DaVinci keeps crashing when opening my project

Like the subject says, DaVinci keeps crashing when I try to open my project. Furthermore, sometimes it opens but crashes when switching tabs or making changes. And shortly after a crash, DaVinci won't open at all, crashing in the process of launching the application.

I've tried the following things based on searching this forum and online:
1) Limit memory usage to 50% or less
2) Delete the project and start over
3) Import separate files to see if a file is corrupt
4) Updating to the most recent version

I'm on a M1 Macbook Pro (v12.4) with 32GB of RAM.
The project uses only ProRes 422 files. I've worked effortlessly with ProRes RAW before so the hardware shouldn't be any issue.

[Dwaine Maggart]

Are you using the current 18.1.3 Resolve version?

Have you tried making a Project Export .drp of the project, and if that works, Importing that drp into a new project?

When you are in the scenario where Resolve won't open, how do you fix that?

Are you using App Store Resolve or Resolve from the BMD web site?

Yes that's the version I'm using.

Unfortunately I can't, cause the project won't open.

I just wait for a couple of minutes or try launching it a couple of times and then it usually works again. The project manager opens, but when selecting that specific project it crashes again. Any other project can be opened, edited and played just fine.

I'm using Resolve directly from the BMD website.

[Dwaine Maggart]

To try a Project Export of the project, you don't need to open it. On the Project Manager page, right click the project and select Export Project. Does that work, or does it crash?

Hi! I am having the same issue. Any help would be appreciated.

Resolve keeps crashing, initially only when I tried to export, but now it crashes shortly after opening the project. I have disabled all effects but this did not fix the issue.

I have tried to import the .drp into a new project, but this new project also crashes.

For what it's worth, I suspect that there's a problem with Fusion paint nodes.

The crash log, system info and .drp file are all available here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... share_link

To try a Project Export of the project, you don't need to open it. On the Project Manager page, right click the project and select Export Project. Does that work, or does it crash?

Just tried this. Exporting works, but once I import the .drp into a new project, it crashes when finished loading.

Thom, sorry to hear you're also experiencing these issues. I don't think the problem lies with Fusion paint nodes since my project doesn't use Fusion. It's early stage, like 15 minutes in. Just importing media and dropping a couple pieces on the timeline. It then crashed.

Today I was grading a one hour timeline and 30 minutes in Resolve just kept freezing. What seemed to help was deleting all the cache files (they were sound cache files) from the windows explorer window. I never even cached anything myself but somehow resolve created an audio cache file that was troublesome.

[Dwaine Maggart]

@Justin: Can you put the drp on a file sharing site and provide a link so we can look at it?

Today I was grading a one hour timeline and 30 minutes in Resolve just kept freezing. What seemed to help was deleting all the cache files (they were sound cache files) from the windows explorer window. I never even cached anything myself but somehow resolve created an audio cache file that was troublesome.

Did the drive on which your cache lives happen to run out of storage recently? Resolve doesn’t clean up partially-written cache files so if it was writing one and ran out of space it might have left a cache file that later confused it during cache file read.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Today I was grading a one hour timeline and 30 minutes in Resolve just kept freezing. What seemed to help was deleting all the cache files (they were sound cache files) from the windows explorer window. I never even cached anything myself but somehow resolve created an audio cache file that was troublesome.

Did the drive on which your cache lives happen to run out of storage recently? Resolve doesn’t clean up partially-written cache files so if it was writing one and ran out of space it might have left a cache file that later confused it during cache file read.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

No, drive was always ok and not full.

@Justin: Can you put the drp on a file sharing site and provide a link so we can look at it?

Of course. Here's the link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/e5obg8emsga4b ... s.drp?dl=0

The problem gets worse...

A project I've been working on for a while which kept working while the one I posted about crashed, has just shown a critical error during saving. It asked to either reload it, or to export the project and reload from that export.

When I asked it to export, it said the project couldn't be exported and quit DaVinci. I've just re-opened DaVinci and it's gone... Like, there's absolutely no trace of it. The project now says "Untitled Project". When I open it, it's completely empty...

This is getting out of control. The project that's now gone was one I've been working on for more than a week. I have a lot of client projects coming up and I can't afford to lose progress like this.

Update: I've been able to recover the file through: https://beginnersapproach.com/davinci-r ... -projects/

Opening it again, the effect I last used, Halo, is disabled. When I deleted the effect from the clip, DaVinci gave me notice that it's currently unavailable to begin with.

