Solution(s) to media that won't relink

For those of us using the CloudStore and a proxy workflow with Dropbox or Google Drive, there seems to be an issue where if you connect to your synced proxy footage (i.e. you take your laptop home and reconnect the proxy to the dropbox source instead of the CloudStore proxy source), you can't connect back to the originals on the CloudStore once you are reconnected. No manner of unlink/relink, removing proxies, changing source folder or updating Path Mapping will help. You can literally tell it to change the path, and it just ignores you. If you listen closely, you can hear the engineers laughing at you.

A solution was posted here viewtopic.php?f=21&t=172954 but that didn't work for me. I'm sharing my solution because it's worked more than once for me, and was the only thing that worked.

CHANGE THE ORIGINAL FOLDER NAME.

Then, relink of course.

If the file path won't update when you tell Resolve to Change Source Folder, then change the name of your source folder. My folder names all end with a YYYYMMDD of when it was created, so I just added "-01" to the end, then changed source folder, and it worked.

I hope this helps someone else out there.

UPDATE

Naturally shortly after posting this, my own solution didn't work for me. Then I found this solution below, which did:

viewtopic.php?f=21&t=194951

methinks Resolve has got some issues… sigh

Thank you for sharing. I also followed the recommendated /viewtopic.php?f=21&t=194951
Go to File->Project Manager -> Copy the problem Cloud project -> switch to Local -> Paste -> Relink the media -> Go back to Project Manager -> Copy from Local and Paste into Cloud. Now you have a (copy) version of your project, but at least your media is linked.

Copy Cloud to Local.png (119.75 KiB) Viewed 1447 times

Definitely some kind of bug/issue with Cloud relinking when you rename/move a folder on your machine.

I was flummoxed because I had tried everything to relink the files that were clearly on my machine. And when told me to "Please check the path or change the parent folder if it has moved." ...it wouldn't let me change it.

Relink Moved Folder.png (134.63 KiB) Viewed 1447 times

I am just now trying to get into remote editing, and this issue is a huge barrier to doing that smoothly.

Thanks!

~Luke

Yeah they really need to sort this out!!

I'm collaborating remotely with a videographer on other side of the border (I'm in Canada, he's in US), and this entire Cloud Collaboration workflow is absolutely busted and is enough to make me want to give up.

I've wasted several hours since yesterday trying to get this to work. I've used every possible means of relinking the media to no avail. I can see where our proxies are in the shared Dropbox folder, and DaVinci simply refuses to relink them.

We've tried:

[list=]Adjusting path mapping under Project Settings - DaVinci refuses to allow/implement any changes[/list]

Unlink/Relink Select Media

Replace Selected Clip

Relink Proxy Media

Relink all Clips for Selected Bin

Every other menu I could find in Media Page/Media Pool

None of this is working and it's mind-boggling especially if you're paying DaVinci for a service! They need to get this together because it's literally infuriating and I'm wasting precious time and clients are waiting!!

[Peter Chamberlain]

are the proxies in a folder called

Proxy

The current project is a set of reels for six independent business owners that share a space and operate as a sort of cooperative. The footage is divided across six respective folders. Within each of those folders, the proxies are all indeed within a folder called “Proxy”.

I even tried Shift + Backspacing the proxies and re-importing everything through drag and drop (since Resolve doesn’t seem to show the proxy clips when browsing within the Media Page or the Edit Page’s Media Pool) to no avail. I was able to import everything but the footage won’t re-link and so all my existing timelines remain unpopulated.

I ultimately had to manually re-align everything since thankfully all the missing media clips kept their original handles but this took a couple hours to do. The missing clips in this case seemed a brighter red than usual if that makes sense?

I’m curious to know whether or not Resolve recognizes clips based solely on file name? That doesn’t seem to be the case since I feel this should have been straightforward. Does Resolve “tag” media somehow with an ID (in a similar way to how Pro Tools behaves)?

I’d love to see the Cloud workflow improved since it’s an amazing feature it just doesn’t seem to be reliable since we’ve encountered numerous other bugs in the process.

Sorry for your pain. You’re not the only one. If you search the groups you should find a post that talks about renaming the folder containing your media - inside Resolve I think. That seems to kick it into allowing the relink.

