If you want your Instagram Reels to look as sharp and professional as possible, your export settings in DaVinci Resolve matter a lot! In this guide, I’m going to walk you through exactly how to set everything up correctly so you’re not leaving any quality on the table.
And before we get into it, I’ve created free export presets and a graphic overlay template that shows you where to position your text and other elements so nothing gets cut off by Instagram’s buttons and UI. You can download both completely free here!
Set Up Your Timeline First
Before you ever hit export, you need to make sure your timeline is set to the correct resolution. When creating your timeline, set it to 1080 x 1920 resolution (vertical).
For frame rate, you’ll want to choose 23.976 fps, 29.97 fps, or 59.94 fps, depending on the frame rate you filmed at. In the past, Instagram used to convert 24fps videos to 30fps, which could cause footage to stutter and not play back as smoothly. But as of mid-2025, Instagram supports 24fps natively, so you can choose whichever option works best for you.
Navigating the Deliver Page
Once your video is fully edited and ready to go, head down to the Deliver page at the bottom of DaVinci Resolve.
Name your file, then choose the folder location where your exported video will be saved. Make sure you know where it’s going!
If you’ve already downloaded my free export presets, you can select the correct preset from the menu at the top and all of these settings will be dialed in for you automatically. If not, keep reading.
Format and Codec Settings
Make sure you select Single Clip, then for format, choose MP4. Resolve might default to QuickTime, and while both are identical in quality, MP4 gives you maximum compatibility and is the format Instagram expects.
For codec, select H.265 (HEVC). Most phones record in H.265 these days, and it’s the format Instagram is optimized for, so this is the best choice.
Settings for Mac Users
On a Mac, you’ll see a checkbox that says “Use hardware acceleration if available.” Check that box. This tells Resolve to use your GPU for exporting, which means your video will export significantly faster.
Leave your Resolution and Frame Rate both set to Timeline Resolution and Timeline Frame Rate, since you already set those correctly when you created your timeline.
For the Quality setting (this is where you set your bitrate), here’s what I recommend:
For a 24fps or 30fps export, set your bitrate to 30,000 kilobits per second
For a 60fps export, set it to 50,000 kilobits per second
This targets a bitrate that’s slightly higher than what a phone records at in 4K, giving you that sweet spot of high quality without a bloated file size.
For Encoding Profile, choose Main10. This ensures your export uses higher quality 10-bit color.
Finally, scroll down to Advanced Settings and check both the Force Sizing to Highest Quality box and the Force Debayer to Highest Quality box. These tell Resolve to use the best scaling algorithms when downscaling 4K footage to fit your 1080p vertical timeline. Your footage will look noticeably sharper.
Settings for PC Users
You’ve already set Format to MP4 and Codec to H.265. Depending on your graphics card, you’ll see different options in the Encoder dropdown.
You can leave this set to Auto most of the time. But if you see an Nvidia option, select that because your GPU will likely render your video the fastest.
Leave Resolution and Frame Rate set to Timeline Resolution and Timeline Frame Rate.
For Quality, if you have an Nvidia or AMD graphics card, you should see a Restrict to quality setting. Set it to 30,000 kilobits per second for 24 or 30fps, or 50,000 kilobits per second for 60fps.
If available, for encoding profile select Main10.
Don’t see that Restrict to setting? No worries. If you only have a Native Encoder option, your settings will look a little different. You’ll see a Rate Control option instead. Set that to Variable Bitrate, and a Bitrate field will appear. Set it to 30,000 for 24/30fps or 50,000 for 60fps.
Just like on Mac, go into Advanced Settings and check both the Force Sizing to Highest Quality and Force Debayer to Highest Quality boxes.
Exporting Your Video
Whether you’re on Mac or PC, once everything is set, click Add to Render Queue, then hit Render on the right side. That’s it!
Getting the Best Quality on Instagram
Here’s where a lot of people miss out on quality. You might think you can just copy the exported video to your phone and upload it directly to Instagram. That will work, but it won’t give you the best possible quality.
Instagram rewards you with higher video quality if you use their Edits app to send the video to Instagram.
Download the Edits app, import your video, and don’t worry about making any edits since it’s already done. Just go to Export in the top right. For export quality, select 4K at 30fps even though your video is 1080p. This pushes the app to use a higher bitrate, which helps preserve quality when it’s uploaded.
