Media Offline - Best way to deal with and avoid

As I learn more of the intricacies of DR, I saved my project as a similar name but with a different number in front of the name (e.g. 11 Bikes, 10 Bikes, etc.) as I go along and then Export that same project to an external hard drive.

When I booted up DR today, the last project name appeared but I got that Media Offline (error?) window. The last 3 very short clip videos I imported displayed in the Medial Pool but now they were in that same red color and the Media Offline.

I wasn’t sure what to do so I re-imported those same 3 short video clips into the Media Pool and then dragged each to the V2 Timeline to replace the “red” images on the Timeline. I now have to re-trim each.

Any idea of what happened?

How to avoid that in the future?

Thank you so much!

You're working from internal drives only?

No, Jim. I'm so concerned about losing a project that I regularly, manually save to the desktop hard drive and when I'm done for the day I then in DR Choose File >Export Project and choose the external hard drive so at least I have the project as edited saved.

Outside of that, the only step I know to save my editing would be to Render it as an .MP4 file.

Should I NOT be exporting the Project to the external hard drive?

If I should export to the external hard drive, is there a better way than using Export Project?

Thank you!

Using an external for backups is fine.

But the Database, Media, Cache...all that stuff is on internal drives?

Where is your media?
Media offline has very little to do with making backups of your project, and more to do with where the actual media is located. The project itself just looks in the last location it was told the media lived.

If your drive letters are constantly changing, then Resolve isn't going to know where your media is, and making a backup if your project does not make a copy if the media with the project.

As far as relinking the media, do a search. There is no need to re edit and re trim clips. You can have resolve relink to clips, bins, folders, change source paths...you just need to do some reading.

This might be helpful:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9i3x06004w0jp ... d.pdf?dl=0

I haven't had this problem since setting the drives to not power down to save power.
Yeah, now they're always spinning.... but at least I can get video edited.

I have my camera videos (main videos) on my desktop hard drive (C:\) along with my short video clip (5-7 seconds) and my audio (music) all on my desktop hard drive.

In case that desktop bites the dust, I then copied all those DR folders over to my external hard drive (SSD 1TB) so I "should" (hopefully) have everything "backed-up" or "saved" if the desktop becomes unusable.

Every few minutes I do a manual Save Project As and give it a new name. e.g. Bike1, Bike2, Bike3 so I have the last edits saved.

I then selected File > Export Project As (to save on that .drp on the external SSD 1 TB hard drive).

If I do a Save Project as to the internal hard drive is it recommend that I then do an Export Project As with the same EXACT name as I did on internal hard drive during the Save Project As process?

Thank you.

It doesn't matter as long as you can identify it in case of a crash. And, yes, having all your media and the .drp files backed up will enable a reconstruction of the project even if your machine blows up.

In case that desktop bites the dust

To handle that, I prefer to keep nothing project related on the C: drive. Additional hard drives for Databases, Cache, Media and Exports will add safety, speed and organization to the process.

This also allows you to reinstall Windows when needed without risking the work.

When I was editing on 11/2 I exported the project as a .drp and saved it both to the external hard drive (H) and the immediately saved that project by the same name on to the internal hard drive (DATA D:). But today (11/3) once DR opens and I choose Import project and find the 11/2 .drp project it opens but in the Media Pool widows there are 5 files (4 .mp4 and one .mp3 music file) that are in that red offline media. All 5 files are both on the external hard drive and the internal hard drive so I'm not sure why DR can't find those 5 files. I even copied and pasted those files into the parent Videos folder so they are in both my Camera Video folder and that parent folder on both internal and external hard drives. Is there any way in the Media Pool to ascertain the exact folder/sub-folder that Media Offline file originated from? Ex. in Windows you can find the folder/subfolder string C:\Videos\Movies Editing\Audio to see the .mp3 music you're using and where it's located. I'm not sure how to enable DR to see this media as it's on both drives. Is there an ideal place to always save your .drp projects - in certain folders? Certain sub-folders? Thanks for your troubleshooting.

Go to your Edit page, select the Master bin, right click, and select relink clips (or something like that).
It will prompt you for the file/folder. Go to the drive and folder where your project's main clips are located. Select okay and relink the clips. If it does not find it, the clips may be in subfolders. Resolve will as if you want to do a deep search, select that can continue with the relinking process. It will make a recursive search of all your subfolders from the root folder you selected. If all your files that were offline are located, it will relink and the red marks will go away. You can then continue to work on it. Save your project/export your project again.

Hi Ellroy ... Way Cool! It found 17 of the 19 clips but displayed that 2 of the 19 clips could not be found. It then prompted to do a Comprehensive Search but still didn't find those 2 clips. Would you suggest I just drag those missing 2 clips back over from the Camera's SD card and place them in my D drive in this sub-folder
D:\Videos\Video Subject Name\DCIM\100CANON
where I have all my other videos stored from the Camera?

I'm not sure how those clips became separated by I've had to use the internal hard drive, and external hard drive and 2 flash drives in this process so I'm editing ion the fly. Thank you so very much for sharing this great trick and for all your kind help. I'm so close....!

Hi Ellroy ... Way Cool! It found 17 of the 19 clips but displayed that 2 of the 19 clips could not be found. It then prompted to do a Comprehensive Search but still didn't find those 2 clips. Would you suggest I just drag those missing 2 clips back over from the Camera's SD card and place them in my D drive in this sub-folder
D:\Videos\Video Subject Name\DCIM\100CANON
where I have all my other videos stored from the Camera?

I'm not sure how those clips became separated by I've had to use the internal hard drive, and external hard drive and 2 flash drives in this process so I'm editing ion the fly. Thank you so very much for sharing this great trick and for all your kind help. I'm so close....!

Yeah, you can just copy those 2 files into your project folder and just relink it again. To expedite and not have to relink everyone of the files again, and since there are only 2 files and you know where they are going to be, you can right click on the individual files and select Relink clip for just those 2 files.

I used a multi-dock so I have removable drive bays. When I have projects that are reworks and the client brings back the drive and project file, this kind of things tend to happen especially if the drive name/letter or mount point changes. So I just import the project and then relink the clips from the new mount, save the project and export a new project file when I am done with the work. Easy. BTW, my name is spelled E-L-L-O-R-Y.

Hi Ellory... My apologies. I meant no disrespect. I'm having to re-locate from one station and PC to the next (8 so far today) so that was completely unintended on the fly! Really appreciate you sharing all your very helpful guidance.