[Dwaine Maggart]

The project-that-crashes loads OK on my Windows system.

The timeline has 3 ungraded ProRes clips on it. I don't see anything going on in the project that should cause Resolve any issues.

The only other thought be that your audio file is located in your Downloads folder. If there is some other file or files in the Downloads folder that Resolve doesn't like, that could cause it to crash when it looks in that folder for the audio file. Might be worth moving any files in the Download folder other than the desired audio file to another folder to see if that's the issue. And if that is the issue, the Downloads folder is probably not a good place to use Resolve media from.

Update: I've been able to recover the file through: https://beginnersapproach.com/davinci-r ... -projects/

Which of the solutions provided there was the one that let you recover your project? That will help inform us of what went wrong.

Dwaine, any idea what's causing Resolve to crash in my case?

I have been actively troubleshooting, and updating the same Gdrive folder with the subsequent logs and crash-recovery project files.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... share_link

I saw in another thread that there's a crashing problem caused by one (or more?) of the OWC RAID enclosures. Is anyone here with a crashing problem running one of these?

I saw in another thread that there's a crashing problem caused by one (or more?) of the OWC RAID enclosures. Is anyone here with a crashing problem running one of these?

No, not in my case. Good to know though, thanks!

The project-that-crashes loads OK on my Windows system.

The timeline has 3 ungraded ProRes clips on it. I don't see anything going on in the project that should cause Resolve any issues.

The only other thought be that your audio file is located in your Downloads folder. If there is some other file or files in the Downloads folder that Resolve doesn't like, that could cause it to crash when it looks in that folder for the audio file. Might be worth moving any files in the Download folder other than the desired audio file to another folder to see if that's the issue. And if that is the issue, the Downloads folder is probably not a good place to use Resolve media from.

I've relocated the audio file from my downloads folder to my harddrive where the video files are located as well. It still crashed.

However, the project did load fine for a second. Then I generated optimized media for a clip and shortly after... it crashed. Thinking back, I did clean my cache a couple days ago. So it seems like generating optimized media for a clip might make it crash.

I now cleared my cache and tried loading the project again, and it loads just fine!

I'm glad I figured out the problem. But I do need to have optimized media cause my laptop is not able to play the ProRes in realtime (Macbook Pro M1... maybe it's the HDD and not the hardware?).

Fyi, the location for optimized media is in my documents where I created a folder called "DaVinci Cache".

Update: I've been able to recover the file through: https://beginnersapproach.com/davinci-r ... -projects/

Which of the solutions provided there was the one that let you recover your project? That will help inform us of what went wrong.

Using the .db file to re-import the project by placing it in the correct folder. I'm still not sure what exactly happened, cause it crashed on me a couple times again. But I kept trying to restore the project and now it finally works fine.

Pretty weird. Started using DaVinci cause it's way more stable than Premiere. Never had any problems until now. And seems like there's a bunch of problems appearing all at once. Makes me wonder if they correlate to any extent.

The "new way of doing things" is proxies rather than optimized media. Not that optimized media is deprecated - it has some features that proxies don't - but you may fare better if you try proxies instead.

That said, optimized media should work and it's a bummer that it's crashing on you.

I have just downloaded Davinci 18 and I am having the same issue. I havent even been able to open it once.
When its loading it gets to audio plugins and the crashes.

. dropbox . c o m / s / lzcj03u6moyfdy9 / DaVinci - Resolve - logs - 20230303 - 125739 . tgz ? dl = 0 

Here is my log, please can you help me.

I have just downloaded Davinci 18 and I am having the same issue. I havent even been able to open it once.
When its loading it gets to audio plugins and the crashes.

. dropbox . c o m / s / lzcj03u6moyfdy9 / DaVinci - Resolve - logs - 20230303 - 125739 . tgz ? dl = 0 

Here is my log, please can you help me.

you have an Imac, MacOs 12.6.3, a graphics card AMD Radeon R9 M395... I doubt that you can start v18.

go back in time and download v12.5 or v14 and see if it even start.

[Dwaine Maggart]

One space would have been fine.

Looks like the last time you had the system working was April of last year with Resolve 16.1.2.

And even then, I'm not sure it had a proper database, because I don't see that any projects were loaded.

The issue with 18.1.3 is some sort of database issue.

So, assuming you don't have any existing projects to worry about, do the following:

Note, some locations below are "hidden" folders. To see hidden folders, press the <CMD> and <SHFT> and <.> keys all at the same time.

