How to fix offline media in DaVinci Resolve 18

How to fix the 5 common reasons for media offline error and how to fix them.
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00:00 Intro
00:20 Storage Disconnected
01:03 Clips moved to new folder
06:03 Media not in media pool
06:40 Slow storage
07:16 Clear render cache

[@AustinEterno]

Saved the day with that last tip on clearing the render cache! Thank you! My clips were connecting and disconnecting erratically and it was driving me nuts while trying to export!

[@Christian-vv2gq]

Always love it when someone provides quick, efficient and working help. Thanks man, really appreciate it!

[@rachelperera7772]

Your explanation was the most comprehensive and easy to understand. Thank you. Doing a deep search now lol

[@carlgraham_]

This was great. I had all my media, and the "Media Offline" screen went away when I pressed Shift+D (Bypass Color Grades and Fusion Effects) so the last two explanations were a life saver. Thanks!

[@MasayaShida]

oh my god this is it

[@2wheelsonline]

Deleting the cache did it for me! I have multiple timelines in one project and just realised how much cache the one project was using. Many thanks!

[@kevinciotta]

this just made my day! thank you mate. looking forward to be seeing more content of yours.

[@LarsWaltherFilm]

THANK you! The Cache and drive issues were the thing for me. Very helpful, thanks a million!

[@victorytarotdivini]

you littelarily saved my day with the comprehensive search!! THANKS!! :)

[@KnightmareOX]

Dude render cashe tip saved me. This was driving me nuts. It worked on the ipad version as well. Thank you! Literally the the only video giving out that tip

[@Sophie-lj9do]

You just completely solved my problem, THANK YOU SO MUCH! Great video!

[@totalpettrainingllc]

Thank you so much, this is a lifesaver. I have no idea why it keeps loosing the clips (past few times) and I have changed nothing about file location. This saved me hours of reattempting recovery/reclipping for a second time! THANK YOU!

[@PetjaKuronen]

thank you so much. I almost gave up on my 10 hour project. You really saved my day.

[@thicccrusade2302]

I had this and it was clearly a codec issue. Threw the files through ffmpeg and now they work just fine.

[@thatoneapricotvods]

You saved my project!! Thank you, very helpful and clear!

[@MaryEdwige]

Solved my problem in 3 seconds man! Thanks!!

[@LaureninGermany]

The last tip, empty all in the render cache saved me. My Resolve went crazy tonight. (critical saving error, media offline, render fail, crashing...) I´ll sleep on it and maybe there´s more I need to do, but thank you so much, you got this project rendered.

[@EducatedThought]

JayAre You know your stuff! I didn't have the media offline until a few days ago. It was dreaded but I remembered this video you did to solve the media offline debacle. My problem is solved!! Thanks a million!

[@maxduewel54]

Great Video, resolved my issue. Thank you for your work !

[@Fly_and_a_Lie]

Huge Thank You! My situation in case anyone else is seeing it. Moved media to an external drive, re linked them all and they displayed and played in timelines and showed no disconnects, but Delivery/Render said I was missing media and rendered all red screens - Clearing the caches fixed it!

[@emiledae]

The third tip worked in seconds! Thank you SOO much! I'll sub and like, but will still owe you big time!

[@leighcrane-freemanvideos7146]

Excellent! Your first answer was my problem! Thank you for helping me!

[@memogutierrez4417]

The last one did it for me! Thank you!

[@Joeliminator]

DUDE THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! U SAVED MY HALO MONTAGE I'VE SPENT HOURS ON!!!

[@todorvassilev8592]

spot on video, helped with my issue - it was cache. thanks mate

[@castielvargastv7931]

In my case davinci often says media is offline even if i did not move anything

[@enduringwave87]

Same here man.. WTF is this error? As soon as I set my Upscaling options in settings , it gives me the MEDIA MISSING RED MARK while I haven't even touched the original source location of the media. Fucking Crap Software

[@MotoCampAdventure]

Make sure you try the render cache trick at the end for anyone in this situation. Just worked for me.

[@alienman7866]

My media file comes from one folder. All media is offline.

[@biggydeefrog5827]

Render cache was the problem. Deleted and all good now. Nothing better than a quick fix. Thanks!

[@BrianMCollyer]

Thanks, one of the simplest and doable explanations of this relativity simple, but frustrating condition, especially if you move stuff around like me.

[@stephen.j.bradley]

Super helpful, thank you so much!

[@bollersepp1591]

Thank you for this video!