There’s also a post that suggests exporting the cloud project, relinking, then importing that into the cloud.

This is off the top of my head but doing some searches should reward you with first hand info.

Sorry for your pain. You’re not the only one. If you search the groups you should find a post that talks about renaming the folder containing your media - inside Resolve I think. That seems to kick it into allowing the relink.

There’s also a post that suggests exporting the cloud project, relinking, then importing that into the cloud.

This is off the top of my head but doing some searches should reward you with first hand info.

Awesome thank you, I'll give this a try!

Yeah the renaming of the folder was my suggestion; it was what finally worked for me in a situation similar to yours. But then the next time; that didnt work. I then learned the tip of exporting the project from cloud, importing to local database, then everything relinked. Then export/import back to cloud.


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The cloud project problems that are driving me insane right now are the fact that relinking files is catastrophically broken. When my one collaborator relinks files they end up unliked in my project.

That factor alone makes the collaboration features almost entirely unusable, but it gets worse.

Relinking is apparently not enough for Fusion to work, so I've had to go through the Fusion clips, open each in a timeline and conform lock the clips -- fortunately the footage has been less problematic, but the reality is that there are some MAJOR problems with the cloud projects, and Fusion in particular.

The cloud project problems that are driving me insane right now are the fact that relinking files is catastrophically broken. When my one collaborator relinks files they end up unliked in my project.

I feel this. Questions for you… 

1. Are you using Dropbox/Google, or are you using BMD's own Cloud storage?
2. Does your system ever lose access to the original footage and rely on the proxy footage (i.e. is a laptop that you take home, away from the storage with the originals so you link to the proxy?)

-Joseph

The cloud project problems that are driving me insane right now are the fact that relinking files is catastrophically broken. When my one collaborator relinks files they end up unliked in my project.

I feel this. Questions for you… 

1. Are you using Dropbox/Google, or are you using BMD's own Cloud storage?

Neither. We both have local copies of the fooage.

2. Does your system ever lose access to the original footage and rely on the proxy footage (i.e. is a laptop that you take home, away from the storage with the originals so you link to the proxy?)

It's on a local drive, and neither of us is using proxies.

Oh wow, so quite a different use case, and you still have relink issues. Damn. It’s worse than I thought then.


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Yes, it's VERY broken.

Following up on this issue I'm still finding Resolve's file linking to be deeply broken. In fact I'm finding Resolve as a whole to be deeply broken if I'm being honest, lol.

I'm curious - can anybody confirm whether or not file linking is based on file name? I just wonder how it works behind the scenes. I'm sure there are many good reasons why it wouldn't be that simple - but on the other hand I sure would like to be able to just tell Resolve "Hey, ya see this file here? It has the same name, I can see it, you can see it.. NOW F@#$@%ING RELINK!!!!"

Lol... yeah I love Resolve in theory but am beginning to hate it in practice. It just feels like very powerful software that is so very deeply broken.

I hear about switching to Resolve for its "stability"... I can't help but laugh and think "Stability? You call this software STABLE?..." lol... Resolve is great, it's powerful and I think Blackmagic has their heart in the right place but man oh man is it painfully busted (at least in my experience).

Something that the Dev team needs to consider...
Design and test workflows not features. Run through the whole process from beginning to end before signing off on something.

@ André
File linking is definitely based on timecode, and then also on the name.
That's why we transcode everything that's coming in without proper TC to get one, have constant fps (if coming from smartphones) and get unique filenames.

That way, and with our hardware (not only Macs in the student labs) DR is reasonably stable if you don't jump on a new release immediately. At least much better than Premiere Pro, which we completely left behind by now. Even FCP-X, which is developed for only one OS, has more flaws.

@ André
File linking is definitely based on timecode, and then also on the name.
That's why we transcode everything that's coming in without proper TC to get one, have constant fps (if coming from smartphones) and get unique filenames.

That way, and with our hardware (not only Macs in the student labs) DR is reasonably stable if you don't jump on a new release immediately. At least much better than Premiere Pro, which we completely left behind by now. Even FCP-X, which is developed for only one OS, has more flaws.

That much I understand so please forgive me if I wasn't being very clear.