In Finder, navigate to this folder:

/Users/tutor/Library/Preferences/Blackmagic Design/DaVinci Resolve

Rename the dblist.conf file to dblist.conf.old

Then navigate to this folder:

/Users/tutor/Library/Application Support/Blackmagic Design/DaVinci Resolve

And rename the Resolve Disk Database folder to Resolve Disk Database.orig

Now launch Resolve, and it should start, with a fresh Local Database Local Project Library.

If Resolve still does not launch, send another Resolve log.

And just to reemphasize, since people always get this wrong, the folder locations above are in the hidden /Users/tutor/Library folder, NOT the main /Library folder or the System/Library folder.

[Dwaine Maggart]

@Walter: He has an iMac 17,1, which seems to be a late 2015 iMac, which does appear to be supported by Monterey. So I don't think that's an issue. And it should run on the R9 M395 GPU in that system, since Resolve 18 works on my even older iMac 15,1 running Big Sur with an R9 M295 GPU.

@Walter: He has an iMac 17,1, which seems to be a late 2015 iMac, which does appear to be supported by Monterey. So I don't think that's an issue. And it should run on the R9 M395 GPU in that system, since Resolve 18 works on my even older iMac 15,1 running Big Sur with an R9 M295 GPU.

roger that.

Pretty weird. Started using DaVinci cause it's way more stable than Premiere. Never had any problems until now.

I'm with you Justin. I had more or less the same issue and lost 2 days of work on a project. I haven't abandoned Resolve, but I am way more weary of it than I ever was of Premiere and I go back and forth between them. My general rule of thumb is if it's a project that I'll be coloring, I try to do it in Resolve, if it's a strict cut, I do it in Premiere. Resolve projects seem to get corrupted way too easily something I can't remember ever happening in over a decade strictly in Premiere. I regularly save out timeline and project back-ups throughout the day, as well as exporting at the end of the day or more frequently. I even tend to save out a fcp7 xml at the end of the day, in case I have to go back to Premiere.

I've had horrible performance with audio using the voice isolation features and it makes it almost unusable cutting if those are left on. I was applying at the track level, so unless I'm unaware, I don't think caching is an option. Sorry, this was a tangent and off topic.

Pretty weird. Started using DaVinci cause it's way more stable than Premiere. Never had any problems until now.

I'm with you Justin. I had more or less the same issue and lost 2 days of work on a project. I haven't abandoned Resolve, but I am way more weary of it than I ever was of Premiere and I go back and forth between them. My general rule of thumb is if it's a project that I'll be coloring, I try to do it in Resolve, if it's a strict cut, I do it in Premiere. Resolve projects seem to get corrupted way too easily something I can't remember ever happening in over a decade strictly in Premiere. I regularly save out timeline and project back-ups throughout the day, as well as exporting at the end of the day or more frequently. I even tend to save out a fcp7 xml at the end of the day, in case I have to go back to Premiere.

I've had horrible performance with audio using the voice isolation features and it makes it almost unusable cutting if those are left on. I was applying at the track level, so unless I'm unaware, I don't think caching is an option. Sorry, this was a tangent and off topic.

Thanks for sharing your opinion. I do like Resolve far better than Premiere, so I'm planning to stick to it. But like you said, becoming more aware of potential corrupted projects as well. Thanks for mentioning the voice isolation problem, I'll be sure to keep that in mind since I'm working with voice overs right now. Helps me prevent from needing to solve another problem haha!

Hello,

I have the same issue, i was working and dowloading something at the same time, when i got a notification "Critical save error". When i closed that i couldn't open the project anymore, I got a error notification if tried literaly everything. So if you guys know some way around it to get it back working please let me know

I have a solution: get someone with another version of DR to open the project, change to another timeline, and then save and export the project. And send it back to you. That has worked now for me. I have a MBP M1 with DR 18.5.1 running on it, and my helper has the same DR version but running on windows.
That has worked twice for me now, with a gap of a week between the freezes.

DaVinci Resolve quit while I was clumsily fiddling with a scaling bar on Fusion (something to do with keyframes) and now I can't open any projects. They all get about as far as 90–100% and then DaVinci freezes.

I looked at the solutions above, but they all seem to relate to particular corrupted projects and none of mine, even the completed ones, will open now. I can open the initial project manager. I was originally working in 18.5 but I upgraded to 18.6.3 after getting this problem and still have the same problem.