[@NighthawkX02]

You saved many lives with this video

[@jamesbeecroft3151]

Thank you so much for this video! Clearing my render cache did the trick. The weird thing was my videos could still be played and it didn't show it as "Media Offline" on my Timeline, but I wanted to add a transition and whenever I would try and see what all the different transitions would look like it would then say "Media Offline" in my preview. It also didn't help that I changed the file name which initially caused this issue in playback as well, but I changed the name back to what it was and that fixed that issue, but the whole transition thing was still an issue for some reason.

[@fruitykissesco7300]

I would try to change the name back but the name for my files were IMG_30224

[@HealingMe2022]

Thank you!!!! Very helpful video

[@philcoffman197]

Clear Render Cache, saved the day, thanks

[@junxheallven670]

life saver - - - very informative and DAY SAVER

[@mygconsultingyou]

Bro!!!! the Render cache delete ALL was the trick...makes so much sense. Thank you so much. I was so confused before I saw that!

[@OTKAndFriends1]

Awesome Video, thanks a lot!

[@basicrocky]

This guy saved 50 hours of my time with his last tip! Thank you!

[@blancamaldonado2482]

THANK YOU BRO it was solved after I turned off render cache! Ur the MAN!

[@KryZeeMedia]

Thank you so much, for me it was the render cache, resetting it solved the issue!

[@emmzyjane]

Wow thank you! The locate wasn't working when I had just the clips on my desktop but I made a folder and put them in and did it again and it worked :)

[@sarahvangoor2918]

This was super helpful! Thank you sir!

[@JayAreTV]

You're very welcome!

[@user-wi5tb3fd4g]

Thank you bro this was very informative and helpful

[@tahirchowdhary2145]

Thanks budddy you saved my two weeks Hard work

[@shapeyourbelly]

thank you so much, it solved my problem

[@SHARKFINN50]

thanks, I ran out of storage on my drive and broke things a little this fixed it right away thanks for going through the cache thing even though its rare

[@gerardlopez7268]

Hey, thank you so much, i'm studying filming and Davinci resolve's been pissing me off with all troubles, your video helped me.

[@stanox905]

last option was the good one for me, thks soooooo much !

[@samuelnassar2926]

thanks dude this helped a lot!!!

[@erickherrera9223]

Thanks dude, so helpful.

[@JayAreTV]

No problem!

[@paulgarvey99]

Hey Jay. Always a pleasure to check out your tips. The render cache could be symptoms of a broader drive space issue, not just the cache itself. I purged media from my drive to improve capacity and problem solved.

[@larryFWD]

The headache that media offline has given me in DR is grave! It is my one main gripe with the software. Jay Thanks for this. One question on the last point re deleting render cache. I once had an almost unresolvable issue some weeks back and you're right clearing the render cache helped. I however met the issue again on export as DR is telling me that I have a missing clip and when I traced it to the clip on the edit page, it was working fine as long as I selected NONE for Render Cache, but as soon as I select 'SMART' the media offline re-appears. I am considering removing that clip from my project now, thankfully I can do without it, but what a disaster if it is a major part of my project. Any thoughts?

[@devotedfusionband]

I'm actually having a different issue with this and I am hoping you can solve my problem. The Video media that I placed in the timeline is all good, no framerate issues. However, it will FLICKER for a split second, every 5 seconds, that "Media Offline" sign. I initially thought that it was just a glitch in Davinci Resolve, but this flicker actually shows up when I export it. Can you PLEASE assist me with this? -Sean

[@pixeldot7171]

deleting cache did it for me. Thanks

[@Crashtastic_]

First one did it for me. I had been stupid enough to move my raw clips into a new folder during the rendering process which resulted in the render failing and the media to appear as offline. I'm still new to davinci & video editing in general so I was puzzled. Thank you!

[@schroevendriver]

Thanks this helped me alot i thought i was screwed i organised my drive but when i went to edit i saw the 'media offline' screen and almost had a heartattack because i went trough 10 hours of footage and if it wasnt for this video it would have been for nothing thanks alot

[@d2isr222]

Thank you!

[@PoetryFilms]

Thanks for taking the time to post it. But, for what it's worth, as a new user I'm getting that Media Offline message for clips on an external SSD that DaVinci can clearly see and access (it even loads some from the same folders) but for reasons to do with fps it decides not to display. In fairness, I'm just testing out the Free version so this is probably one of the limitations of Free. But it's very misleading for the application to say Media Offline when it's clearly not. DaVinci Resolve is already a steep enough learning curve (coming from Lumafusion, which by the way has no problems with the same files). The developers might update some of their 'error' signage to be a bit more precise. Otherwise, very impressed so far with the Free version

[@BossLevelPro]

Yasss, liked subscribed, all dat shiz. Because you sir somehow got me the exact answer I needed on, what I would think, is an obscure issue. I thought I lost all the rotoscoping effort, and heart, I put into my vid but all I needed to do was delete the render cache. Whew

[@RGBguy]

Thanks man!