This is also why the bitrates I recommended earlier are important. You’re re-encoding the video inside the Edits app, so you want the source file to be as high quality as possible going in.
After the Edits app finishes rendering, click the “Send to Instagram” button on that same page. This is critical. Do not save the video and open Instagram separately. You have to send it directly from this screen to unlock the higher quality processing.
Once Instagram opens, go into Advanced and enable “Upload at highest quality.” Then post your video. Instagram will give it extra processing because it came through the Edits app, and the result will be noticeably better than a standard upload.
Get the Free Presets and Safe Zone Template
If you haven’t downloaded the free export presets and safe zone overlay template yet, grab them at the link in the video description. The overlay is especially helpful because it shows you exactly where to place your text and graphics so nothing gets hidden behind Instagram’s UI buttons.
And if you want to take your video editing to the next level overall, check out my Edit Videos Like a Pro guide for a complete breakdown of my editing process!
Adobe just made the biggest update to Premiere Pro ever, and it fundamentally changes how you color grade video. I’ve been in the beta for over a year, and Adobe even flew me out to their headquarters to be part of the launch video for this update. So I’ve had a lot of time with it, and I’m excited to break it all down for you.
You can try it out right now in the latest Premiere Pro Beta. Here’s everything you need to know.
What Is Color Mode?
When you open Premiere Pro, it’ll look familiar at first. You’ve got your editing tools, your Import and Export modes up top (added back in 2022), but now there’s a new option sitting right next to Edit mode: Color Mode.
If you’ve been wanting more from color in Adobe Premiere, this is going to blow your mind. It’s a radical rethinking of how you color grade video, and it’s a really good one.
The first thing you’ll notice when you open Color Mode is that it looks completely different from what you’re used to in Premiere. The monitor window is huge, which makes sense since you’ll want to see all the details of your footage while grading. Your video clips from your sequence live on the right side, and you can scrub through everything using the playhead at the bottom.
One thing I love: you can switch between a single clip view and a grid view, and resize it however you want. So if you’re editing a wedding video and need to see the getting-ready footage alongside the ceremony clips at the same time, you can do that easily. It’s a huge help for keeping your colors consistent across a project.
And unlike DaVinci Resolve, where you’re kind of locked into a horizontal line of clips, all of these panels in Premiere are moveable. You can rearrange everything however you like, which I really appreciate.
The New Color Grading Controls
So how do you actually color grade? Down at the bottom, you’ve got a set of tools that look like abstract color wheels. But when you click on them, you get a lot more control than you might expect.
Click and hold on Contrast, and a detailed scope pops up right there. Adobe calls this a HUD (Heads Up Display), and it gives you a ton of data right where you need it. No more digging through a separate panel. You can also resize or move any HUD if you want.
Drag upward to increase contrast, downward to decrease it. Drag left or right to shift the pivot of the contrast point, which helps you dial in your highlights and shadows further. It’s basically a Lumetri slider, but with an extra axis of control.
The same logic applies to Exposure: drag up or down to adjust exposure, left or right to adjust the black level. You’ve got temperature, balance, and saturation controls too, all with color scopes built right in.
By default, you’re adjusting the entire clip, but you can also target just shadows, just highlights, or define a custom zone. You can even shift specific hues in your video by selecting a color at the bottom and dragging your mouse around. And if you want sharper footage, the detail tools let you boost texture or sharpness just by dragging.
It feels intuitive. If you’ve used color wheels before, you’ll pick this up fast.
But what if you miss the old Lumetri sliders? Don’t worry, they still exist. Just go back to Edit Mode, choose the Color workspace, and all your Lumetri controls are right there like before. That said, Adobe has told me that Lumetri is basically old news now. I also covered the good, the bad, and the confusing in Premiere Pro if you want the wider picture. It’s not using their latest color technology. If you want the best of what Premiere has to offer for color grading, Color Mode is where you need to be.
Styles and Style Modules
Here’s where things start getting really interesting.
So far we’ve only been doing basic color corrections on a single clip. But if you click the plus button next to Adjustment and choose to add a Clip Style, you’ll get a whole new menu full of style presets. Think of these like super advanced Instagram filters, but with way more control underneath.
You’ve got cinematic presets, cool and warm options, lighting presets, black and white, boosted saturation, and a ton more.
Now, you might be thinking “okay Matt, this is just LUTs.” And that’s a fair assumption, but hold on, because these presets are actually made up of individual building blocks called Style Modules.
