importing timeline from friend - wrong clips loading

Davinci Resolve - version 17.4.3 build 10
Me - windows 10 | friend windows 11

I switched to resolve 2 years ago. working great and smooth. few days ago I and my friend started working on an edit. laying out clips, audio and 1 adjustment layer.

I exported the timeline via - file-export- timeline as a .drt file. sent it to my friend with almost 20GB of footage in a HDD. - he did his part and sent me the .drt file via email. when i import it - i can see the audio and stuff correctly. but the video clips - although the cuts seem correct -clip names are wrong in my timeline.

rendered video side by side -

This can happen when you have Clip Name conflicts and overlapping timecodes: in other words, it sees two similar clips with identical names and timecode that starts with 00:00:00:00, and grabs the wrong ones. For a lot of reasons, you're better off having unique file names and vastly different timecode (like time of day).

One thing you can try: delete all the clips from your media page, then manually import the "correct" clips (preferably from a single folder) and see if they automatically relink. This can work, particularly with difficult MP4/H.264 clips.

Hi, thank you for the quick response. The clips are named from my camera. And has common canon naming. I will try deleting all clips n importing again.

I have this same problem but the names are completely different.
I import a timeline (.drt) sent by someone I'm working with into a project where I already have all the right files, all the edits are correct but the clips are all wrong and have completely different names. It's pulling from clips in a different bin in the same project. It has done this twice now and both times has pulled from the same wrong clips.
The TC might be similar but If the names are completely different how can this be happening?

Davinci Resolve - version 17.4.3 build 10
Me - windows 10 | friend windows 11

I switched to resolve 2 years ago. working great and smooth. few days ago I and my friend started working on an edit. laying out clips, audio and 1 adjustment layer.

I exported the timeline via - file-export- timeline as a .drt file. sent it to my friend with almost 20GB of footage in a HDD. - he did his part and sent me the .drt file via email. when i import it - i can see the audio and stuff correctly. but the video clips - although the cuts seem correct -clip names are wrong in my timeline.

rendered video side by side -

I have the exact problem with 18.5

Same problem but with different operating mode.

I have a project (let's call it XYZ-1) where I have several timelines on. I saved them one by one using Mediamanagement to also export all the footage. For each timeline I created a folder where I then find the timeline in .drt format and all the footages associated with it.

Then I create a new project "XYZ-3" where I reload the timelines by creating a Bin for each timeline. And up to this point I've had no problems.

Then I open the "XYZ-2" project and exporte, as I did before, all its Timelines.

Reopen new project "XYZ-3" and load each single timeline into new bins.

So in this new XYZ-3 project I now find two BINs, XYZ-1 and XYZ-2 with the respective sub-bins containing the imported footage of the individual timelines.

And here's the problem. In many XYZ-2 timelines I find completely different clips that are from the XYZ-1 timelines. For example: clip number C00959 (from XYZ-1) instead of C00123 (from XYZ-2)

It seem to be an import problem while the individual exported files are correct.

I suspect that Resolve is ignoring the filename in this use case and marching only on timecode.

I hope the devs are testing Resolve with files that have no TC as this is a very common use case in the larger set of users that BMD seems to be courting.

Hi, all the original footages have TC. I transcode it to mp4 and also try MXF file format by exporting.

In the meantime, I discovered that only the DJI OSMO+ footage is replaced. Those from Sony and Panasonic, however, are not.

Some news,
Most of the changed clips have Fusion FX like tracking and planar tracker using some png images etc.

And all external Graphics imported in a Bin won't be copied from Mediamanagement !!!

A bug?

Some hints from Marc, a very experienced, professional user:
"reminders on Media Management in Resolve:

1) limit your session to just the files actually used in the session (that is, make sure no unnecessary files are sitting in bins)

2) Render-in-Place all H.264, JPG, TIFF, and PNG graphics clips to ProRes or DNxHR so that now the clips have embedded timecode and (preferably) unique file names

3) for camera clips with embedded audio, my opinion is you're better off if you strip the sound out as a WAV file that lives in the session

4) be aware that Titles can be a bit dodgy and don't always survive the changeover with Media Management. (I would say the same thing with Fusion sequences, which I would render out and treat as a separate transcoded element.)

The simpler you make your session, the better the potential for successful Media Management. The moment you have a filename clash or a timecode conflict, it can fail. I wish Resolve had better error trapping so that when it did encounter an error, it just popped up a message with a list of problems, rather than just bailing on the Media Management entirely.

If your trim run is failing, here’s another one from Marc: do a copy run first, connecting to the new files. Then try the trim run, and it has a better chance of getting through.

If your file copying is failing for another reason, try Nikolai Waldman's Resolve Collect and I bet it'll get you at least 98% there without errors. His program has been a lifesaver for me over the last 6-7 years.

http://www.niwa.nu/resolve-collect/

And

I haven't generally found that to be a problem unless the effect involves varispeed or running footage backwards or something like that.

Long-GOP footage is problematic for a lot of reasons, but it does work better now than it used to.

Some Media Management tips that work for the way we use Resolve:

1) limit your session to just the files actually used in the session (that is, make sure no unnecessary files are sitting in bins)

2) Render-in-Place all H.264, JPG, TIFF, and PNG graphics clips to ProRes or DNxHR so that now the clips have embedded timecode and (preferably) unique file names

3) for camera clips with embedded audio, my opinion is you're better off if you strip the sound out as a WAV file that lives in the session

4) be aware that Titles can be a bit dodgy and don't always survive the changeover with Media Management. (I would say the same thing with Fusion sequences, which I would render out and treat as a separate transcoded element.)

The simpler you make your session, the better the potential for successful Media Management. The moment you have a filename clash or a timecode conflict, it can fail. I wish Resolve had better error trapping so that when it did encounter an error, it just popped up a message with a list of problems, rather than just bailing on the Media Management entirely."

I found the correct method to export and re-import all files and timelines.

Previously I exported the timelines with related clips using Mediamanagement and using high quality h264 compression. It correctly output the video and audio files and finally saved the .drt file too. I loaded the new project, created a new Bin and directly imported the .drt file of the timeline. All associated clips also automatically appeared in the bin. But as I loaded the timelines, the clips were replaced with those from other timelines.

I went crazy even trying the Reconform which initially seemed to work but then the same problem arose.

In the end, not knowing the internal workflow of DR well, I thought that in some way it was going to replace the files as the source disk (in my case Z: ) is specified in the settings where it searches for the source files instead of from the folder where I saved the .drt timeline. Furthermore, by checking the clips generated by Mediamanagement I found that they were all correct.

At this point the intuition... I created the Bin and made an Import Media instead of an Import Timeline and... finally everything is in its place. In this way he went to look for the video from the Bin and not from the Media.