What I'm curious about is whether or not DaVinci writes in any sort of metadata the way Pro Tools creates unique file IDs for any audio or video you import? If it's simply based on time code and file name then any (identical) instance of a given file should be recognized when you attempt to re-link but that doesn't seem to be the behaviour. Hence my suspicion that there is more going on behind the scenes.

I'm curious to know because I can't help but wonder if this somehow has something to do with re-link issues. This seems to be an issue especially if you're collaborating as I have been across Blackmagic's cloud service where both parties were using duplicate local copies of the proxy media. We've since gone away from syncing anything other than the projects themselves in Blackmagic's cloud, with media being synced via Dropbox and that seems to have resolved the majority of the issues we were encountering.

I would just love to know if there's something I'm missing because even when exercising great caution, I frequently have clips I'm actively working with sporadically un-link. It happened to me Wednesday this week. A clip on the timeline I was working suddenly vanished, yet was still visible in my Media Pool, and still playing back from my media pool and the timeline, but the clip itself on the timeline was indicating it needed to be re-linked. I tested it and tried exporting the video and sure enough, it didn't render that clip.

Any insight as to how DaVinci handles media syncing would be greatly appreciated!

This is such a train wreck. There is so little documentation on all of this and support is useless. They literally told me no one there knows how any of this works, that they are only there if equipment stops working, and that all I can do is read the manual and come here. I get keeping costs down and all, but there has got to be a better way! I agree with the previous statements that they need to focus on workflow and not features so much. Let's get this concept rock solid and release another solid version in a year or so. It also appears that their real goal is to have all of their remote collaborators using cloud store equipment. I watched the two videos they have on the support page from the original release and then the '23 NAB release, and it was clear that they designed this for their hardware AND their cloud storage. I would so much rather pay double for the software and have the flexibility and stability to use 3rd party gear and just have it work.

Thanks to all of you for blazing the trail and helping us out here. It's insane that their relinking is so bad. I also had a major glitch exporting metadata to an updated project. No file path changes, no name changes, just meta, and it broke the entire project every time. My only recourse was to go to a previous local backup and sacrifice some edits to rescue weeks of meta-tagging. Maddenning.

Oh wow, so quite a different use case, and you still have relink issues. Damn. It’s worse than I thought then.


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I am in the same situation you replied to in this comment but the copy paste project did work, however I wonder if you have found d the answer to this question. Do you know since the copied project is now titled copy at the end, will it properly sync? Should I rename back to the original name? U am concerned about meta data primarily at this point. My partner who is at the studio is doing copious amounts of meta tagging and I want to make sure that makes it to me before I start editing. I wonder should he export an Drp and send it to me and perhaps I upload that as my copy to the cloud on my end. Any help is great, thanks.

In this case there’s a simple answer to help you safeguard your metadata.

Use the Export and Import Metadata commands in the file menu. Then even if the project loses its metadata you can restore it once you get the file linking cleared up.

PS: The red Media Offline error message that’s rendered instead of the actual file contents is not definitively telling you that Resolve thinks the media is offline. What it’s really saying is Resolve couldn’t render the given frame. So while it does look like this is a file linking problem there’s no certainty that that’s what’s going on.

Clearly some parts of Resolve see the file just fine. Which I imagine is why relinking doesn’t succeed - those parts of Resolve either say the link is fine or replace the link with a new working link - which another part of Resolve thinks is broken. Probably because there’s an internal path mapping that’s overriding where the file actually is with the map to where the file is on the other persons system.

I did an experiment which demonstrated this behavior. I added a bogus path mapping, then dragged a media file into Resolve. The timeline said the media file was offline even though I had added it in the most bullet proof way possible.

[quote="Joe Shapiro"]In this case there’s a simple answer to help you safeguard your metadata.

Use the Export and Import Metadata commands in the file menu. Then even if the project loses its metadata you can restore it once you get the file linking cleared up.

I had an issue with doing just that. Upon importing the metadata the entire project was corrupted. Not only did files go "offline" but I also could not even reveal them in the media pool or navigate properly. The whole project just freaked out. I was able to replicate it on multiple machines. I had to go to the backup of the project previous to this attempt at meta exporting and use that as the new project just to get a working project. I have not tried to export and import since then but I really don't want to either.

that is interesting on the whole media offline topic. Is there an easy way to figure out where the break may be or is the import-export option the best fastest work around?