DaVinci Resolve 18 not saving issue?

We have seen a few similar reports but trying to repo new cases is challenging.

Older versions of Edius for Windows had what I call a "flight data recorder", i.e.: In Windows Event Log they send about every action the user triggers, so after a crash or hang you can see what was done before.

Example:

Example for EDIUS' command logging (German Windows)

EDIUS-FDR.PNG (40.52 KiB) Viewed 4304 times

GNU Emacs (an editor for nerds) also has a "view-lossage" command that will display the last commands entered, like this:

Code: Select all

<help-echo> <help-echo> M-x ;; execute-extended-command
 v              ;; self-insert-command
 i              ;; self-insert-command
 e              ;; self-insert-command
 w              ;; self-insert-command
 <tab>              ;; minibuffer-complete
 l              ;; self-insert-command
 <tab>              ;; minibuffer-complete
 <return>           ;; minibuffer-complete-and-exit

So my guess is that if Resolve would save the last commands in some ring buffer (another nerd phrase), it might be helpful to reproduce issues when that buffer can be dumped.

Unfortunately such excessive logging can have privacy issues...

It happens to me when I use Izotope RX Voice De-noise in "Adaptive mode".

Screenshot 2023-07-15 213042.png (48.25 KiB) Viewed 4227 times

In this mode, the plugin constantly listens to the input and adjusts the thresholds. As soon as I switch "Adaptive mode" off, "Edited" disappears and I am able to save the session again.

Hopefully this helps.

Chris

Nice catch, Chris.

So I'm using Davinci Resolve Studio 18.5 and this situation happened to me now. Yesterday I started a new project, did some basic stuffs on Edit and Fusion (merging, polygon masks, color corrector, brightness contrast nodes if I can remember correctly). I have live saving turned on and I'm sure I also pressed ctrl + s couple of times during work. Today I opened the project and everything's gone. All nodes in fusion vanished and there's only Fusion Composition clip in Edit page..

[Shrinivas Ramani]

Hi Youngjoon

From the project manager, can you export the project (as a DRP file) and send us a shareable link?

Did you make other changes after reopening the project?

Lastly, can you add some info on the project and project library - if it was local, network based or from the Blackmagic cloud, if local, the file path associated, if the project had backups enabled etc?

Thanks
Shrinivas

From the project manager, can you export the project (as a DRP file) and send us a shareable link?

drp file: https://wetransfer.com/downloads/ea73cf ... e=sendgrid

Did you make other changes after reopening the project?

I think I extended that fusion composition track in edit page

Lastly, can you add some info on the project and project library - if it was local, network based or from the Blackmagic cloud, if local, the file path associated, if the project had backups enabled etc?

It was local project, Davinci is installed in C: (system drive), Davinci resolve media folder is in external hdd, project backups was not turned on, but Timeline backups are turned on.

This work in particular is not a big deal, because I managed to recreate the same quite quickly, but I'm worried about future bigger works..

I've just experienced the same problem. I am unable to save after using automation on the fairlight page to create fader keyframes. I did the same thing this morning with no problem, but now I am suddenly unable to save my keyframe creation.

I just experienced this issue for the first time but I'm still on 18.1.4 build 9 so am unsure if this has been solved in a later version yet?

I started to notice that any time I saved, the popup progress bar that usually flashes up briefly when saving was not appearing and the red 'Edited' badge next to the project name wasn't going away.

I exported the timeline as a DRT and then exited without saving. Luckily, the DRT contained all my unsaved changes so even though the changes were lost in the project I didn't actually lose any work. But it was a bit scary for a moment there!

Edit to add that I'm colour/picture finishing only and never touch audio or visit the Fairlight page.

I just upgraded from the free version to the latest studio version 18.6 on mac. I migrated all of my projects successfully. Then I created a new project, worked for about 5 hours, then exported an early draft. I tried to close the project, but I kept getting the dialog checking if I wanted to save first. I had been saving constantly, of course, so it was a bit surprising. I confirmed the save. The dialog window went away, but Resolve didn't close. I tried to close again through the project home window. Same dialog and lack of closing. I tried to "save as" to create a copy since clearly something was wrong. Nothing happened. Nothing I tried worked. I finally had to select not to save and Resolve did close. My project is nowhere. It was never saved, even when I was manually saving.