Click the Style Modules tab and you’ll see them all: Color and Contrast, Color Shift, Contrast Kit, Detail, Film Color, Flare, and more. Each one does something different, and you can mix and match them.
For example, the Contrast Kit gives you similar contrast controls but adds the ability to target just the highlights, which is super useful for recovering overexposed areas. The Film Color module lets you choose from popular film stock negatives and prints, then dial in the overall look, the midtones, shadows, and highlights separately. Add a Flare module on top for a subtle cinematic fade.
The key difference from a LUT: everything is non-destructive and fully tweakable. You’re not making blanket adjustments to a clip. Every module can be modified, minimized, or removed. And if you land on something you love, you can save it as your own style preset.
If you still want to use LUTs though, you absolutely can. Click the plus button next to Clip Adjustment, choose Add LUT, pick from your installed LUTs, and adjust the intensity. It all works right alongside the other modules.
Remember the Object Mask feature Adobe added to Premiere a while back? The one that lets you select any object in your frame and track it? That works in Color Mode too.
Add a new adjustment module, select the Object Mask tool, click on the object you want to change the color of, right-click to track the mask, and then use any of the color tools on just that object. It makes color grading specific elements in your video dramatically easier, and it only takes a few clicks.
Grading at the Clip, Selection, and Sequence Level
This is where Color Mode really starts saving you serious time.
Everything we’ve talked about so far has been at the clip level. But look over to the right of “Clip” and you’ll see two more options: Sequence and Sequence Style.
Select Sequence, go to your style presets, and start clicking through them. As you do, you’ll notice something wild: all of the clips in your sequence are being color graded simultaneously.
So instead of going back to the edit page, creating an adjustment layer, dragging it across your timeline, and then opening the color panel, you can color grade your entire sequence in just a few clicks. That’s huge.
Of course, not all your clips were filmed at the same time with the same light, so here’s the third option that makes this even more powerful. Go to your clips panel, click on the first clip you want, hold Shift and click to select a range (or hold Command/Control to select specific clips), and a new menu option will appear at the bottom left called Selection.
Click the plus button, add a style to just those selected clips, make your tweaks, and those adjustments apply only to the clips you picked. It’s easy to use, but also packed with depth. Genuinely impressive.
Why This Matters for Premiere Pro Users
Looking back at Adobe’s updates over the last few years, including Import Mode and Export Mode back in 2022 (which a lot of editors complained about), it’s actually starting to make a lot of sense now. They were building toward this.
And I’ll be honest: I haven’t always used words like “intuitive” or “exciting” to describe editing in Premiere Pro. But Color Mode feels both of those things. Adobe managed to walk a fine line here, making color grading approachable enough for editors who are new to it while also adding the kind of advanced features that pros expect.
There are also no nodes here. Adobe could have just looked at what DaVinci Resolve was doing and copied that workflow, but they didn’t, because a lot of video editors are intimidated by nodes and don’t want to learn them. If you’ve been editing in Premiere and wanted more advanced color grading without having to learn Resolve, you no longer have to leave.
And this is just the beginning. I can already see Adobe adding new modules and updates to Color Mode over time, which makes it even more exciting.
If you want to keep leveling up your video editing beyond color grading, check out my Edit Videos Like a Pro guide. It covers the biggest rules I follow as a video editor, and it applies whether you’re using Premiere Pro, Final Cut, or DaVinci Resolve. You can download it completely free.
Blackmagic just announced DaVinci Resolve 21, and honestly, it’s a WILD update! They originally said this was going to be more of a bug fix year, focused on smoother performance and fewer big feature drops. But then they just kept adding things, and before they knew it, they had a massive update on their hands. So let’s break down everything that’s new and what you’re actually going to care about as a video editor.
AI Tools
Of course, we have to start with AI. That’s what everyone wants to know about. What new AI stuff is going to make us better editors?
AI IntelliSearch is the first big one. Adobe has had something similar in Premiere Pro for a while, and it’s great to see it land in Resolve. Basically, you can have Resolve analyze all of your footage and it will detect things like people’s faces, objects, colors, and a wide variety of other details. Everything gets cataloged so you can search for it. So if you type “dog,” it’ll pull up every clip with a dog in it. Not super useful if you’ve only got 10 clips, but if you’re working on a wedding video with 500+ clips? That’s where this becomes genuinely powerful.