[@rosedonahue4478]

Thank you!!

[@EnyoHawk]

thank you so much!

[@saatviksharma8465]

Thank you for help

[@Glowbox3D]

Case study: my media wouldn't come back online. The MOV was downloaded after being initially edited in iMovie and then WeTransfered to me. It was a normal MOV in my downloads folder. When I imported that in, it said Media Offline, and all the steps in this video didn't reconnect it. It played fine on VLC when I opened it on my PC, but Resolve couldn't connect the dots.

[@mat8eo273]

same here brother, I am losing my patience with this. Did you find any solution in meantime ?

[@Petrunkiss]

Thanks!

[@reload54]

One of my problems is when I pull a photo into Davinci it says media offline the moment I pull it in? I thought it was something to do with indexed vs RGB or Jpeg vs Giffs but not sure why it's happening.

[@benthebrickbuildervlogs]

thank you so much

[@BoostBroers]

Can you help me with this>> i make a macro in fusion with an image in it and when i try to re use it at the titles screen it gives me that error

[@VideosByBob]

Here is another solution. My clip was in the media pool and was pointing to the correct location and I could play it on the viewer. It was offline only in the timeline. I tried all these steps, but nothing worked. Then I right clicked on the clip in timeline and clicked "Conform Lock with Media Pool Clip" and it reappeared instantly. That should be part of the software to do on its own.

[@PokerStars-cj9qi]

thanks a lot bro

[@ocampovisuals]

thank you

[@SpydrBro]

THANK YOU!!! I was about to have a heart attack. I thought I lost a week’s worth of work.

[@sandrarathe8287]

THANK YOU!!!!!

[@MisterMotion]

I had the media offline problem but turned out I had to re-encode my file from peak framerate to constant framerate in handbreak...

[@hannaortega9154]

Oh am I overjoyed to have found this comment. After hours of troubleshooting, THIS turned out to be the issue. Thank you for commenting on what the cause of the problem was for you as you've spared me hours of rigorous troubleshooting!

[@MisterMotion]

@@hannaortega9154 you made my day Hanna I thought no one would care!!!

[@hannaortega9154]

@@MisterMotion You thought wrong my friend. You've made mine!

[@mythicUK]

Thank you for this!

[@user-um2ng7dk6d]

thank u, wery usefull

[@Percevalko]

Thanks.

[@lootingmen871]

thank u sooo much

[@cuz7592]

Thank you for the vid! The music at the end made me a bit distracted while listening to your explanation of different caches.

[@shaunashleychin]

Thanks so much. You saved my ass from having a terrible day.

[@joelprestonsmith]

Thank you, JayAre. But what do we do when we click the chain-button to locate files, navigate to the correct folder, only to find out that EVERY file in that folder (and every file on our entire computer) is grayed out?

[@SamChaneyProductions]

If you're having the issue where the clip is showing offline immediately after importing it, and the audio mysteriously works, it's probably because the file is using the H265 HEVC codec. If you're on Windows you'll have to fork up 99 cents for the driver for this on the Windows Store

[@ravifleming]

Thank u brother this is the exact scenario i was in. It worked alright.

[@kinglukas-gamingedition8335]

You litteraly saved 5 hours of work xD

[@salkex3]

My files were located on my desktop, never moved them. My SSD is fast enough to not have issues with the program itself, I also cleared the render cache. Still happening for no known reason whatsoever. This program is EXTREMELY inconsistent in quality, sometimes things render out just fine, sometimes i get the "media offline" error. Literally change nothing, render again and it suddenly works. It's very clear why the program is free, the developers really did an embarrassing job...

[@JayAreTV]

It's hard to agree with you when millions of others at all levels use the program daily without such problems.

[@salkex3]

@@JayAreTV You don't really have to agree, I'm just sharing my experience of working with the program for about 2 years now. Today I spent an hour trying to relink/relocate the files (which were literally on my desktop and DaVinci knows they're there), and got the "media offline" a hundred times at least. Then just out of nowhere without changing a SINGLE thing, I hot render again, and the media offline error dissappeared on me and I was FINALLY able to render my video out. I literally did the identical thing twice, and got different results, and this keeps happening to me so often that I'm at the end of my ropes. Most likely gonna have to look into a different video editing software since DaVinci was so inconsistent for me. There were times where I missed the deadline for my edits just because DaVInci decided he can't identify a fraction of a clip that's sitting on the desktop and was relinked a million times, only to suddenly start working out of nowhere...

