Blackmagic Forum

I've seen many, many posts from people experiencing the dreaded Media Offline and I've had it happen to me every so often. Generally, the solution is to Relink Clips. I get that. It works.

BUT... HERE IS THE QUESTION...... WHY THE HECK DOES IT HAPPEN?

I get all the reasons revolving around missing files or media that has ben moved, but in my case, here is the scenario.

I'm working on a project. The media was organized into a few folders and that's where it lives. It has never been moved and none of the files have been edited. Literally, nothing has changed since the project was opened and the media imported. I worked for a solid day and all was well. Then, out of nowhere, I see that 3 clips in my timeline are not displaying and I'm getting the Media Offline screen. Sometimes, mousing over the clip in the Timeline or Media Pool will magically make it display, but more of the time, I either have to Relink or at times, I can close the project and reopen it. Sometimes that works.

I don't understand how this is happening if I'm referencing the same files in the same location and that never changes.

Is there another answer?

The only thing that makes sense to me is that it's a bug in Resolve where the internal link gets broken.

There have been (and still are) other causes which can confuse the situation.

For example, if the hard drive becomes not available to Resolve for any reason the link can be broken. Make sure hard drives do not have power saving enabled. In fact, generally power saving functions cause quite a few problems with Resolve.

Mike Warren wrote:The only thing that makes sense to me is that it's a bug in Resolve where the internal link gets broken.

There have been (and still are) other causes which can confuse the situation.

For example, if the hard drive becomes not available to Resolve for any reason the link can be broken. Make sure hard drives do not have power saving enabled. In fact, generally power saving functions cause quite a few problems with Resolve.

Hi Mike. Thanks for the response. I just checked to make sure I didn't have hard drives going to sleep and as I thought, it's all set up correctly and hard drives never sleep.

robertmitchellphoto wrote:I've seen many, many posts from people experiencing the dreaded Media Offline and I've had it happen to me every so often. Generally, the solution is to Relink Clips. I get that. It works.

BUT... HERE IS THE QUESTION...... WHY THE HECK DOES IT HAPPEN?

My guess is that this is an OS problem. The drive might change its letter (common in Windows), or it became momentarily disconnected, or there's a permissions issue. It happens. Or perhaps somebody moved the files to another folder or changed the name of the folder, so the path is now different.

There are ways to affix a permanent drive letter in Windows and maybe that will help.

I've had it happen under Mac OS, but usually when it does it's because the drive has gone offline for some reason (like a cable got bumped or something). But it's extremely rare -- and I mean like never.

I've had that once in 6 years on the Mac, when someone didn't eject the drive and reconnected it.

All drives are fine. Outside of Resolve, there are no issues. All drives remain mounted and accessible. The system is constantly in use, so I would know if there was an issue with a drive or drives.

From what I can tell, there is an issue/bug in Resolve that causes this to happen. There are hundreds of posts in this forum and elsewhere with the same problem, with systems that are operating perfectly.

I'll contact BMD directly to get an answer.

So here is an update with some additional info that may or may not make sense or help resolve this issue.

I was looking at the current project that is giving me trouble and while browsing the clips and looking at the clips that are showing up as offline, it occurred to me that this is the first project that wasn't just footage from my DJI drone (which never gives me a problem), but that this project has clips from a GoPro and an iPhone 11 Pro.

The only clips that flip to Media Offline are always those from the GoPro or iPhone, and the interesting thing is that I can re-import or Relink and either way, the problem will start all over. The clips from the DJI drone have never been a problem and within this project, they're always there and work fine.

I did look at the files in the Inspector and the video codec for the GoPro is H.264 High L4.2 and the iPhone is H.265 Main L4.0.

Is this the problem? Does Resolve have a problem with these formats?

Check with something like MediaInfo to see if the files are variable frame rate. Resolve definitely has problems with that. I'm pretty sure iPhone files are VFR. Don't know about GoPro.

I recommend using only internal drives for an edit system.

Jim Simon wrote:I recommend using only internal drives for an edit system.

I am using internal m.2 SSD as my drive for footage, with another internal m.2 SSD dedicated to cache.

So, I'm still doing some testing, but I may have solved the problem..... for me, at least. I say that because I've seen many scenarios that are different from mine where users experienced the Media Offline message.

Anyway.... based on some of the responses, some research, and my own troubleshooting and intuitive skills (he he he), it kept coming back to the clips from the iPhone and GoPro that were having issues, and that had to do with the HVEC codec. I don't think it's the H.264 vs. H.265 difference, but rather, the HVEC encoding.

I grabbed a utility (Handbrake) that can convert formats and encoding. I'm sure there are many, both free and paid, and this is the first one I cam across. If anyone wants to recommend a better or best one, that would be great.

OK, so I ran all the iPhone and GoPro clips through Handbrake and converted everything to H.264 with a .MP4 extension. The conversion took a little time but was worth it. I created a new project and imported all those clips as well as some other still photos and DJI drone footage. I started putting a timeline together, making it more complex, adding Fushion, transitions, and some audio effects. Unless I'm just being fooled or its taking time for the issue to kick in, everything seems to be working fine.

I've closed the project and re-opened it a few times with no issue. WhenI load up the project that had problems, it either loads with some media offline clips or it happens in use after a few minutes. If I close that project and open the new one with the converted clips, it loads fine each time, and as I edit or move around within the timeline, it's all good.

Now I just need to build this timeline further and use it for a day or so. That should tell me whether the problem is actually fixed.

For anyone that's having this issue, and you're pulling footage from devices that are using HVEC in their encoding, this may be a fix for you too.

I'll keep you posted.

Yep, this is definitely a HVENC issue. I get it occasionally and *only* on H264/265 files. It is transient and simply goes away when I move to another point in the timeline or mouse-over the thumbnail.

However, I have seen a few videos uploaded to YouTube where there's a single frame or two of the DR "Media Offline" screen embedded in the final video so be careful

Thanks. Yeah, I'm watching everything very carefully to make sure I'm not just being fooled and that there are no other issues.
I haven't exported yet, so I better do that just to be safe.

Well, I spoke too soon.

Even with all the converted clips, out of nowhere 3 clips I the media pool showed the Media Offline message and I got a quick flash of that when playing the timeline. After scrolling over it, it worked, but didn't change the media pool clips.

The history I cited is still the same. It's never happened prior to using clips from the iPhone or GoPro but I can't see what is still different or not lining up.

Not sure whether this is just coincidence, but I'm also finding that my timeline and playhead stop working in the Edit page after a short time.

Perhaps I should reinstall the latest version of DR, or maybe I should go back to the last stable v16. UGH!

Another update.

Let's see how this goes.
After getting the Media Offline message with any file at any given random time with no explanation and no fix, I decided to install the last stable version of Resolve 16.

So far so good. I miss a few things in 17 but so far, after about 2 hours of working with a project in 16, I'm not having any trouble. Since I was fooled last time, I'm going to keep at it and see what happens. Right now, it feels as if 16 is more stable.

OK, so I hope I'm not speaking too soon again, but here goes....

After digging around I found that the HVEC Microsoft extension was recommended and fixed the issue for some. Technically, with Resolve 17, I don't think I'm supposed to need it but since I was experiencing a few other bugs in 17, I decided install the extension and roll back to the last stable version 16 of Resolve.

I've now been editing and using the system constantly for several days, and as of yet, I haven't seen any Media Offline screens anywhere. I've been building on the timeline, adding a lot of effects, transitions, fusion and audio effects. It hasn't popped up on its own, and any of the things that used to seem to induce it aren't having any effect.

I don't want to jinx it, but in my particular scenario, I may have solved the problem.