Next, and this is where it gets a little crazy: Blackmagic introduced an AI speech generator. You type text into a box, and it generates an audio file of that text being spoken. You can use pre-made voices they offer, or you can create a custom voice using an existing audio file. As long as you have at least 10 seconds of someone speaking, you can clone their voice. In the previous version of Resolve, voice cloning required 5 to 10 minutes of audio, and you still had to record yourself speaking in the same cadence and then layer it. Now? You just type what you want and it spits out the voice. Wild stuff. Just… don’t trust everything you hear on the internet.
AI CineFocus is another new one, and it’s very similar to Apple’s Cinematic Mode. If you’ve filmed something on your phone or with a camera that doesn’t have a shallow depth of field, you can now add depth of field in post. You just click around, tell it what to keep in focus, and blur the rest. You can control the bokeh shape and intensity too. It’s not going to undo a shallow depth of field you already shot, but if your footage is flat, this could be a real alternative to spending money on a fast lens.
Remember Benjamin Button? Aged in reverse, old then young. Yeah, they basically added that to Resolve. There is now an AI face age transformer tool where you record someone, tell Resolve their current age, and offset it older or younger. It tracks their face and actually adds or removes wrinkles to make them look different. This is the kind of thing Marvel was paying a fortune for a few years ago, and now you can do it at home. Weird, yes, but also genuinely useful if you have clients who want to look a little younger on camera.
On a similar note, there’s a new AI Face Reshaper tool that lets you adjust people’s facial features, make them wider, tighter, and so on. Blackmagic mentioned comedy as a use case, but I actually think it’s really interesting for animating still photos. Instead of just the Ken Burns pan and zoom effect, you could have the subject subtly moving too. That’s a cool tool for documentary work.
And we’re not done with faces yet. There’s also an AI blemish removal tool. As someone who has to be on camera, I can absolutely see myself using this. Woke up with bad acne? Black eye from bumping your head? There’s now an AI tool in Resolve that looks like it’s going to handle that pretty well. Great for clients who are sensitive about that stuff too.
Keeping on the AI train, there’s a new feature where Resolve can detect a slate or clapperboard in your footage. If you’re running a bigger production with multiple takes and different setups, Resolve will automatically read the slate data, generate markers, and add all of that to each clip’s metadata. You don’t have to do that by hand anymore. This is a massive time-saver for bigger productions.
There’s also a new Ultra Sharpen tool that Blackmagic says can rescue footage that might otherwise be unusable. I’m a little skeptical until I’ve tested it myself, but if it can salvage blurry shots, that could be really exciting. And along those same lines, there’s a new AI Motion Deblur feature. If you have clips with heavy motion blur from a low shutter speed, this tool analyzes the footage and clears up a lot of that blur to make things sharper and easier to see. I’ve had so many shots over the years where I’m like “why is that so shaky?” This could genuinely fix some of those.
Photo Editing (Yes, Really)
Okay, this one I genuinely didn’t see coming, but the moment you hear it, it makes total sense. DaVinci Resolve 21 now has a full photo editing page. Like, Lightroom-style photo editing. Sliders, RAW support, cropping, reframing, a lightbox mode, albums, and even tethering so you can shoot directly into Resolve.
And here’s the part that makes it different from Lightroom: you also get all of Resolve’s color grading tools on top. You can color your photos with nodes if you want to. There’s even multi-user support so multiple people can edit photos at the same time.
So right now, DaVinci Resolve is going after Premiere Pro with the Edit and Cut pages, After Effects with Fusion, and now Lightroom with the Photos page. All in one app, all free (or a one-time Studio purchase). The competition this creates with Adobe is great to see.
Edit and Cut Page Updates
There are some solid quality-of-life updates on the editing side too. HTML graphics and Lottie animation support is now built in, so you can import those animations and they’ll play natively in Resolve without any extra steps.
There’s now a spell checker in the edit text tool, which honestly was long overdue. I’ve caught misspellings in my own videos before that I really wish I’d caught sooner. That’s now a non-issue. And there’s also emoji support now in the text tool. Finally. No more importing a PNG just to get an emoji into a title.
Color Page Updates
The Color page got some good updates too. The big one is the Multi-Master Trim Manager. If you need to deliver multiple versions of a project (say, one in standard dynamic range and one in HDR), you used to have to manage multiple timelines. Now you can have one timeline with multiple color versions, keeping everything consistent and saving a ton of time.
