Destructive Timeline Editing

Hi, I am a Vegas Pro user of 12 years who recently converted to DaVinci Resolve, and while the majority of DaVinci Resolve's quirks can be easily overcome, I find this problem to be consistently destructive to my timeline requiring me to constantly use the "Undo" command or not realizing I have accidentally deleted a clip until much later.

When adding clips/moving clips in Vegas Pro, If you dropped a clip on top of another clip or moved a clip over another clip in the timeline, the most recent clip would only change the opacity of the clip below, and wouldn't change it in any way. (Deleted/truncated). You could in fact slide the newer clip back and forth if you wanted without causing any alteration of the clips underneath it. This is also how Vegas did the cross-fade transition -- by overlapping two clips on the same track.

It's an intuitive and non-destructive way to handle timeline inserts.

Although I try to be careful, when editing in DaVinci Resolve, the clips are automatically overwritten when drug over, or when moved partially over an adjoining clip, so I find myself constantly deleting or partially deleting a clip/track when editing a large project.

Is there any way to have the timeline function non-destructively like Vegas Pro, in DaVinci Resolve 16?

I'm also interested to know if there is a setting where we can drag clips freely around the timeline (Edit Page) without worrying about destroying other clips on the page.

Any suggestions?

Thank you.

It's an intuitive and non-destructive way to handle timeline inserts.

Bit it's not industry standard behavior.

Resolve has a similar feature, though it's called up deliberately with modifiers. The behavior you see in Resolve is SOP for NLE's.

This may be one of those things you have to get used to.

Resolve has a similar feature, though it's called up deliberately with modifiers.

What does this mean? What modifiers?

The only equivalent in Resolve for video clips would seem to be using higher tracks for the added clips. There's also something called "take selector", which allows multiple clips to occupy a single timeline position, but its a fixed stack of clips, the timeline will not adjust as you drag and drop.

You might want to add this one to feature request list. It's worth looking into. Of course, if it were added, folks would complain about clips mysteriously buried underneath other clips.

The only equivalent in Resolve for video clips would seem to be using higher tracks for the added clips. There's also something called "take selector", which allows multiple clips to occupy a single timeline position, but its a fixed stack of clips, the timeline will not adjust as you drag and drop.

You might want to add this one to feature request list. It's worth looking into. Of course, if it were added, folks would complain about clips mysteriously buried underneath other clips.

Thank you for the reply.

My current editing method (to make sure I don't destroy/modify existing clips) is to manually move clips to another blank track (Alt-Up/Down arrow) when they need to be moved around, and then return them to the track I'm editing on once I'm done rearranging. Even swapping clips on the same track (Control-Shift drag) is giving me problems when I have linked subtitles (post about that here). It seems like an extra step to constantly move the clips back and forth between tracks, but it works.

What does this mean? What modifiers?

If you hold down Shift+Alt while dragging one clip over another, it will automatically add a transition. I think that's as close as you'll get to the Vegas behavior in Resolve.