A DaVinci Resolve review workflow that keeps clients out of your timeline

DaVinci Resolve is a phenomenal edit and grade tool, but it isn’t where you want your client leaving feedback. You don’t want notes living inside the project, you don’t want to hand out access to your database, and you definitely don’t want the client “just moving one thing” on your timeline. What you want is a clean loop: cut in Resolve, review outside it, bring the approved decisions back.

Here’s a workflow that keeps the two worlds separate.

1. Cut in Resolve, export a review copy

Work as you normally would in Resolve. When you’re ready for eyes on it, export a review copy — a reasonable H.264/H.265 at a sensible bitrate is plenty for feedback (save the full-quality master for the deliverable). This is the version that leaves your machine; your project stays yours.

Upload the export to a review tool and send a single link. This is the step that keeps everything sane: one link means everyone comments on the same version, instead of five people marking up five downloaded copies. With a resumable uploader, even a large export goes up in the background and survives a dropped connection.

The friction here on per-seat tools is that inviting the colourist, the producer, and the client can cost money. On a storage-based tool they’re all free, so you invite everyone who touches the cut without thinking about it.

3. Collect frame-exact notes

Ask for feedback on the frame, not in prose. “Warm up the grade from 01:12” or “trim the head of this shot” attached to the exact timestamp is something you can act on; “the vibe feels off” is a guessing game. Timestamped comments and on-frame drawings turn the review into a punch list you can work straight down back in Resolve.

4. Resolve notes, then approve

Mark comments done as you address them so the client sees live progress and nothing comes back twice. When the list is clear, get an explicit approval on a specific version — a recorded sign-off, not a thumbs-up in chat.

5. Lock the picture

Lock the approved version as the reference. That’s your picture lock — the signed-off cut that protects the grade, the mix, and everything downstream. New versions can stack on top for future changes, but the locked one stays unambiguous. Everyone with access can see which cut is final.

Why keep them separate

Resolve is for the craft; the review tool is for the conversation. Keeping them separate means your project stays clean, your client never needs Resolve installed, and your feedback lives in one organised place instead of scattered across the app, email, and chat. Editlock is built to be the review half of that loop — Resolve-friendly, with unlimited free reviewers so the whole team can weigh in on the cut.

Starter post — adapt to your own Resolve setup.