There’s also a Magic Mask Render in Place feature now, which lets you cache a magic mask so working with them is way smoother. And here’s an interesting one: you can now view your nodes as layers if you prefer that workflow. Resolve knows that nodes are intimidating for some people, so they added a layer view option. I’m curious to try it.
Fusion Updates
Blackmagic recently acquired a company called Crocodove, and their library of presets and tools for Fusion is now included. If you’ve been wanting more motion graphics presets to work with, this is a fantastic addition.
There’s also a new Audio Driven Fusion Animation feature that lets you sync your Fusion animations directly to an audio file, quickly and easily. If you’ve ever had to manually keyframe animations to music, you know how much of a pain that can be. This looks like it fixes that in a big way.
Fairlight Updates
On the Fairlight side, you can now organize audio tracks into folders, which is great for keeping complex timelines clean. There’s also a six-band clip EQ and EQ level match, plus in-chain effects. It’s more incremental on the Fairlight page, but there’s a good reason for that.
Blackmagic also announced a completely separate free app called Fairlight Live. As the name suggests, this is built for live video production. Whether you’re running 20 inputs or hundreds of inputs, Fairlight Live gives you all the mixing controls you’d expect from the Fairlight page in a standalone app. It’s also going to be compatible with Blackmagic’s ATEM Mini Switchers through a software update. Really useful for anyone doing live production work.
Background Rendering
This one doesn’t get the flashy AI headline, but it’s one I’m genuinely most excited about: background rendering is finally here. If your computer is struggling with playback, you can leave Resolve alone for a bit and it’ll start rendering your footage in the background to make it smoother. You can also generate proxies in the background now, instead of having Resolve lock you out while it processes. Same goes for AI transcripts. All of this now happens in the background while you keep working. Huge.
And It’s Still Free
Just like last year, Blackmagic CEO Grant Petty said this is a free update. Yes, even with all of this. He acknowledged they probably should be charging for it, and they may in the future, but enough people have been picking up DaVinci Resolve Studio to make it work. So if you already own Resolve Studio, this is a free update. And if you’re on the free version, it’s still free.
I’m very interested to dig into exactly what’s in the free version versus Studio once I get hands-on with it. The beta is available to download right now if you want to jump in.
If you want to get better at video editing regardless of what software you’re using, check out my Edit Videos Like a Pro guide. It covers my biggest rules as a video editor for making better videos, and it’s completely free. I wrote it, AI did not.
And if you want to see more DaVinci Resolve tutorials and breakdowns, make sure you’re subscribed over on the YouTube channel. I’ve got a lot more Resolve content coming!
Dell just released the dream monitor for video editors. It isn’t cheap, but it checks literally every single box you could ever have for editing and color grading, it can calibrate itself, and you can game on it too. This is the Dell U3226Q, and in this post I’m going to be reviewing it from the perspective of a video editor who also games some on the side.
Also, for the sake of ethics: this post is not paid or sponsored by Dell, but they did send me the monitor so I could make this review.
An Anti-Glare OLED Panel
Let’s start with the biggest reason to care about this monitor: it has an extremely color accurate OLED panel. If you want a cheaper way into OLED, I put a $700 MSI OLED up against the Apple Studio Display. Dell claims this is the world’s first OLED panel with an anti-glare, low reflection coating. That means it doesn’t have the glossy pop you’d get from an OLED with a glass screen, but as a professional who wants to minimize glare, if you work in a bright room this thing is going to block more light and be much easier to see. It also comes with a detachable monitor hood to cut back on even more light hitting the screen, which is great.
If you’ve never used an OLED before, just know that OLED is pretty much the peak of display technology right now. You get a virtually unlimited contrast ratio with bright highlights and perfectly dark shadows because the pixels themselves can turn completely off when showing black. There’s no halo or ghosting effect like you’d get on an IPS panel.
Everything in display technology has been moving toward OLED for years. Phones have used OLED displays for years. If you’re watching my YouTube video right now on your phone, you’re probably watching it on an OLED screen. OLED TVs are what most people want to buy, and I’ve personally had one for several years and love it.
So when I say this Dell monitor is designed to leverage all the strengths of an extremely high-quality OLED panel in ways that will truly benefit you as a video editor, including a bunch of features they aren’t even advertising, I mean it. This may be the last monitor you have to buy for a very long time.
