Rendering Error: The clip could not be decoded

Hi,
ever since upgrading to Resolve 16 a few weeks ago I keep running into problems when rendering.
Right now I keep getting the message "Rendering Error: The clip MVI_0938.MOV could not be decoded correctly. Please check if the clip is still available on the drive".

Well, I did check, the clip is still available just like every other clip in this project. It plays back in Resolve just fine, it is used in multiple instances none of which cause these problems.

This is not the first time I run into this problem during rendering. Another project kept rendering a "Media Offline" clip 4 times out of 5 into the final video. It would only work sometimes.

Yes, I just updated to the latest version this morning. The recurring crashes made it hard to finish this project. Now it is done and I can not even render it.

I captured the logs right after this crash. Please let me know if I can help you fix this bug.

Edit: Sorry about the double post. I got an error message when I tried to post the first one and had not expected it to be posted.

If that is any help: For now the render throws this error message consistently at the same spot in the project. I can, however, set an In-point at this exact spot, render only this range to the end and it works just fine. So I can render the whole projects in two parts, just not as a whole. It is a rather small project of only about 4 minutes in length.

I would suggest reading through the FAQ as it has some suggestions.

One thing to look at is your GPU driver if you have not updated recently. If you have an NVIDIA card, install the latest _Studio_ version of the driver if offered for your card instead of the _Gaming_ version.

If that doesn't fix it, create a signature in the User Control Panel accessed via the link in the upper left corner of this web page. List your system configuration as I have done in my signature.

Thank you for the suggestions which I have followed. I did install the NVIDIA Studio drivers and just added my system to the signature. That didn't fix the issue either, though...

Perhaps upgrading to 16.1.1 stopped the crashing aspect of your problem? If not, and since you've updated DR and the GPU driver, then it would be appropriate to generate new crash logs.

You say it fails at the same spot. A few things to check:
-- In the Deliver page Render Settings panel under Advanced Settings, do you have Use Optimized Media or Use Render Cached Images turned on?
-- Make sure that the destination drive for the render is not full or nearly so.
If that hasn't fixed your issue, time to trouble shoot. Make a new timeline with the problem clip and do a test render. If it doesn't fail, start adding in any corrections or effects including transitions at the point of failure.

Hi,
I am sorry, right now I can not afford to spend more time helping Blackmagic troubleshooting. I am going back to version 15 to get a few projects done and when a new update to 16.1.1 comes out, or maybe even a 16.2 I will try again. I have lost too much time and too many nerves already

What I can say so far after going back to Resolve 15.3 is that it is running rock solid on my system and a lot more smooth, which, as I feel it, is definitely related.

Also hit this one just now - log attached.

I suspect it could be a GPU issue, but there doesn't seem to be a Studio driver for my card (Quadra K2100M).

Wanted to try going down to 15.3 version as this seems to have worked for others, but I'm only on free Resolve 16 version and v15 seems to need an activation key. I guess the free versions started recently from v16+. Video is not my day job (I'm a coder), so I only get to tinker occasionally when I need a demo video or something. May get budget for a full version, but I doubt it at this stage - will probably just get sent back to using a low end tool of some kind.

Edit: Woops - my bad - downloaded the wrong v15.13, hence the activation prompt - try again!

So the upshot of my rendering problems was that I got the video to render by 2 different routes in fact:

• I downgraded my main machine to Resolve 16.0. Note though, I could not simply open the project. I had to export it from 16.1.1 and them import it back into 16.0.
• As an alternate (and in parallel) I installed a clean 16.1.1 copy on a different machine in the hope maybe a different GPU would get around it. No luck with that, but I found another thread suggesting disabling the User Preference to abort rendering on a bad frame. That seemed to work also.

Both of these seemed to work and given me a fully rendered timeline.

A final note is that in searching for answers I saw a note that GoPro footage can be problematic. Interestingly, my timeline has GoPro footage in it but not the clip causing the issue. The one failing is actually a screen capture clip from a demo machine. The render is processing both streams tho - GoPro cam, and desktop capture. So perhaps it is a factor. This specific problem did seem to have been solved by users upgrading to the full/commercial Studio version.

While I have not encountered this myself, I understand that some screen capture software generates variable frame rate files and that this can be an issue.

I don't believe there is a database incompatibility issue between various sub-versions of DR16, but there definitely is one between any DR 16 version going back to DR 15.