[@phonezman]

Something he missed mine said "offline media" was because It wasn't a supported Video format (.m4v) I had to convert it to .mp4 first.

[@Kid_Clutch7]

this worked for me

[@phonezman]

@@Kid_Clutch7 I am glad it helped!

[@higgsbosontesticle]

I wanted to use an image off a website and got this problem. So I thought "well, why not just open it with Paint and save it right afterwards to make it mine" and that worked.

[@sips3812]

I imported a bunch of my images into davinci resolve [I downloaded the program today] and only 3 of the images are loading and everything is offline despite the program knowing where they are I'm suspecting it is because I modified the names of images just downloaded of google though one of the images was an exported image and that worked so either I try to export every image I took instead or do some other method or just not changing the names of the things

[@ScrungleSketches]

This is super helpful but I thought I'd add something in the comments if stuff still isn't working. I was having offline problems today and had to jump through multiple hoops. If you're using windows, Microsoft charges one dollar for a video player that you have to install before you can edit videos. once I installed it all my problems were fixed. :)

[@Nick_Lavigne]

The only way I found to link a clip that was renamed on the drive is to use the replace function. In premiere you just point to the correct file. I think resolve should add that as it is easier.

[@hannaortega9154]

I had the media offline problem but turned out I had to re-encode my file from peak framerate to constant framerate in handbreak, same as MisterMotion. Copy and pasted his comment so anyone else having the same issue would be more likely to see this comment and see if it's the case for them.

[@GeraCube]

Thank you! This was exactly what I needed!

[@qxer3935]

Worked, Thanks alot

[@JacquesEng]

I seem to have a problem none of the options work, could this be because of the file format? mine shows mp4. This is what GoPro generates

[@immax321]

I'm just installed, getting Media offline only on the video track, audios are ok, any suggestion?

[@Zilarrr]

for people that have shit computers with the slow storage issue (like myself) 1: Render as much as you can 2: Place the render on layer one of the timeline, deleting the previous clips 3: With magnet, place the playhead at the end of the render 4: On all the clips that you can select with the playhead ctrl + [ them 5: Delete all the clips under and above your render 6: Repeat until finished

[@Noxoreos]

There is one reason missing in the video, which I experienced. I just installed resolve 18.6 for the first time on my Windows machine and had this "Media Offline" issue with all 4K videos that I brought over from my Smartphone. I think whis issue is very likely to happen to other newcomers to the software, too. VLC plays those out of the box, but that's it. I'm using the free version of Resolve to start out with editing and this issue occurs in Resolve free on Windows, when you select video files that are compressed with H.265 (HEVC), which is not natively integrated in Windows. To fix this issue, Microsoft sells an extension for 99 cents, that enables HEVC support in Windows. I tried with two different codec packs from the internet (K-Lite and another one), but none of them worked. So I bought the extension from Microsoft in the Windows Store. I know it once was free but it's not anymore. Anyway, after installing it Resolve was able to playback the video without any issues then. I'm glad that worked, because converting files down to H.264 would be quite tedious and time consuming.

[@GabrielaHermed]

Thank you, but I still cannot figure out which one of these is. I tried all of them. I only hear the clips audio but it still says media off.

[@HippieP629]

A couple months ago I had offline media. I was losing my sh*t. I tried everything sugg'd. FINALLY found out that I just needed to dload the hvec codec. VOILA!

[@TheElectricCherry]

I am able to open MKV files just fine on my laptop (I believe it is still on version 17) but a fresh 18 install on my desktop says media offline

[@johnbivins]

Thanks, I just freaked lol. Chaged the name of a source file and then everything went red; of course this is due tonight! changed it back and won;t do that again. Thanks for the helpful video!

[@aracnoloco]

Davinci showed me the red files although I did not change anything in the folder/file structure (did not move nor delete anything). store all my stuff for editing on an external SSD (relatively). What I noticed is that everytime I plug another external device, lets say a SD card in order to get recently recorded offtext the order of the devices SSD has the name T7 (D:) yesterday but now gets the name T7 (E:) because the SD was plugged in before the SSD an was assigned by the laptop SD (D:) and the SSD changed from T7 (D:) to T7 (E:) and thus Davinci loses the original T7 (D:). So the question is how to avoid the random assignment of the different devices by Windows (other that deliberate order of plugging them into the laptop)

[@lozzka847]

СПАСИБО!!

[@tobiasantolini1052]

So why does this happen when I change Prefer Proxies to Disable Proxies? Its showing me media offline after doing this

[@julianbr9603]

beste video ooit