Missing waveforms/ CacheClip error msg
Posted: Sun Dec 03, 2023 10:16 amHi!
I wanted to share some thoughts on 'missing waveform' issue.
I'm on v.18.6, Mac mini M1 with Big Sur (when the issue started) and Sonoma (when I managed to solve it).
Recently I encountered missing waveforms again — last time I had this was few years ago with v.16 on old High Sierra iMac. I was surprised that's still a thing (and even wrote a post about it: https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=184149#p997887). I spent a lot of time searching the Web for solution (Internet is clogged with solutions addressing the trivial 'audio view options' settings of timeline in Edit page OR the old issue I just mentioned). I ended up editing a project (without seeing waveforms) on my main Mac workstation and then retouching the edit on another computer with Windows (which didn't have the missing waveforms problem). That costed a lot of nerves, but - luckily - I finally found the cause of the issue.
So, on my disk I used to have a folder where I'd put all the source material that I've been currently working on. Let's say it's
/Users/xyz/Movies/MATERIAL
This folder was also listed on my 'Media Storage Locations' (DaVinci Resolve > Preferences > System > Media Storage).
At some point I started experiencing severe lagging of my computer. One of the first solutions I tried was to free some space on the hard drive. So I took the MATERIAL folder and moved it to an external drive. As a reminder to where I moved it, I created AN ALIAS (shortcut) pointing to the new location. The alias was in the previous location and had the same name. So,
before I had FOLDER: /Users/xyz/Movies/MATERIAL
now I had ALIAS: /Users/xyz/Movies/MATERIAL pointing to the MATERIAL folder in the new location
That turned out to be an issue. Why? I assume:
When I loaded new media to DaVinci Resolve project, it tried to create CacheClip folder in the 'Media Storage Location' = MATERIAL folder. From what I heard waveform filas are cached there.
The folder wasn't there, so Resolve tried to create it.
But it couldn't create it, as the name was already taken (by the alias).
So I just had no waveforms. Sound was playing, I could edit as normal, but the waveforms weren't there.
I was able to recreate the issue and solve it once again, so I'm pretty confident that was the original cause of the problem.
Conclusion
I wish that Resolve could just tell me that it's unable to create CacheClip folder in specific location on the disk and therefore it cannot generate waveforms. Not providing ANY error message in this case costed me a lot of time and hassle.
I wanted to share some thoughts on 'missing waveform' issue.
I'm on v.18.6, Mac mini M1 with Big Sur (when the issue started) and Sonoma (when I managed to solve it).
Recently I encountered missing waveforms again — last time I had this was few years ago with v.16 on old High Sierra iMac. I was surprised that's still a thing (and even wrote a post about it: https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=184149#p997887). I spent a lot of time searching the Web for solution (Internet is clogged with solutions addressing the trivial 'audio view options' settings of timeline in Edit page OR the old issue I just mentioned). I ended up editing a project (without seeing waveforms) on my main Mac workstation and then retouching the edit on another computer with Windows (which didn't have the missing waveforms problem). That costed a lot of nerves, but - luckily - I finally found the cause of the issue.
So, on my disk I used to have a folder where I'd put all the source material that I've been currently working on. Let's say it's
/Users/xyz/Movies/MATERIAL
This folder was also listed on my 'Media Storage Locations' (DaVinci Resolve > Preferences > System > Media Storage).
At some point I started experiencing severe lagging of my computer. One of the first solutions I tried was to free some space on the hard drive. So I took the MATERIAL folder and moved it to an external drive. As a reminder to where I moved it, I created AN ALIAS (shortcut) pointing to the new location. The alias was in the previous location and had the same name. So,
before I had FOLDER: /Users/xyz/Movies/MATERIAL
now I had ALIAS: /Users/xyz/Movies/MATERIAL pointing to the MATERIAL folder in the new location
That turned out to be an issue. Why? I assume:
When I loaded new media to DaVinci Resolve project, it tried to create CacheClip folder in the 'Media Storage Location' = MATERIAL folder. From what I heard waveform filas are cached there.
The folder wasn't there, so Resolve tried to create it.
But it couldn't create it, as the name was already taken (by the alias).
So I just had no waveforms. Sound was playing, I could edit as normal, but the waveforms weren't there.
I was able to recreate the issue and solve it once again, so I'm pretty confident that was the original cause of the problem.
Conclusion
I wish that Resolve could just tell me that it's unable to create CacheClip folder in specific location on the disk and therefore it cannot generate waveforms. Not providing ANY error message in this case costed me a lot of time and hassle.