Resolve 18.6.6 M3 Pro Mac Media Offline / Render

18.6.6 still has not fixed the media randomly showing offline and having render crashes with an M3 Pro Mac when decode h.264/h.265 hardware acceleration is enabled. The old (slow) work around of disabling this feature is still the way to go.

Is this problem really so difficult that Blackmagic isn't able to fix a major issue with Apple's current chipset?

As my colleagues here, I, as well, have been experiencing the same issue. Might the issue be in the OS (I am on Sonoma 14.4) Anyone to help with this? Thank you.

Since I don't get this with M1 or M2 under Monterey and Ventura, it might be specific to M3 and Sonoma.
Could be that the fix has to be by Apple.

I had the same problem today while testing some footage. In DR’s master preferences I had one external driver linked to cache, I added a separate one since I was advised to have 2 separate drivers, one for editing and another one for caching. When I activated Smart render caching, I got Media Offline, so I removed the old cache link and kept the new one, it worked properly.

I've found the Media Offline issue goes away if you DO NOT USE the drive locations provided in the project settings. In a perfect world you could set those to use a network drive so everyone who touches the project doesn't have to re-render caches every time but it doesn't work that way. It actually creates a cache folder per user and just eats away at drive space. It also bugs out and shows media offline, especially in a multi-user project.

The solution is to leave all the directories to the .\cache (or what ever they are) directories. Then go into your Resolve Preferences at the top and set the FIRST drive\folder location you want all the caches and stuff to go to. This will let your caches stay "local" even if they are on a network drive and not go loco with media offline. At least that works for me going between a mac laptop and a windows desktop.

You may have issues with the M3 but I would look at this as a more robust solution to a long time issue with caching.

You may have issues with the M3 but I would look at this as a more robust solution to a long time issue with caching.

I own MBP M3 Pro, I don’t think it’s a M3 issue. Most likely it’s the caching folder’s location, as you have mentioned.

Network drives might react a tad too slow and then DR considers the clip offline.

Yeah, that sounds right. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a heartbeat for file access that is set really low. Then when a network drive is requested for the first time, it's reported as Media Offline. I was wondering if it would be worth it for them to have a rescan button in the drive options or something to double check the latency of the drives?

I have an NVME network drive over a 1GB network that still got the error so it's not a timeout for a network drive to spool up, it's as fast as the folder can be requested but who really knows.

Hey, Omar Mohammad, could you please provide me a tutorial on how did you set up your cache and relinked it? I have the same set up as you (macbook pro m3), therefore I am assuming it could fix my problem as well. I have tried the majority of what people recommended. I use footage from Sony A74. (Codec: H.264 High 4:2:2 L5.2 50fps, 3840x2160) Thank you so much.

Hey, Omar Mohammad, could you please provide me a tutorial on how did you set up your cache and relinked it? I have the same set up as you (macbook pro m3), therefore I am assuming it could fix my problem as well. I have tried the majority of what people recommended. I use footage from Sony A74. (Codec: H.264 High 4:2:2 L5.2 50fps, 3840x2160) Thank you so much.

Go to Davinci Resolve Preferences or (Command + comma)

Screenshot 2024-03-25 at 4.34.14 PM.png (123.58 KiB) Viewed 1019 times

Go to Media Storage, click System tab not User, and then add a location.

Screenshot 2024-03-25 at 4.34.29 PM.jpeg (223.69 KiB) Viewed 1019 times

Just make sure you get the same location in Project Settings -> Master settings

Screenshot 2024-03-25 at 4.40.50 PM.jpeg (368.57 KiB) Viewed 1019 times

Hey Omar, thank you so so much for your tutorial. Yet, it still does not help. It may be a codec problem with H.264
I am frustrated and it makes editing difficult.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... drive_link

Hey Omar, thank you so so much for your tutorial. Yet, it still does not help. It may be a codec problem with H.264
I am frustrated and it makes editing difficult.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... drive_link

That’s weird. I only edit BRAW, I don’t recall fiddling with h.264. I will test the file you have shared in machine and let you know.

I still have the same problem too. I doubt it's a caching /hdd or ssd/ problem, it's more likely an m3 pro h.264 hardware encoding/decoding issue with footage of sony cameras in my case. If I you turn that hardware decoding off in preferences it works fine, but everything gets slower, of course, as described in numerous threads before. Same footage/project on an m1 laptop works just fine.

Crazy thing is - to me the problem occurs only after the timeline is somewhat populated with clips, cuts and fx. It does not seem to happen on a new and clean project in the beginning, but after working on it for a while it starts to emerge.

Did you observe how your RAM is doing when the TL gets populated? (Activity Monitor)

Ram usage definitely increases when scrubbing a problematic timeline, but no swap gets used and there is still more than around 4gb free ram. CPU usage stays low all the time.

In my case it is specific to (sony a7sIII 10bit 4k) h.264 footage. Scrubbing through h.265 footage in the same timeline works just fine.

I think it's a bug then. There are similar reports around here.

I have this problem recurrently using Ventura 13.5.1 and an M1 Max Macbook Pro. It doesn't matter if my cache folder is on an external SSD array or on my internal drive.

The latest problem came after caching a short film and about 2/3 of the titles were all listed as "offline." Turning "render cache" to off. It's maddening.

I've had this problem recurrently for a while. I think it must be a bug.

Found an acceptable workaround by using online/offline workflow with optimized media. Crazy thing is, that it renders fine with using the h.264 material and hardware acceleration on during export.