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How to Fix Broken DaVinci Resolve Projects

When an entire project goes offline, panic can occur.

Most of the videos The creators know each other with the scary “Media Offline” warning and the panic it causes. For DaVinci Resolve users, the fix usually only takes a few clicks, but sometimes relinking clips seems impossible and the project seems to be gone forever.

When editing a complex project, it's not uncommon for offline clips to arise. Video editing software does not touch the source material during editing. Programs like Resolve use the file to track changes instead of changing the original clip, and the file may lose information about where the original media is located.

Media offline simply means that the editing program has lost the path to the original file. This often occurs due to moving or renaming clips in the Finder, but sometimes media files can become disabled for no apparent reason.

A more serious problem occurs when it is not possible to re-reference the original clip, and then a “matching” media file in Resolve becomes necessary.

How to fix broken DaVinci Resolve projects — Traditional Solution

Typically, fixing offline media starts by right-clicking the clip to bring up the context menu and selecting Find in Media Pool.

How to fix corrupted DaVinci Resolve projects — Find in Media Pool is the traditional way to fix offline media.

Once you find a clip, right-click it and select Relink Selected Clips from the context menu. The standard Open dialog box allows you to point to the source clip on disk and reconnect the footage.

Sometimes relinking doesn't work; in this caseReplace Selected Clipwill perform the same function. If you select the same source clip, the media will become available again and the media offline warning will disappear.

How to fix corrupted DaVinci Resolve projects — Relinking selected clips usually works fine, but not in this case.

A more serious problem is that sometimes you can select Find in Media Pool' and can't select the original clip , even though this clip is in the media pool. Selecting Find in Media Pool has no effect and nothing happens at all.

If the problem is with one clip, the easiest solution is to re-import and re-edit that clip. On a timeline where all media is shown as offline, redoing all the work is usually not possible, in which case a backup may solve the problem.

DaVinci Resolve has a backup feature that allows you to save data in user-selected increments. It's located in the DaVinci Resolve menu and then in Settings. Click the Usertab and thenSave and Load Project. Set a time and location for incremental backups.

Setting a backup location and frequency is an important first step when working in Resolve.

The problem is compounded by the fact that backup is disabled for editors using the Blackmagic Cloud workflow tool.

Media compliance

The solution to this problem is the “Conform to Media Pool” tool found in the Clips menu.

Conform Lock allows you to associate any clip with the original source material

Start by clicking on the correct original clip in the media bin and then go to the timeline and right-click on the clip that is offline Go to the Clips menu and select Reconcile lock with media pool

Because the missing footage clip and the original clip have the same timecode, using the reconcile tool has the same effect as relinking or replacing. should be available online again and the media blackout warning should disappear.

Compliance Issues

There are some caveats to this process. Matching only works on one clip at a time, so you need to adapt each one individually.

Many projects consist of hundreds of clips from a single source piece of footage, so you must select each clip one at a time, select Match lock to media pool clip, move to the next clip, and repeat.

One way to simplify this process is to go to the Keyboard Setup setting in the Davinci Resolve menu and assign a simple keyboard shortcut to Match Media Lock pula.

Keyboard shortcuts in Resolve are a great way to speed up tasks.

Adjustments like zoom and crop, color correction, or audio settings often disappear. media matching, so the clips may need to be re-adjusted. If all the source frames had the same color setting, copying and pasting the settings can come to the rescue.

Make any missing adjustments to the first clip and select Copy from the Edit menu (or press Command-C), then select all remaining clips and select in this menu Insert attributes…. Select all the attributes you want to apply to the clips, press Enter, and everything will update.

Backup Plan

A good backup plan is the first line of defense against many data corruption problems, so It's a good practice to ensure that a program's backup features are working correctly.

Mac has a built-in backup feature thanks to Time Machine, and setting it up can also help you recover data after loss.

Our guide to using Time Machine for backup is a good start to preventing data loss.

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