My son did a screen record and we are getting the same error. Can not decode. I hope they fix this error. This is for Resolve 16.

I always recommend hardware recorders for screen capture that you intend to edit. They typically record standardized formats designed for editing, whereas software recorders typically do not.

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/produc ... studiomini

I was having this same issue last night. I was rendering out a 25 minute edit that was multi-cam at one point before I flattened the edit when I was done. I saw there was update to 16.1.2 but that didn't fix it. I went to a different computer and that didn't fix it. I even made sure all of my drivers were up to date.

The render would always have this error at the point in the timeline. I went to that point and noticed that it was failing right at the end of the clip that kept giving me an error so the clip was definitely there and it had no problem encoding the clip when it was used multiple times in the timeline already. What I did find though, there was a sliced edit point at the last few frames of the clip that I guess I made by accident while I was cutting between the two cameras. Once I removed that edit point, it rendered out fine.

Sorry this doesn't help with rendering out with Fusion compositions but hopefully it helps out somebody.

I'm heaving the same issue im my project, all the drivers are updated and in other projects are working just fine, but in my major project I keep having this bug even if take out the clip from the timeline.

I have the same problem. These are simply Nvidia captures of training material that Im just lining up together, trimming out the unneeded dead air at the beginning and the end. Then exporting it to a slightly lower bitrate. These are 3hr videos, for 10 days. After waiting around 25min, it gets to the end of the first clip then throws up the error that it couldn't decode said clip. Yet it's output is fine all the way to the end of said clip. Essentially I wasted about 3hrs on one clip trying to figure out what is/was wrong. Unsurprisingly, my bosses don't like to hear about that kind of time wasting, especially now.

Our fix was to just subscribe to Adobe... Reran the same three days of training in Premiere that DaVinci kept failing and it exported flawlessly. Too bad

I have the same issue, but it seems that it has something to do with rendering in 4K. At least for me. I did the rendering in 1080P and it worked with no issue.

All my videos in the past have been in 4K but after the latest update, (not sure if it´s the update to blame) it has failed in rendering in different spots of the video wherever that specific clip shows up.

The clip in question is one I filmed using Action Screen Recorder. Another thing I did differently this time, was fuse two clips together that I had edited, the clips being cuts of the one in question.

I updated my Nvidia Drivers, Windows, Resolve(before the issue), restarted my PC. Nothing worked.

I have the same issue. (16 on a new MacBook Pro running Catalina). I'm a novice user, so have no ideas for work arounds. Has happened exporting to avi, mov and mp4 all in 1080/60 (original video settings).

I had this problem when stitching multiple clips together. I removed the offending clip but it still failed at the same point....but I found a video on youtube that fixed it for me - not sure what the option protects against but appears to be a bit heavy handed about it.

Sorry can't post a link here but the instructions are basically.

1) Select "DaVinci Resolve" in the menu bar (top left)
2) Select "Preferences"
3) Select "User" (top, centre of screen)
4) Untick the bottom option "Stop renders when a frame or clip cannot be processed"

My file then rendered fine.

I had this problem when stitching multiple clips together. I removed the offending clip but it still failed at the same point....but I found a video on youtube that fixed it for me - not sure what the option protects against but appears to be a bit heavy handed about it.

Sorry can't post a link here but the instructions are basically.

1) Select "DaVinci Resolve" in the menu bar (top left)
2) Select "Preferences"
3) Select "User" (top, centre of screen)
4) Untick the bottom option "Stop renders when a frame or clip cannot be processed"

My file then rendered fine.

Thank you. This fixed the issue for me too.

h0tspurs

I had this problem when stitching multiple clips together. I removed the offending clip but it still failed at the same point....but I found a video on youtube that fixed it for me - not sure what the option protects against but appears to be a bit heavy handed about it.

Sorry can't post a link here but the instructions are basically.

1) Select "DaVinci Resolve" in the menu bar (top left)
2) Select "Preferences"
3) Select "User" (top, centre of screen)
4) Untick the bottom option "Stop renders when a frame or clip cannot be processed"

My file then rendered fine.

This solved my issue! Thanks h0tspurs!
All my projects were rendering correctly and fast. This one after who knows what change in Resolve started failing. It says the error is at clip 1, but the whole clip 1 plays fine (exported MOV file) and it's clip 2 that gets cutoff at the last few seconds of the whole video. Whatever random error there was that tick helped.

