If you have been scrolling the Deliver page preset row looking for a Discord button, stop — it is not there. DaVinci Resolve 21's reference manual lists the social presets one by one — YouTube, Vimeo, TikTok, Dropbox or Dropbox Replay, and Presentations — and there is no Discord entry in that list. The Presentations preset is not even an encode target: the manual says it "lets you flag and format timelines to be used with Presentations in Blackmagic Cloud. Unlike other presets, there are no codec settings to choose from."
That is not a problem, though. The four presets that do encode video all use the same three core settings, and you can rebuild those by hand in about a minute with one extra control that lets you aim at a size target. This guide walks through that Custom setup.
Before you start
You need three things. First, a finished timeline. Second, the current per-file upload cap for the account and server you are posting to — Blackmagic's documentation obviously says nothing about that, so check Discord's official help center, or read what Discord actually measures when it says your file is too large. Third, a moment of honesty about your platform and version.
Two official limits are worth knowing before you build the render:
- On Windows, Blackmagic's Supported Formats and Codecs (July 2025) describes H.264 as "8-bit OS-supported profiles. More profiles and GPU acceleration in Studio" for both decode and encode. The free version encodes H.264; the profile range and GPU acceleration are where Studio differs.
- The same document's notes section states: "Encoding video resolutions >= 4K is only supported with DaVinci Resolve Studio." Blackmagic's product page separately says the free version can "edit and finish up to 60 fps in resolutions as high as Ultra HD 3840 x 2160" — the two pages use different verbs and do not define whether UHD counts as 4K here, so check the current limit in the official documentation if you are exporting above HD on the free version.
For a chat upload you will almost certainly be rendering at or below 1080p, so neither is likely to bite.
Step 1: Look at what the preset menu actually offers
Open the Deliver page and read the preset row. Chapter 187 of the manual documents these render presets by name: YouTube (720p, 1080p, 1440p, 2160p), Vimeo (720p, 1080p, 2160p), a TikTok Deliver Page Preset, Dropbox or Dropbox Replay (720p, 1080p, 2160p), and a Presentations Preset. That is the complete social list in the manual's Deliver chapter.
The result: there is no preset tuned to a chat app's file cap, and no preset anywhere in the list that lets you type a target size.
Step 2: Switch the preset menu to Custom
The manual is explicit about why this matters:
"If you want to create your very own settings, then choose custom."
"When custom is selected, nothing is automatically set, and all conventional media rendering options are available, except for those that are specifically associated with particular presets. You must manually choose the settings and options you need. All Render settings are saved on a per-project basis."
That last sentence is useful: the settings you are about to build stick to this project, so you only do this once per edit.
Step 3: Set Format to MP4 and Video Codec to H.264
Copy the starting point from the presets that already exist. The YouTube, Vimeo, TikTok and Dropbox presets are documented with identical core parameters — "Format: MP4", "Video Codec: H.264" and "Audio Codec: AAC". Only two things differ between them: the Encoding Profile (High for YouTube, Auto for the other three) and the audio source (Main 1 for YouTube, Bus 1 for the rest).
The manual's description of the MP4 container is one line: "MP4: Dedicated MP4 encoding lets you export H.264-encoded movies." H.264 in MP4 is exactly what you want here.
Step 4: Set a ceiling with Restrict to X Kb/s
This is the control the presets do not expose, and the reason you went Custom. The manual documents it under the optional MP4 and H.264 controls:
"Restrict to X Kb/s: You can choose Automatic, or select a maximum data rate with which to export."
Blackmagic publishes no default value for this field and no bitrate numbers for any of the social presets — the What's New page only says compression settings "have been developed based on each site's best recommendations." So there is no official number to copy; pick a ceiling, render, and check the result on disk.