This is on Mac OS Monterey, MacBook Pro, 2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5, Intel Iris Plus Graphics 1536 MB. Everything was working fine until the crash.

I'm apparently not allowed to post urls but I have the .drp of the project that crashed and a crash report from the time it crashed.

Thanks for all and any help.

[Dwaine Maggart]

Put a space in the URL so that the forum system doesn't think it's a URL.

Ah, thanks for that.

I fixed the problem in the end by deleting the original Resolve Projects file in my users/application support folder, then uninstalling and reinstalling DaVinci and linking the new projects library to a copy of my 'projects' file.

DaVinci Resolve quit while I was clumsily fiddling with a scaling bar on Fusion (something to do with keyframes) and now I can't open any projects. They all get about as far as 90–100% and then DaVinci freezes.

I looked at the solutions above, but they all seem to relate to particular corrupted projects and none of mine, even the completed ones, will open now. I can open the initial project manager. I was originally working in 18.5 but I upgraded to 18.6.3 after getting this problem and still have the same problem.

This is on Mac OS Monterey, MacBook Pro, 2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5, Intel Iris Plus Graphics 1536 MB. Everything was working fine until the crash.

I'm apparently not allowed to post urls but I have the .drp of the project that crashed and a crash report from the time it crashed.

Thanks for all and any help.

This is exactly what happened to me! I also have the .drp of the project that crashed but the crash report isn't from the exact time of the crash.

I'm running Big Sur on a MacBook Pro, 2.3 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9, AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 4 GB.

Running Resolve 18.0.4.

Ah, thanks for that.

I fixed the problem in the end by deleting the original Resolve Projects file in my users/application support folder, then uninstalling and reinstalling DaVinci and linking the new projects library to a copy of my 'projects' file.

I did this and upgraded to the latest version of Resolve and am still having the same issue. The system says it loads 100% of the project but it never actually opens it. It just spins. Getting desperate, this is setting me back quite a bit.

Here are my specs again: I'm running Big Sur on a MacBook Pro, 2.3 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9, AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 4 GB.

Let me know if there's more info needed to help me sort this out.

Thanks!

[Dwaine Maggart]

If the issue is related to one specific project, try exporting the project and importing it back in and see if the copy works.

If that doesn't work, but you can successfully export the project, send us the project export .drp and a Resolve diagnostics log, which you can generate from the Resolve Help menu.

If the issue is related to one specific project, try exporting the project and importing it back in and see if the copy works.

If that doesn't work, but you can successfully export the project, send us the project export .drp and a Resolve diagnostics log, which you can generate from the Resolve Help menu.

It's not just one project, Resolve won't launch any of them. I've also removed the .plist file and still the spinning wheel of death.

Here's the Resolve diagnostics log:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HyyyVK ... drive_link

Here's the .drp for the project I was working on when it crashed:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1T-KykD ... drive_link

[Dwaine Maggart]

Your Google Drive link requires access credentials. Please make it an open link.

Your Google Drive link requires access credentials. Please make it an open link.

Sorry about that. Here you go.

Resolve diagnostics log:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HyyyVK ... sp=sharing

.drp for the project I was working on when it crashed:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1T-KykD ... sp=sharing

I was putting the finishing touches on a project today, and exported it, and when I went to close it out, it wouldn't let me Save. Then I got the "Critical Error" message and when I relaunched the project, the last few hours of work were gone.

Opened a new project to start working on it, put about 20 minutes into fine-tuning things, and then *poof* it just disappeared. And it couldn't have been an accidental delete, because all other working timelines I had are also gone.

I didn't have project backups on (I do now) but have timeline backups on. Can't seem to figure out how to restore those and even if I could, Resolve won't let me do anything in a project without giving me the Critical Error message.

Running a Macbook Pro M1Pro Sonoma 14.1.1 - Resolve Studio 18.6.1b19

Hi i had the same problem earlier today, where I was not able open any projects or create new ones. I was able to fix my problem by going to device manager opening display adapters and disabling the integrated graphics card. (goes without saying this only works if you have a dedicated graphics card). I do hope this helps anyone else having this problem.

[Dwaine Maggart]

@Stephen: You said you updated to the latest Resolve version, but your logs show 18.0.4.

The logs you sent also only show 1 attempt to launch Resolve after it last crashed. That crash appears to be Fusion related.

So with the logs provided, it's hard to tell what's going on.

But as a shot in the dark, try this:

Open Finder and do the following:

We need to navigate to a hidden folder. To enable showing hidden files/folders, do this:

Press Command + Shift + . (period) to make the hidden files and folders appear.

