidence about specific webcam microphones, so this article does not evaluate audio capture quality.

Recording tips for an easier key next time

• Light the background evenly and keep it brighter than the subject, but avoid clipping it so hard that detail around the edges is lost.
• Put distance between the subject and the wall to reduce light bouncing onto the subject.
• Avoid white or very light clothing.
• Lock exposure and white balance on the camera if it allows, so brightness does not shift during the recording.
• If you control the setup and need clean results, a green or blue backdrop is generally easier to key than white.