davinci resolve chroma key

The short answer: DaVinci Resolve's Delta Keyer is the most capable free chroma key tool available. It lives in the Fusion page — a node-based compositing environment — and it does what paid plugins do in other editors: sample a colour range in 3D space, suppress spill with a dedicated tab, and clean up the matte with curves rather than single sliders. The learning curve is steeper than Premiere Pro's Ultra Key, but the result on difficult footage is better, and the price is zero.

This page is specifically about DaVinci Resolve. For the general keying principles that apply to every editor, see the green screen removal guide. For comparing Resolve against other editors, see the green screen editing software comparison.

Where the Delta Keyer lives

Unlike Premiere Pro, where the keyer is an effect you drag onto a clip, Resolve's keyer is a node in the Fusion page. To get there: select your clip in the Edit page, then click the Fusion tab at the bottom of the interface. The clip appears as a MediaIn node on the left side of the node tree. You add a Delta Keyer node between MediaIn and MediaOut (the output node).

To add the node: with the MediaOut node selected, press Shift+Space to open the Effects search, type "Delta Keyer", and select it. The node appears in the tree. Drag from MediaIn's output to the Delta Keyer's input, and from the Delta Keyer's output to MediaOut's input. The node tree now reads: MediaIn → Delta Keyer → MediaOut.

If you have used Resolve's older 3D Keyer (Resolve 17 and earlier), the Delta Keyer is its successor. The 3D Keyer is still available in the Effects menu, but the Delta Keyer is the recommended tool in Resolve 18 and later.

Step 1: Sample the key colour in 3D

Select the Delta Keyer node and look at its controls in the Inspector panel on the right. Under the Colour tab, you will see the key colour swatch with an eyedropper. Click the eyedropper, then click on the green screen in the viewer.

The difference between Resolve's colour picker and a simple one is that Resolve samples in 3D colour space — it does not pick a single point, it picks a range. After sampling, you can expand or contract the range by adjusting the delta value, which controls how wide a volume of colour space is treated as background. This is more precise than a single tolerance slider because it accounts for the fact that a green screen is never one flat colour — it is a cluster of similar greens, and the picker defines the shape of that cluster.

Step 2: Adjust the delta (tolerance)

The delta control is Resolve's version of tolerance. Raise it until the background disappears, then back off slightly. Check the result in the matte view: under the Display menu in the Delta Keyer, switch to Matte to see the alpha channel as black and white. White is subject, black is background. Look for grey areas along the edges and holes in the subject.

The Delta Keyer also has an Edge control with a softness curve. Instead of a single feather slider, you get a curve that lets you control the transition across the matte boundary with more precision. For most footage, a small softness value on the curve is enough — push it too high and the subject looks like it is wrapped in plastic.

Step 3: Spill suppression

Switch to the Spill tab in the Delta Keyer controls. Resolve's spill suppression is more capable than Premiere Pro's single slider: it has separate controls for spill amount, spill range, and a colour correction that lets you replace the desaturated green with a neutral tone. Start with the amount slider and raise it until the green rim on the subject disappears, then fine-tune the range if needed.

As with any keyer, spill is caused by the subject standing too close to the screen during filming. If the spill is heavy enough that suppression turns the subject grey, the footage was shot wrong — no amount of post-production will fully fix it. The green screen editor guide covers spill measurement and the trade-offs of each despill method.

Step 4: Matte cleanup

The Matte tab has controls for shrinking (choke) and softening the matte, similar to Premiere Pro's matte cleanup but with more granular control. Use shrink to remove fringe pixels around the subject, and soften to blur the matte boundary. Small values are usually enough — one or two pixels of shrink and one to three of soften on 1080p footage.

There is also a garbage matte option inside the Delta Keyer node, or you can add a separate garbage matte node before the Delta Keyer in the node tree. For unevenly lit screens, add a garbage matte node to exclude the problem areas, then let the Delta Keyer solve only the edges.

Step 5: Background composite

To composite a new background, add a second MediaIn node for the background image or video. Connect both the Delta Keyer's output and the background MediaIn's output to a Merge node. The Delta Keyer's output goes to the Merge's foreground input, the background goes to the background input, and the Merge's output goes to MediaOut. The node tree now reads: MediaIn (green screen) → Delta Keyer → Merge ← MediaIn (background) → MediaOut.

This node-based approach is Resolve's strength and its barrier. Once you understand the node tree, it is more flexible than a timeline-based effect chain — you can branch, combine, and reorder operations in ways that a linear effect stack cannot. But the initial learning curve is real, and if you are only keying one clip, Premiere Pro's drag-and-drop approach is faster.

Delta Keyer vs Magic Mask

Resolve also has Magic Mask, an AI-based tool that isolates a subject from any background — with or without a green screen. The two tools serve different purposes:

If you shot on green screen, use the Delta Keyer. If you did not, Magic Mask is the fallback — but it requires Studio, and the video background remover guide covers the broader landscape of AI-based removal tools.

Exporting with transparency

On the Deliver page, choose a format that stores alpha:

• QuickTime ProRes 4444. The standard for production pipelines. Large files, exact alpha.
• WebM with VP9. For web playback in Chromium and Firefox. Resolve's WebM exporter includes alpha support.
• PNG or TIFF sequence. Each frame as a separate image with alpha. Maximally compatible.
• Not H.264 or H.265. No alpha channel in the base profiles. A transparent export to these codecs comes back flat.

For social media delivery, composite the background and export opaque.

Quick answers

Related reading: the four keying settings in order (general guide), choosing the right green screen editor, Premiere Pro chroma key (Ultra Key), rescuing unevenly lit footage, 12 checks before you export, and removing a video background without a green screen.