Once you've done that, in Finder navigate to this folder:

/Users/steveo/Library/Preferences/Blackmagic Design

Rename the DaVinci Resolve folder to DaVinci Resolve.orig

This moves the Resolve preferences folder. Now start Resolve. It will create a new DaVinci Resolve folder with default preferences. Does this allow Resolve to start?

If not, send a new log file.

@Stephen: You said you updated to the latest Resolve version, but your logs show 18.0.4.

The logs you sent also only show 1 attempt to launch Resolve after it last crashed. That crash appears to be Fusion related.

So with the logs provided, it's hard to tell what's going on.

But as a shot in the dark, try this:

Open Finder and do the following:

We need to navigate to a hidden folder. To enable showing hidden files/folders, do this:

Press Command + Shift + . (period) to make the hidden files and folders appear.

Once you've done that, in Finder navigate to this folder:

/Users/steveo/Library/Preferences/Blackmagic Design

Rename the DaVinci Resolve folder to DaVinci Resolve.orig

This moves the Resolve preferences folder. Now start Resolve. It will create a new DaVinci Resolve folder with default preferences. Does this allow Resolve to start?

If not, send a new log file.

It worked! Thanks so much Dwaine!!! Really appreciate it.

Sorry I thought you needed the report closest to when the crashed happened.

Thanks again!

Seems this thread might be more closely monitored by someone in my timezone then another one I posted in. I am having some of the same issues of Davinci crashing and it doesn't seem to be when I do something specific. I've been watching a clip in the edit tab, or looking in the workspace menu or making a freeze frame. Sometimes it won't even open the project back up. I tried creating a 2nd project with the same DRP file but it still crashed.

DRP file
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1siHiEg ... sp=sharing

Resolve Logs file
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UQbJSC ... sp=sharing

[Dwaine Maggart]

The only odd thing I see in the project is perhaps the .HEIC HEIF files.

2 things to try:

First, go into Resolve Preferences - System - Decode Options, and uncheck "Decode H.264/H.265 using hardware acceleration", then save the prefs and restart Resolve. Does that help?

If not, make a Save As copy of the project, and remove the "VERO for holiday video" bin from the Media Pool, save the project and restart Resolve. Does that help?

If either of these things helps, it might be good if you can provide a link to one of the .HEIC files, so we can test it here and see if we see similar behavior.

I posted about a similar issue a few weeks ago and got no responses.

The issue was eventually resolved by exporting and importing the project into a new one.

However, the same issue occurred, first on 18.6.3, then after uninstalling and reverting back to 18.5.1, thinking it was just an 18.6.x issue, I'm once again unable to open up a certain project.

Resolve logs Zip file:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XkKrdk ... sp=sharing

This did not help. I can send another crash report. It only started doing this recently. Could it be the video format? I've worked on other videos with this format though.

The only odd thing I see in the project is perhaps the .HEIC HEIF files.

2 things to try:

First, go into Resolve Preferences - System - Decode Options, and uncheck "Decode H.264/H.265 using hardware acceleration", then save the prefs and restart Resolve. Does that help?

If not, make a Save As copy of the project, and remove the "VERO for holiday video" bin from the Media Pool, save the project and restart Resolve. Does that help?

If either of these things helps, it might be good if you can provide a link to one of the .HEIC files, so we can test it here and see if we see similar behavior.

[Dwaine Maggart]

Yes, please provide another log. i thought it could be related to the video format, that's why I suggested the things I suggested. So even removing all those HEIC files from the Media Pool of a copy of the project, the copy of the project still crashes?

[Dwaine Maggart]

@Drew: I'm sort of baffled in that I responded to your current post, just a bit before Jason's post that's following yours, and my response seems nowhere to be found. So apologies if anyone saw my response to Drew as I try posting it again:

Is "(001_LIS_Smart System 5 Preventive Maintenance part 2 (Copy))" the project in question?

Can you provide a project export .drp of that project?

Are you loading it from a Local or Network Project Library?

Whichever you are loading it from, if you import the .drp into the other Project Library type, does it still crash loading from there?

See attached file. Yes I removed them from a copy of the project and restarted and it crashed while playing back the video in the edit tab.

Yes, please provide another log. i thought it could be related to the video format, that's why I suggested the things I suggested. So even removing all those HEIC files from the Media Pool of a copy of the project, the copy of the project still crashes?