Blackmagic Forum

Hello All,
Recently we had a computor problem, the only solution was to save all data to a hard drive and wipe the computor disk, then reinstall macOS and reimport all the data from the hard drive. I'm currently using the free vertion of Davinchi Resolve 18.6 on my macOS Big Sur, version 11.7.10. The computor is fine now, except for DaVinci resolve. When I open up the app, the edit for all the progects is still there, but all the media is offline. I am able to reimport the footage from downloads (making the media now is online), but the next time I open the app, all the media is agian "offline".

How do I keep all the footage online?

Take care that all drives are listed in the preferences and have them connected before you start DR.
And then, you need to give DR full disk access. I suppose you know that, but thought I should mention.

If you're running into Media Offline problems, check these things:

1) are the drives listed correctly in User -> System -> Media Storage?

2) are there any potential filename conflicts with the source media?

3) be aware that almost all H.264 files do not have accurate embedded timecode, so that can be a potential issue (particularly combined with #2)

4) make sure the drive read/write permissions are set correctly

5) check the file path on the Media Page for the missing files and see if you can force a relink. Highlight the files, right-click, choose RELINK MEDIA, and then choose the correct source folder.

6) if the files are H.264/H.265 10-bit, be aware that they will only play in Resolve Studio. (There's quite a few codecs that only play in the Studio version.) For a lot of reasons, highly-compressed H.264/H.265 files are not ideal for post. We generally transcode everything to a better format like ProRes 422 or DNxHR SQX, embed better timecode, and give all the files unique names.

7) it's possible only your render cache has gone offline. To ward against that, re-render the cache or just delete it all and then go to the deliver page and try again.

The key is to check the MEDIA PAGE. Look at the rows of media and check where the source drive is. Worst case, relink it all. We try to confine all the media for one project to one folder, so worst case, we'd lasso all the media files, right-click and choose RELINK, and choose that one folder. "In theory," it should just work. Sometimes, just closing the session and re-opening it forces Resolve to go out and check the drive and file paths, and then the session is fine again.

Finally: on a Mac, check to make sure you have the latest Pro Video Formats update:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/106396

BTW, running an old Mac with OSX Big Sur 11.7 is very dicey in 2024, even with Resolve 18.6.