I completely lost the project and my day of work. What happened? What is going on? After over a year of loving the free version of Resolve this is my first experience with the paid studio version.

i can confirm this is still ongoing nearing 2nd quarter 2024 and has happened to me multiple times in the past two days. the first response here helped me: even though i am using only one timeline in my current project, i enabled timeline tabs, closed the active timeline and the software immediately ran the scheduled auto-save which had been postponed due to the bug, and also allowed me to manually save and quit the software without the save prompt.

the projects which i've had this issue with seem to be random, some using source footage from external drives, in some of them i haven't touched anything in the fairlight audio page, etc.

i am running 18.5.1B6 non-studio version on mac mini m1 16gb on macos 11.7.9 with all filepaths set to the local system ssd. this has also occurred to me on multiple occasions on the m1 macbook air 16gb. the only anomaly that i presume might contribute to this is letting the computer fall asleep or designating it to go in sleep mode without quitting davinci, although i cannot confirm this bug occurs immediately upon waking up the computer as i often have multiple applications running.

Greetings, just adding an update to this thread. I have a lot of projects, most keep updated saves but a few revert back to an earlier version - Note that while in DR and saving, the project save date is current and showing correct time of save. However when Resolve closes down and reboots, project has reverted to an earlier save date several years back.

My theory is that it is projects that have imported a timeline from another DR Workstation or XML from other platform. All the saved changes in the project are there, so no work is lost, it's a bit disconcerting though! I've tried some of the suggestions including creating a new timeline, which hasn't changed this behaviour. Working on DR 18.6.5

If this is still a bug then what I don’t understand is why BMD can’t/hasn’t added debug statements that write info to the log that elucidates what’s going on in Resolve when this behavior starts happening. That way, even if they can’t reproduce it, they should be able to understand it once someone has it happen and submits a log.

I have had this happen on a few occasions in version 18.x.x, usually after Resolve has been open for a long time and I suspect that it may be related to Windows. I've not had it happen in the version 19 betas so far.
One problem with creating a log is if you have Resolve open you cannot create a log without saving the current open project, Catch 22.
To make Save work again create a new timeline in the open project and then delete it from the Media Pool. Save should now work again.
I have submitted log and NFO files in the past.

One can create a log after restarting Resolve or even before that by running the capture logs script - think that’s what it’s called.

As far as why it’s happening nobody knows. But I’ve seen it happen on macOS so it’s not unique to Windows.

Unfortunately, it seems that BMD hasn’t added sufficient debugging info to the log to ferret out the problem. Which to me is surprising - hence my previous post.

Just wanted to chime in that this happened to me in the very latest version of Davinci 18.6.5 (Build 5) as well.

I freaked out a bit as I didn't know how many hours I had potentially lost, made as many backups as I could and tried all the described workarounds in this thread (in which none worked).

The only plugin I'm using is MagicAnimateV3Free, everything else is "pure" Davinci. It was when fiddling around with the audio that I noticed the issue as I made a song and everything around it about 4 seconds shorter. Then when trying to add a fade to the song it didn't work, the song was blasting at 100% despite the fade. That's when I wanted to restart the application and ran into this issue.

Lucky for me, I only lost about a minute of work. But it could have been a moment that would have put me off video editing for weeks if I know myself correctly... phew...

More info on this happening in 19b2 here: viewtopic.php?f=21&t=200417#p1052220
I've included a database that seems to be able to repro the issue.

I posted this workaround elsewhere, but here it is again in case somebody's looking for a solution:

Here's a workaround if you suddenly cannot save a project:

1) turn on Dynamic Project Switching in the Project Manager

2) start a brand-new project

3) go back to the bad project that won't save, and copy the entire contents of the timeline to the clipboard

4) go to the new project and paste that timeline to a new timeline.

Does the new project save? In tests, it's working for me.

I've only run into the "Resolve no longer saving" problem maybe 3 times in ten years, so it's a very rare malfunction... but it does happen. Not sure if it's the OS, or the Resolve database, or some other issue.

That’s exactly what I did to fix things after the third time I couldn’t save. So I’m not stuck. Just trying to help debug the issue.

Ran into this behavior which only happens when the "can't save" bug is happening. Might help debug it?
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=203024&p=1054188#p1054188

Dang, happened to me for the first time ever yesterday. So annoying!

Thanks Joe, Marc,

I used that work around Marc suggested, created new project, copied and pasted 4 timelines from buggy project into new project, and that is now saving as it should with 'date modified'. This would get tedious if there were a lot of timelines in a project, and while it brings in all the files, it does not bring in the bins or workflow or the colour grades in the gallery - so there's a bit of work to recreate the exact workflow.

