I lost my project because DaVinci crashed and saved it

Hi everyone, really hoping someone could help me with this.

I was working on a project in DaVinci Resolve 17. My autosave is turned off so I have a habit of saving every 10-15 minutes. I had a glitch in one part of the video and wasn't sure if it would show in the rendered video, so I wanted to check. I saved the project, deleted everything from the timeline except for the part with the glitch and tried to quick export it. Suddenly, DaVinci crashed and when I opened my project, there was only the part that I tried to export. So obviously DaVinci autosaved my work when it crashed. I've tried everything, unfortunately I didn't have project backups turned on, I only have the Project.db file which is sadly the version of the project that DaVinci autosaved.

Is there any way to recover this project? Maybe through the .db file? I've checked for previous versions of it in file properties, couldn't find anything.

Thanks!

Ooph, that's rough, I'm very sorry to hear.

One idea: when you open up the project (with everything deleted), does the "Undo" feature work and undo the delete operation that you did? I'm not sure if Resolve saves/restores the "Undo" history.

Other than that: how large is your Project.db file? I wouldn't be surprised if your project files are indeed there in some form, and that we just need to figure out how to restore/extract your old stuff.

Sounds like you have Live Save turned on. Likely you will have to rebuild.

In the future, you should do this kind of thing on a Copy, either of the timeline or of the entire project.

I saved the project, deleted everything from the timeline except for the part with the glitch and tried to quick export it. Suddenly, DaVinci crashed and when I opened my project, there was only the part that I tried to export.

I have no advice for fixing this, but you can learn from this experience. Before performing any potentially-catastrophic operation -- like a global delete or a global color change -- duplicate the timeline and make the change on the duplicate. If it doesn't work, you can always go back to the original timeline.

The Auto-Backups can work as well, and I would assume the most-recent backup would survive even if your current session crashed. That's assuming you had a backup from 20-30 minutes ago.

Or make a .drp export to a separate storage, so you can go back even after a massive crash.

It is exactly why I do not use "live save". I take responsibility for saving and if I screw up I have no one to blame. If you set "Live Save" you still have to take actions to cover this situation like saving some other way anyway. If you are just adding to edit you will be OK if you try a change or delete and get a crash like this then it is not helpful or a disaster. Easier to not use in my mind.

It is exactly why I do not use "live save". I take responsibility for saving and if I screw up I have no one to blame.

I think your reasoning is faulty. Live Save did exactly what it was designed to do here - it instantly saved the changes so that no work was lost after the crash.

Resolve doesn't crash on me often, but this feature does work well when it's needed.

I think the error here lies is how the work was done.

No it did not work for the OP. It lost his work. As I said if you only add to your project it works fine. If you change or delete it can be a big problem as in this case. It can be as simple as closing a window and in doing shut down Resolve. It is nearly always user error but not in this case. The user error in this case was not also having backup set as well as " Live Save ". Even if the backup was 10 min back it would have saved maybe the whole project if what was being done was trying things out. If you have "Live Save" and " Backup " set then you are covered. Personally I like to decide what is being saved and when. If I do something that like and do not want to loose I save. It is only a key press.

It is exactly why I do not use "live save". I take responsibility for saving and if I screw up I have no one to blame. If you set "Live Save" you still have to take actions to cover this situation like saving some other way anyway. If you are just adding to edit you will be OK if you try a change or delete and get a crash like this then it is not helpful or a disaster. Easier to not use in my mind.

Same. This is the first feature I change in Resolve after a fresh install. I frequently open files to test something but don't want to save it.

Thank you everyone for your taking the time to reply and share your tips!!

The project was a week's work, but I was really determined to post it today so I re-did the whole thing from scratch last night. But the first thing I did was turning on backup saving. Now it backs up every 20 minutes so hopefully this won't happen again.

erickim555, thanks for the compassion! Undo didn't work as the program crashed, and I was feeling too frustrated to look for ways to get the data from the .db file, but who knows, maybe it's possible.

SkierEvans, I completely agree. A few months ago I was trying out something on a finished project, completely unaware of live saving as I was new to DaVinci and editing in general. So I thought I'd do whatever I need to, save it as a new project and then just quit the current project without saving and it would revert to the last saved version. Needless to say it did not, instead it automatically saved my changes and I lost all of my work. After that I immediately turned off live save and now I just do a ctrl + S every couple of minutes without even thinking about it. But apparently DaVinci live saves when it crashes no matter if you have the option turned off. Which kind of is a good thing I guess, if you have the backup option turned on.

I'm with Ron and Sean here. I never have Live Save on. If like Sean I'm testing something or just making an illustration for a post, I don't want it saved.

Live save is a brilliant feature as it works alongside autosave. If Resolve crashes and the "live save" version is not the one you want, in the project manager right click on the project and go to auto backup, selecting a suitable version

I am not bothered about crashes. I cannot remember if I have ever had a crash on my PC. The issue with "Live Save" on a PC for sure is that closing a window by mistake can cause this problem. If a program has saved Windows will not ask if you want to close but just close and you have lost everything. Definitely a feature I turn off after every update to make sure. When I am editing something fast I have backup to 5 mins and when I like what I have just done save. I often undo and try something else and do not want the issue of accidentally closing the window. With "Live Save" off Windows will ask if you want to save and you realize you made a mistake. But you can then recover by cancelling the close. Not so if "Live Save " is on. Its gone.

After that I immediately turned off live save and now I just do a ctrl + S every couple of minutes without even thinking about it. But apparently DaVinci live saves when it crashes no matter if you have the option turned off.

What, really? I guess I haven't been in a situation where I noticed this yet, but even on a crash I do not want Resolve saving over my current project. If Resolve would save the crashed project to a backup file and then provide an option to restore it, that's fine. There needs to be an option to turn live save off for crashes too.