Blackmagic Forum

Hi guys,

I am running Davinci Resolve 16.2.7.010 on a HP Z420 Workstation
XEON QC 3.6GHz 16GB RAM with a Geforce GTX 1660 Ti.

I was working on a project yesterday for around 6hours, I was manually saving regularly.

Today I opened the project and although all the bins I set up are there, the timeline is completely absent.
As if I hadn't even started ( apart from the bins)

Is there any way of retrieving this?

( I already went into the project manager and looked for backups, there were none

I have since changed the backup settings in preferences to auto save every 10 mins and backup also.

I really need to know that this won't happen again as I am working to a deadline and this has cost me a day.

Any advice or insight would be greatly appreciated!

TIA

I'm thinking it's more likely that you're just not finding it than it actually disappeared.

Are you using a Timelines Bin (the option in Project Settings)?

Hi Jim,

Thanks for your reply. I'm sorry I'm new, I'm not sure what you're saying means.
I am not sure if I am doing that, I will have a look now, fingers crossed!

Alright, so the very first thing I'm going to recommend is stop working on this project and go through at least the Beginner's Manual before continuing with any real work.

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/produc ... e/training

Resolve is a very complex program, and trying to use it without training is just asking for trouble.

Conor D wrote:Hi guys, I am running Davinci Resolve 16.2.7.010 on a HP Z420 Workstation
XEON QC 3.6GHz 16GB RAM with a Geforce GTX 1660 Ti. I was working on a project yesterday for around 6hours, I was manually saving regularly. Today I opened the project and although all the bins I set up are there, the timeline is completely absent. As if I hadn't even started ( apart from the bins)

Just a thought: create a new empty Timeline and then see if the other Timeline shows up in the list of Timelines. I always use Timeline bins, and they never get lost.

Once -- a long time ago -- I had a case where changes did not save in a crashed session, but that was right around the time that Live Save was introduced (I'm guessing v15). In my cases, it was 5 hours of work I redid in about 20 minutes. Not a disaster, just a momentary heart attack.

For years, I've advised people to manually export a backup DRP copy of every session at the end of the day, and keep it in a separate folder; I call mine the "Color" folder just for sessions. That way, I can glance at them and see how many days went into each specific project. I also try to copy the DRP to a thumbdrive, and that leaves the building in my pocket. I figure even in the event of nuclear attack, the thumb drive will survive and I'll be able to rebuild the project. When we deliver projects, we archive XMLs of every timeline and stills of every shot, so we could use a sledgehammer to put the session back together again if we had to. I've only had to do that twice in 11 years, but eh, it's for peace of mind. On complex projects, we'll archive the XMLs as we go, just as an ongoing thing.

The reality is that Resolve is actually fairly bullet-proof & reliable, and I can go weeks and weeks and weeks without a single crash. On the rare occasions there is a crash, it may not be Resolve's fault -- it could be an OS hiccough or an I/O problem. Even with a crash, I can't recall losing more than 2 minutes of work in years and years. It's also been extremely rare I had to fall back on a backup, but it has happened, particularly in cases where I wanted to check a previous version and see if we'd made a mistake, or if a series of shots somehow got corrupted.

Jim Simon wrote:Alright, so the very first thing I'm going to recommend is stop working on this project and go through at least the Beginner's Manual before continuing with any real work.

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/produc ... e/training

Resolve is a very complex program, and trying to use it without training is just asking for trouble.

HAL voice "I'm sorry Jim, I can't do that"

I hear you, I'm in the middle of a project and so to start all over isn't an option.
I've just made the switch from Premier Pro ( I was a beginner at that too) so I'm not married to it.

I think I may have found it later in amongst the bins but at that point I'd put another 5 hours into the project
and didn't want to click anything that might result in more grief/loss.

I did change my settings so that now it auto-saves and backs up so that's cool !

Thanks for the link, I will definitely check it out once the dust settles

Marc Wielage wrote:

Conor D wrote:Hi guys, I am running Davinci Resolve 16.2.7.010 on a HP Z420 Workstation
XEON QC 3.6GHz 16GB RAM with a Geforce GTX 1660 Ti. I was working on a project yesterday for around 6hours, I was manually saving regularly. Today I opened the project and although all the bins I set up are there, the timeline is completely absent. As if I hadn't even started ( apart from the bins)

Just a thought: create a new empty Timeline and then see if the other Timeline shows up in the list of Timelines. I always use Timeline bins, and they never get lost.

Once -- a long time ago -- I had a case where changes did not save in a crashed session, but that was right around the time that Live Save was introduced (I'm guessing v15). In my cases, it was 5 hours of work I redid in about 20 minutes. Not a disaster, just a momentary heart attack.

For years, I've advised people to manually export a backup DRP copy of every session at the end of the day, and keep it in a separate folder; I call mine the "Color" folder just for sessions. That way, I can glance at them and see how many days went into each specific project. I also try to copy the DRP to a thumbdrive, and that leaves the building in my pocket. I figure even in the event of nuclear attack, the thumb drive will survive and I'll be able to rebuild the project. When we deliver projects, we archive XMLs of every timeline and stills of every shot, so we could use a sledgehammer to put the session back together again if we had to. I've only had to do that twice in 11 years, but eh, it's for peace of mind. On complex projects, we'll archive the XMLs as we go, just as an ongoing thing.

The reality is that Resolve is actually fairly bullet-proof & reliable, and I can go weeks and weeks and weeks without a single crash. On the rare occasions there is a crash, it may not be Resolve's fault -- it could be an OS hiccough or an I/O problem. Even with a crash, I can't recall losing more than 2 minutes of work in years and years. It's also been extremely rare I had to fall back on a backup, but it has happened, particularly in cases where I wanted to check a previous version and see if we'd made a mistake, or if a series of shots somehow got corrupted.

Hi Marc,

Thanks for the reply. I'll definitely look into that.
I'm loving Resolve so far, my friend recommended it to me and I haven't been disappointed.

Best wishes