Color Accuracy
Dell claims this monitor covers 100% of the sRGB color space and 99% of DCI-P3, both of which really matter for video editors. If you want those colors to survive the edit as well, I explain color management in DaVinci Resolve separately. When I tested it with my Spyder color calibrator, I’m happy to tell you those claims were accurate. This screen delivers extremely accurate colors that look exactly how they should.
But here’s the thing: even with an extremely color accurate monitor that comes calibrated from the factory, I always recommend color calibrating any screen you plan to use for color grading. Monitor colors shift over time, it’s just a fact of screen technology. Colors can get warmer or cooler, the tint can shift more red or green. I’ve literally had it happen where I went too long between color calibrations, rendered a video, played it back on another computer, and thought “wait, these colors look a little funky.” Then I’d need to recalibrate to get things back to normal.
And color calibration can be a pain. You have to buy a color calibrator for a few hundred bucks, install the software, and then every few months remember to reconnect the calibrator and rerun the calibration. Most calibration software has a little nagging pop-up that appears to remind you, and I have lost count of the number of times I closed one of those pop-ups because I didn’t have time to deal with it.
And don’t even get me started on managing monitor ICC profiles and making sure each monitor is using the correct one, because you wake up one day and your operating system has chosen a different one for some reason and everything looks completely different until you track down the problem.
Let me know in the comments if you identify with that annoyance, because here’s where this monitor blows your mind.
The Built-In Color Calibrator
If you’ve been wondering why the bottom bezel on this monitor looks slightly thicker with a weird cut-out rectangle, strap in.
With this Dell OLED, you do not need to go out and spend hundreds of dollars on a separate color calibration tool and awkwardly dangle it over the front of your screen. This monitor has one built in, and it is so cool.
Whenever you want, you can press the joystick on the back of the monitor to open the menu, select calibrate, and the monitor will pop out a tiny motorized camera on a stick from the base. It analyzes the pixels on the screen and color calibrates itself at a hardware level.
What does hardware level mean? There are two types of color calibration: software and hardware. Software is where you buy a separate calibration tool, plug it into your computer’s USB port, install software, and whenever you calibrate, the results are saved as one of those annoying .icc files where you’re at the mercy of your operating system to actually use them correctly.
Hardware calibration is completely different. When you calibrate the monitor, the result is saved as a look-up table (LUT) to the monitor itself rather than to your computer. You don’t need any software on your computer for it to work. And if you switch between using a laptop and a desktop, you don’t need to have color calibration software installed on both machines. Just plug either one into the monitor and it’s going to display accurate colors, because those colors are saved to the monitor, not the individual computer.
Pretty cool, right? It absolutely blew my mind when that little camera stick popped out for the first time.
But we’re not done with the annoyance-fixing, because half the pain of color calibrating is the external calibrator and software, but the other half is just remembering to actually do it. Remember that annoying pop-up reminding you every few months?
Here’s what I think is truly magical about this monitor: you can set it to color calibrate itself on a schedule, completely automatically, with no input required from you at all. You can schedule it to calibrate every 200 hours, or quarterly, monthly, weekly, or even daily depending on how color-critical your work is.
You literally never have to think about color calibrating your screen again. Every time you sit down to color grade, you know the colors are accurate because the monitor has been keeping itself calibrated. Suddenly this monitor’s price starts to seem a lot more justified, doesn’t it?
Color Space Support
None of that would matter if the monitor didn’t support the color spaces you actually use when color grading, and that’s another area where this monitor feels purpose-built for video editors.
Open the menu and you’ll find presets for digital cinema like DCI-P3 with gamma 2.4 and 2.2, presets for YouTube like sRGB, photography with Adobe RGB, and broadcast video standards like Rec.709 and Rec.2020. There is so much control here, and it’s far more advanced than just picking “vivid” or “flat” on another monitor.
And then there’s HDR. It supports multiple flavors: HDR10 and HLG both with 1000 nits of brightness, Dolby Vision, and DisplayHDR True Black 500, a display standard designed for extremely accurate shadow detail while still getting quite bright at 500 nits. If you want to color grade in both standard and high dynamic range, this monitor handles basically all of it.
