How To Separate Audio From Video In DaVinci Resolve 18

How to separate audio from video in Davinci Resolve may not be trivial for beginners transitioning from Premiere Pro. This tutorial will show you an example of how to unlink audio from video on timeline and in Media Pool. Unattaching the audio from video track is done by using chain button, but you might also want to right-click on your track and uncheck the unlink checkbox.

If you want to learn how to separate audio from audio, here's a YouTube video for speed learners:

For those who prefer to read, continue on with the article!

Man I just hate how unintuitive separating tracks in davinci resolve is. Especially if you're someone who's just getting started with the software.

When you cut a video in Davinci Resolve, you'll cut through both video and audio tracks. And that's fine, because that's exactly how it works in Premiere Pro.

But it's not so trivial to figure out by yourself how to actually detach audio from video so that you can start cutting the audio separately from the video track.

Unlinking audio is essential skill to have, because you might need it for cropping out individual words from the dialogue on the audio track.

Or if you've spoken too loud and you want to normalize audio on a short span of your video.

In DaVinci Resolve separating audio can be used for extracting sound from a video and saving it into a separate file, or moving the audio around on the timeline independent of the related video track. This can be useful for editing and manipulating audio gaps in large clips.

One of the primary editing techniques in DaVinci Resolve is how to detach audio.

There are at least three ways to separate audio from video in DaVinci Resolve 18.

1. Extract audio part of the clip into a separate raw audio file (MP3 or WAV.)
2. Moving only audio or only video part of a file onto the timeline.
3. Separating audio track from the video directly on the timeline.

Separating audio from video depends on what you're looking to achieve. In this tutorial we'll cover all of the 3 cases listed above. As a Resolve beginner you will definitely want to know these tips and tricks!

1. How to extract audio track into a separate WAV file

It all starts with the Media tab:

To save just the audio part of a video file (MP4) go to Media Tab (at the bottom UI).

Now click on the Media Storage tab in the upper left corner to open file system.

Navigate to the folder and file from which you want to extract audio as a WAV file.

Right click on the file and click Extract Audio and a WAV file will be created and saved in the same folder with the original video. You can now drag this audio into your project or use it separately on your timeline.

2. How to move only the audio or only the video part of a file onto the timeline

Start out with a video file that contains both video and audio content. Make sure it's somewhere in your project or in a folder on your computer.

You can move only audio or only video of a complete video file onto the timeline, by dragging the video onto the timeline (from your media pool) while pressing and holding either Shift or Alt.

Here's how to separate audio from video onto timeline in Edit Mode:

And here's how to separate video from audio onto timeline in Edit Mode:

To drag separate components of a video onto the timeline follow these steps:

1. Go to Edit Mode in the bottom navigation bar UI.
2. Go to Media Pool tab in upper left corner.
3. Browse folders to find your video file.
4. Press and hold Shift key and drag the file onto timeline to separate the audio from the video file and add it to timeline as a single audio track.
5. Press and hold Alt key and drag the file onto timeline to only add the video part of the file onto a video track, without the audio track.

3. How to separate audio from video on timeline using Alt keyboard shortcut

You can also separate an audio track from the video clip on DaVinci Resolve timeline itself, by pressing and holding Alt key and then clicking on either video or audio part of the clip.

To separate audio from video on timeline follow these steps:

1. Drag video file onto the timeline.
2. Press and hold theAlt key and click on audio track or video part.
3. While in this state, click and drag the audio or video part to separately move it around on timeline.
4. The composite clip will be still attached, it's just temporarily detached.

Keep in mind the video and audio are still linked together, they are just temporarily detached until you're done moving audio/video part of it to a new location.

Here's an image hint:

This is useful when you want to temporarily separate audio from video, move it around, and retain positional relationship between the video and the audio intact. (Once you move audio track this way, the video will still be attached to the audio.)

Sometimes you want to completely detach the video from the audio object.

This is explained in the following section.

4. How to separate audio from video using Linked Selection Tool

Alternatively you can use Linked Selection (Ctrl + Shift+L keyboard shortcut) on a selected clip. This will link/unlink audio from the video.

Linked selection is exactly what it sounds like: it combines two selactable elements such as an audio and a video, together. So when you click on one, the entire set in the linked selection is selected.

You can use the Linked Selection tool to toggle between linking and unlinking your video clip to related audio track. So if you use it again on a linked composite, it will unchain the selection and the items will be individually selectable again.

The Linked Selection tool is the button with two chain links on it, just below the main video player:

In DaVinci Resolve 17 how to separate audio from video is a technique that mirrors everything we've described in the above examples so far.