Please help missing link bug Mac 2023

Hello,

I'm new to Resolve having come from Adobe very recently. I will try to be as thorough as possible in the hopes of finding a solution.

I have created a timeline edit and have been trying to render the timeline out but have been having recurring failures due to decoding failure which seems to be due to the timeline having missing links.

I am aware of and have tested relinking the clips, moving the source folder to somewhere else on my machine and relinking, replacing the clips in the media pool window. Changing all of the decoding options on the system preferences and also clearing the render cache as well.

Here is an example of the error - The clip FX3_0540.MP4 could not be decoded correctly.
Please check if the clip is still available on the drive.

The strange thing is in the edit window my timeline seems linked but when I go to the deliver section random clips are missing links, each time I go back and forth new clips seem to be missing. All the time I can play the timeline sequence back absolutely fine usually, sometimes it plays all the way though absolutely fine and others it may occasionally show a missing link, again it seems to be at random.

My assumption is that clearly resolve can't seem to access my files and read them fast enough to render them out? It's frustrating as I've spent a lot of time on this edit and it's my first edit in Resolve so I really want to find out what's happening.

I have a brand new MacBook M3 Pro (18gb RAM) with an M3 Pro chip in it so I'm confused why the Mac would be to slow. It's also running the latest IOS Sonoma 14.2.

The video files I am working with are h.264 files and were shot on the Sony FX3 in Slog 3. I have used the colour section to put a Slog 3 to Rec709 conversion LUT on.

I have even tried unlinking and then relinking the files to an external SSD (which also has the files) but I still have reoccurring missing links similar to when they are located on my Mac internal SSD.

Is this something someone can help me with please?

Thanks you,
James

Hello, James

Many users of MacBook M3 Pro experience this issue

The workaround without transcoding media to large ProRes files is to set your Render speed in the Render Setting (delivery page -> File) to a lower amount. It will take longer time for rendering but the chance you get decode error decreases. It is still sad that you have to pray you don't get the error every time you render something even on the lower speeds

Another option is to disable hardware encode/decode acceleration but it also decreases the speed of work a lot. I tried to render final video with this feature disabled, the render was stable but the fans on my MacBook were going crazy with every minute of rendering