To be clear, I didn't lose any of the work in the project with the bug, but it was annoying not being able to track projects I was working on by 'date modified' as it would always revert to the same date of 4 years ago.

Are others in this post (as implied by Teedyan) actually losing saved work? I hope not!!

Best,

Ray

Wow, didn't know this was an issue until today. It happened to me last night for the first time. I save constantly while I work and had no idea it wasn't really saving hours of work.

I lost hours of work with this bug.

18.6 Studio version, using the fusion page and the paint node.

Happened to me on Version 19.0B build 33, but I've had this issue over 10 times in total in the previous versions as well.

This time, I selected 2 clips, made them into a compound clip, the clips became invisible on the timeline (but were still showing in the preview monitor), after which I tried restarting resolve, only to discover that it asks me if I want to save, but hitting save only closes the dialog and doesn't save the project (the latter behavior of which is what has happened pretty much every time I've ran into this issue).

EDIT: For further context, this has happened to me on Windows, Linux as well as macOS, so it seems to be platform and hardware independent.

EDIT2: Happened again 6 hours later. This time was just keyframing the zoom property.

Using Davinci resolve 19 beta 5 been running into this issue about every 5 mins for just about any project I am running

Can confirm that its still happening on 19.1.2 Build 3. Noticed it after retiming multiple clips with T and I was suddenly able to undo/redo, and then also unable to save in the exact same pattern.
This time it happened on macOS 15+ with an M1 Max, but it has happened to me on Windows/macOS/Linux so its unrelated to the OS.

My projects are always slightly different in terms of the footage source, style, etc, but the project is usually 4k 60fps.

I understand that this issue is very hard for BMD to reproduce and thus hard to track down. But I t’s totally a mystery to me why can’t can’t/haven’t instrumented the code such that when it happens in the field it gives a very clear debug log of what’s going wrong that’s preventing the save - and to some extent how it got into that state.

This problem occurred to me again today, and this time the workaround of switching between projects no longer works!

My project was only using:
- some basic video effects, e.g. Transform, Stablization
- color grading, with a couple of Memories saved
- Nothing from Effects library, no Fusion/Fairlight, no sound editing except volume change

When I used the old trick of enabling "dynamic switch between projects," opening a new project and switching back, it still won't save. I also can't switch between projects by clicking the drop-down menu that shows the project name, but I can switch from File -> Switch Project. However, I can't save the newly opened project either!


Along with the not-saving issue, there are other things that freeze when I continue editing:
- I can't create a new project, either from the menu or from the project manager. I guess I could only do that after relaunching DR
- Some parameter changes in the Transform are not shown live when I adjust them but will apply the changes when I click elsewhere on the timeline and click back on the clip
- The in/outer cannot be removed
- It seems that ctrl+Z is not working either (but it seems to work shortly after the not-saving bug happened), but my memory cache is already set to full 64GB (48GB for Resolve)


The not saving issue happened many time last year, and I applied the workaround each time to save my project. I upgraded once this year, and now it seems there's nothing I could do.

Environment:
Version 18.6.4 Build 6
MacOS Ventura 13.0

The unsaved timeline will still export as a DRT so if it happens again export the timeline for safety before switching projects. That way if you lose changes in a project you can just import the DRT and you'll be back where you were.

The unsaved timeline will still export as a DRT so if it happens again export the timeline for safety before switching projects. That way if you lose changes in a project you can just import the DRT and you'll be back where you were.

Yes, at the end of that day I had to export the timeline, save all the color grading into stills, and restore those settings and it ran normally again. After that, I opened the full disc access for DR on mac to see if it makes a difference in the future. Thanks.

DR will definitely need full disk access on all officially supported versions of MacOS.

Just experienced this in 19 on Windows 11. Offering some data.

- Creating a new timeline re-enabled saving, as mentioned by a previous post.
- I noticed I also couldn't use ctrl-z to undo, which is actually what first tipped me off that something strange was happening.
- I had just copied and pasted attributes on a clip that had several freeze frames. I tried to remove one of the freeze frames, and the clip got very short. I then tried to undo, and it didn't work.
- Now that saving appears to work again, the region where my clip was has a sort of "phantom" clip, where I can select the space on either side of it, even though there is no clip there.

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