Hidden Filmmaker Features
Are we done with video features? No, because there are hidden settings in the menu that I haven’t seen anybody talking about or Dell advertising anywhere, but that are going to be extremely useful if you’re a filmmaker.
Here’s the context: if you want to buy an OLED reference monitor for on-set use, SmallHD will happily sell you one for an eye-watering $13,000 at the time I’m writing this. You get stellar visual quality and all the extra software features you’d expect from SmallHD, like scopes, overlays, and markers. It’s great, but you pay a lot for it.
Now with that $13,000 price in your head, this Dell OLED comes in at roughly one-fifth of that price and includes masking and marker overlays.
You can go into the monitor settings to add a 2.35:1 overlay, a 4:3 overlay if you’re outputting open gate, and more. You can also enable a mask that dims the parts of the frame that won’t be included in the video if you’re filming in an aspect ratio like 2.35:1.
I genuinely don’t know why these features are included on this monitor, but I’m not complaining. It definitely doesn’t have the fancy SmallHD OS, but it also doesn’t have the price. I’m not saying you have to buy it for that reason, but it’s really interesting that Dell included it.
Gaming Performance
Usually with a higher-end video editing monitor you have to make compromises, where color accuracy is great but the refresh rate is terrible. I’ve seen monitors with good colors that maxed out at 30hz or 60hz.
This Dell OLED combines an extremely color accurate and vibrant HDR screen with a 120hz refresh rate, 0.3ms response time, and VRR support. For most people who want to edit videos and game on the side, you’re going to be really happy with it.
To be clear, it’s not going to keep up with the more gaming-focused OLED monitors out there today with refresh rates at 240hz or higher, but those gaming monitors don’t offer the same level of color accuracy and built-in hardware color calibrators either.
Ports and Build Quality
A monitor is only as good as the ports it has, and you don’t have to worry here. You get 2 HDMI 2.1 ports, 1 DisplayPort 1.4 port, 2 Thunderbolt 4 ports, plus a full USB hub with USB-C and USB-A ports that pop out of a hidden cavity on the back. It also has a 2.5 gigabit ethernet port, really rounding out the hub experience. It comes with a DisplayPort cable, HDMI cable, and USB-C cable in the box.
The stand is sturdy with no wobble, and it can rotate, raise and lower, and tilt vertically. Controls are minimalistic: a power button and a joystick on the back that doubles as a button, plus three capacitive buttons on the bottom left of the bezel that you can assign to whatever you want for quick access.
The only thing missing is speakers, but honestly monitor speakers are bad 99% of the time anyway, so it’s not a big loss.
Burn-In: Should You Be Worried?
Let’s talk about the one concern you might have with an OLED monitor, and that’s burn-in. This is where a static image on screen becomes permanently visible, even when you’re doing something else. If you have grandparents who always have the news on, you may have seen this where the TV looks like it permanently has a news ticker at the bottom even when you change the channel.
With OLED screens, burn-in was more of a problem in the past due to the fragile nature of organic pixels. That said, in the last 5 to 10 years, burn-in reduction technology has gotten significantly better. TVs and monitors now have special refresh modes that run when the screen is off to help keep pixels from burning in.
This Dell monitor offers a pixel refresh feature that automatically runs whenever it goes into standby mode, and by default forces a pixel refresh every 24 hours. You can even set it to every 12 hours if you want to be extra careful.
My OLED TV has had zero burn-in issues after years of regular use. That said, a computer monitor is different from a TV because you’re more likely to leave it on all day displaying a static image like a dock at the bottom of the screen. This monitor has additional burn-in protections for that, including the ability to dim the screen or even dim only static areas like where the dock sits.
My recommendation if you’re worried about burn-in: hide your dock and menus until you mouse over them, set your desktop wallpaper to rotate through different images, and set your monitor to turn off when you’re not using it. Do those things and I would really not expect any issues, because the monitor will refresh its pixels whenever it’s off.
Should You Buy the Dell U3226Q?
Let’s talk price. This monitor comes in at $2,600 at the time of writing, which is on the higher end for a professional monitor before you get into ultra-niche reference monitors that cost $10,000, $20,000, or $30,000.
Here’s something I’ve found to be true in my technology-loving life: once you go OLED, you won’t go back. I feel the same way about this monitor as I did when I bought my first OLED TV. The contrast is too perfect, the colors are too good. Pointing a camera at it can’t do it justice, you really have to see it with your own eyes, and once you do and get used to editing on it, you won’t ever want to go back.