The error still exists in version 17.4.2 and only circumvented by unchecking the "stop render" button as described by @h0tspurs. Creating a new timeline, a new project, deleting clip and render cache, etc. did not help. I'm still mystified as to what is resulting in this behavior when the clip itself is fine and another leading editor does not seem to be find any problems rendering the same project with the same clips, including the one DR complains about. What would be tremendously helpful is for Blackmagicdesign to pinpoint what in a clip triggers this unexpected behavior so that users can expect when this might happen. In my case, I like to start a project with DR because I prefer the seamless editing workflow in DR, and then export the project and process it further (VFX, etc.) with another editor. If I can predict when the error might be triggered, I would prefer start and finish that project entirely using the other editor rather than hop from one to the other. This is because even with the workaround, I did get some artifacts in several frames and had to edit those frames out in the exported project. I hope that by now, the bug that causes this error since DR 16 is known to the devs and can be shared with the community (circumstances when it is reproducible) because this would be tremendously helpful. Thanks.

This mysterious "The clip could not be decoded" issue is still not solved in version 18.01.

h0tspurs' method down below worked for me after having many failed attempts to export! I have version 17.4.3 on 11September2022 but I will be upgrading.

I had this problem when stitching multiple clips together. I removed the offending clip but it still failed at the same point....but I found a video on youtube that fixed it for me - not sure what the option protects against but appears to be a bit heavy handed about it.

Sorry can't post a link here but the instructions are basically.

1) Select "DaVinci Resolve" in the menu bar (top left)
2) Select "Preferences"
3) Select "User" (top, centre of screen)
4) Untick the bottom option "Stop renders when a frame or clip cannot be processed"

My file then rendered fine.

And it still exists in 18.6

Maybe my case can shed a bit more light on the issue?

I have a 3,5 hour timeline (10 episodes of a web series cut together) and had trouble exporting it in h.264. And since rendering takes at least 2 hours I went a different route and exported everything into DNxHD.

I reimported the 271GB file and wanted to export it as h.264 in the second step. And then I ran into the "decode" error.

I checked the rendered clip (the truncated file was readable) and shortly before the error Resolve actually inserted one frame of "media offline". The file continued for maybe 10 frames and then ends.

So I thought the DNxHD was broken and I could even see the "offline" frame in my timeline. Since I didn't want to render the big DNxHD it again I just duplicated the previous frame and tried exporting again.

This time it went past the broken frame but stopped a minute later at a different frame with the same error. Only this time, the "Media Offline" visible in the exported video could not be found in the timeline. There the frame existed!

I rebooted the system and the frame that was "offline" in the previous render error was there again.

Since I really just wanted to export the series in h.264 I created a new project with only the DNxHD als the sole clip and tried exporting it. Same "decode" error again. Even earlier in the video where there was previously no issue.

I copied the clip to a different NVMe disk. Same error, different frame.

I tried another render pass with the task manager and the graphs open. There I could see, that the active time of the disk spikes from 30% to 100% periodically, which coincides with a lower transfer speed and a reduction of render speed (it renders at around 300fps, but drops down to a slideshow for a second when this happens.)

So TLDR: It seems Resolve has serious trouble reading the file fast enough? It is a single DNxHD file sitting alone on a freshly formatted NVMe drive. There should be no speed issues. Also Resolve is ONLY doing a DNxHD -> h.264 transcode. I literally didn't touch anything else. So there is also no reason for reading spikes or slowdowns.

As I write this the render finished with the method mentioned above: Don't stop at render errors! I am just worried, that there is a red "Media Offline" frame somewhere. But it is "only" for a festival, so I am not going to check ...

Edit:
Also interesting: The error occured at random frames during the render, but always around the 1 hour mark (in a 3,5 hour timeline), not before. I just finished rendering a 20 min. clip from the same DNxHD file, enabled the "stop render at error" option again and it went through. So maybe the problem builds up over time?

To any others who had this problem before: Did it happen immediately for you?

I might have found a work around. Go to "Playback" –> "Render Cache" –> "Smart". Let the project play through and create a render cache until you see the little blue bar at the top of the timeline over all the clips. Then when you go to export make sure that "Use render cached images" is checked under the Advanced Settings. This worked for me after having the problem occur over and over again. For me, it wasn't just for one clip, it was for a new and different clip each time that the problem occured. Blackmagic has some sort of major bug that needs to get fixed here.

Is there any way to get Da Vinci to do a dry run of decoding a clip, rather than waiting for an error when actually rendering a job?