Step 5: Pick an Encoding Profile
Four profiles apply to H.264, quoted here from the manual:
| Profile | Official description |
|---|---|
| Auto | "Automatically selects an encoding profile." |
| Base | "For H.264, intended for video conferencing and mobile phone use; highly compressed." |
| Main | "For H.264, intended for SD analog transmission." |
| High | "For H.264, intended for Blu-Ray and HD transmission." |
The manual frames the choice generally: "The tradeoff is between quality and computational intensity for encoding and playback."
Step 6: Check the Resolution field before you queue the job
The Resolution field "defaults to Timeline Resolution," so a 4K timeline renders 4K unless you change it. The manual adds one caveat to that: "Some file formats require specific resolutions, in which case the Output Size settings will be automatically set to the necessary resolution."
There is a second resolution control worth knowing about, documented on the TikTok preset: "Use Vertical Resolution: Unchecked. Check this box if you want to deliver your video in portrait mode for proper display on phones. This should be on for TikTok." If your source is a phone recording, that box is the difference between a portrait render and a letterboxed one.
How much a given resolution change moves the file size is not something Blackmagic's official documentation states, so treat the rendered file, not an estimate, as the answer.
Step 7: Check the estimate, then render
Before you queue the job, read the disk figures in the render settings. The manual describes one of them as: "Disk space used after render: Shows the new disk usage based on the specified range of the current session that you're rendering." That gives you a sanity check on whether your bitrate ceiling landed anywhere near the target.
Try it right here
Runs in your browser. Your file is not uploaded anywhere.
If the render came out too big and you would rather not re-render the whole timeline to try a different ceiling, the compressor above takes the file you already exported and shrinks it in the browser tab — nothing is uploaded. The same job is available standalone as compress video.
Common mistakes
- Expecting the multi-pass controls under MP4. The manual tags Multi-pass encode, Key Frames and Frame Reordering as "(Available for QuickTime H.264 and H.265)". Choosing MP4 puts you outside that scope.
- Reaching for the H.264 Master preset. It sounds like the MP4 preset, but per the manual it "defaults to rendering in single clip mode, with the Format set to QuickTime, and the Codec set to H.264." See MP4 vs QuickTime on the Deliver page.
- Assuming a trim-only export skips re-encoding. In the July 2025 codec list, the Codec Passthrough column for H.264, H.265, AV1 and VP9 is a dash on every platform and container. More on that in how Bypass re-encode actually works.
- Leaving Use Proxy Media on. The manual's own description: "Lets your final render use the proxy media instead of the original source camera files. Useful if speed is more important than quality."
- Ignoring audio. For AAC, the manual exposes a Bit Rate Strategy dropdown and a Data Rate field that "lets you choose the maximum data rate for AAC encoding."
FAQ
Does DaVinci Resolve have a Discord export preset? No. The Deliver chapter of the Resolve 21 manual documents social presets for YouTube, Vimeo, TikTok, Dropbox or Dropbox Replay, and Presentations. Build a Custom render instead.
What settings should I copy from the built-in presets? Format MP4, Video Codec H.264, Audio Codec AAC — those three are identical across the YouTube, Vimeo, TikTok and Dropbox presets. Then add Restrict to X Kb/s, which none of them exposes.
What bitrate does Resolve use for the YouTube or TikTok preset? Blackmagic does not publish the numbers. The documentation says only that the settings were developed from each site's recommendations, so there is no official figure to reuse.
Can I export 4K for Discord on the free version? Blackmagic's codec list says encoding at 4K and above requires Studio, while its product page says the free version finishes up to Ultra HD 3840 x 2160. The two are not reconciled officially — check the current limit in the official documentation. For a chat upload, 1080p or lower is the better choice anyway.
Is there a faster way than re-rendering repeatedly? Yes — export once at a sane setting, then compress the exported file rather than re-queuing the timeline. Browse more walkthroughs or all Clapr tools.
Settings and quotes above are from the DaVinci Resolve 21 Reference Manual and the official Supported Formats and Codecs document (July 2025), checked 16 September 2026. Verify against Blackmagic's current documentation before relying on them.