The good news is that OLED monitors keep dropping in price. You can get an extremely color accurate OLED for around $500 to $1,000 right now that will work great for color grading. But those budget OLEDs won’t have nearly the same features that make your life easier as a professional.
You’ll still need to color calibrate your monitor. You can buy a separate calibration tool and try to remember to do it every few months, or you can buy this Dell and have it calibrate itself automatically as often as you want, to the exact color space you’re editing in. It supports more color space presets than most monitors. Throw in the markers and overlays for different video aspect ratios, and this Dell OLED makes a really compelling argument for the price.
It’s going to save you time as an editor. And if your time is money, which I know most professionals feel strongly about, I think the Dell U3226Q is the monitor you should buy.
I’ll link to where I found the best price for this monitor down below, along with my monitor buyer guide to help you save time and money. And if you’re a video editor, check out my Edit Videos Like a Pro guide as well, which is completely free to download.
The MacBook Neo is an incredibly affordable laptop with a seriously powerful A18 Pro chip inside. But here’s the catch: Apple thermally throttles that chip to keep temps in check, and it slows it down significantly. Today I’m going to show you how to fix that with a simple $10 mod that can improve performance by 10 to 20%.
Baseline Performance Before the Mod
Before touching anything, let’s establish what the Neo can do out of the box.
Video export test: Exporting a 10-minute video in DaVinci Resolve at 4K, 50 Mb/s takes 11 minutes and 30 seconds. The performance cores hover around 2.2 GHz because the MacBook immediately throttles once it hits 100°C.
Gaming test (3DMark Solar Bay Extreme): This benchmark tests graphics performance for higher-end games with ray tracing. The Neo scored a “Good” rating with an average frame rate of 8.8fps and a max of 11fps.
Dropping the ray tracing and running the regular Solar Bay (not extreme) gave a “Great” rating with a much better average of 28.7fps and a max around 35fps. Worth noting: the Neo has an A18 Pro, not the newer A19 with improved ray tracing.
The Neo isn’t slow by any means, but if you’re doing pro work or gaming on this thing, it’s leaving performance on the table. Let’s fix that.
What You Need
This mod costs about $10 in materials. Here’s what you’ll need:
Flip the Neo over with the trackpad facing you. Unscrew all the bottom screws, keeping in mind that the 2 screws near the trackpad in the bottom middle are slightly longer than the rest. Set those aside separately so you know exactly where they go back.
To remove the bottom panel, just slide it backwards away from you and it pops right off. No drama.
Here’s the good news: you don’t need to remove anything else. Look at the strip along the top of the interior and that’s your entire motherboard. The CPU and GPU are located on a chip roughly in the center of that strip.
Cut a piece of thermal pad approximately 3 to 4 inches long by 2 inches wide. The thermal pad already has adhesive on it, so peel the backing and stick it directly onto the motherboard over the chip.
That’s literally it. Pop the bottom panel back on, screw everything back in, and you’re done.
Why This Works
By adding this thermal pad, you’re dramatically increasing the cooling surface area of the laptop. The CPU is now essentially in contact with the aluminum case of the laptop, turning that aluminum body into a giant heat sink.
Yes, the bottom of your laptop will run warmer. But in all of my testing, it’s not uncomfortably warm and won’t damage anything. All you’re doing is warming up a chunk of metal.
Video export test: That same 10-minute 4K DaVinci Resolve export now takes 10 minutes and 31 seconds, with performance cores holding a higher 3 GHz thanks to reduced thermal throttling. That’s about a 10% speed improvement for $10 in materials.
Gaming test (3DMark Solar Bay Extreme): The modded Neo jumped to an “Excellent” rating with an average of 9.9fps and a max of 25fps. That’s roughly a 20% performance improvement in graphics.
Regular Solar Bay: Also scored “Excellent” with an average of 31.3fps and a max around 38fps.
A 10 to 20% performance boost for $10 is genuinely awesome. I’m a big fan of this mod.
What About the Warranty?
If you’re worried about voiding your warranty, I wouldn’t stress too much. If you ever have an issue and need to bring it into an Apple Store, just open the Neo back up and remove the thermal pad before you go. No harm done.
And if you want to level up your actual editing skills, grab my Edit Videos Like a Pro guide. It’s completely free and covers the biggest rules I follow to create better videos.
