Can I compress video clips before doing the editing?

Hello,
I'm pretty new to this software and to video editing in general. I've been joining video clips and fading them together nicely to make large videos. The end results are great but the export process takes many hours.
I'm wondering if it's a good practice to compress the video clips before editing them, to reduce the export size drastically. I use Handbrake for file compression.
Does anyone have advice on this subject?

Don’t. Repeated compression to even smaller size will stomp on image quality.
What you can do is converting your highly compressed originals to a good I-frame codec, like DNxHR or Cineform and work with that. This may improve your render times, depending on your system.
File sizes will be temporarily much bigger though.

For anybody new to Resolve editing, be sure to read the free textbook "The Editor’s Guide to DaVinci Resolve 17," available on Blackmagic's Training website:

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/produc ... e/training

No matter how much you already know about editing, this will help you get up and running with the specifics of Resolve.

Thanks for the advise guys, I appreciate it.

Your source clips are already compressed.

What Uli said. Transcoding to DNxHR will make it as easy as possible for Resolve to speed through the clips.

I recommend laying all of your clips on one timeline (select all, drag to timeline.) Go straight to the deliver page and export as individual clips using the original filenames (under the 'File' submenu.) Let those export. When done, delete all of your original clips from the media pool and drag these new files in. Viola!