Backing Up, Transferring and Restoring Projects AND Media with Project Archives in Davinci Resolve

[@meetupachterhoek]

Mr. Alex explains it so well, clearly, without frills, noise around it. Just clear information, concise, clear. Very good. Thank you so much!

[@RealBrotha32]

Alex you make resolve so much easier my brother thank you 🙏🏽

[@JeffNotes]

I was trying my best to switch over from premiere pro to davinci for months now... I should've serrrrriously started with your video first! wouldve made my life much easier! thanks a bunch for this! =)

[@gabrielcastillo2890]

This video was really helpful, thank you for making it, I appreciate you taking the time off your day and making videos that help others, I hope your hard work has payed off. And if it hasn't yet, I'm sure it will.

[@englishwithstacie7423]

Thanks! I bought another laptop last week and was looking for a video about transferring my projects, and on the next day you uploaded this one :D I looove your channel and I'm so happy it's growing ;) I'm an English teacher and I need a lot of text in my video lessons. Could you, please, make a couple videos on text animation? I mean, some creative stuff, cause I've run out of ideas :)

[@OregonCoast426]

Brilliant! Thank you for a very clear and thorough explanation, mate!

[@kennethochoa7550]

easy pewee tut thanks

[@SharonVoyage]

Thank you soooo much! I'm pretty new at Resolve and was playing with some files I downloaded and had NO clue how to open them. You saved me! Liked and subed.

[@joestechbits6261]

I really appreciate MrAlexTech's videos. I have been trying to find a way to simply archive Resolve projects without much luck. Alex's videos have helped me much in the past and I finally came across this one that made it so clear and simple. Keep up the awesome videos Alex. 10 star rating!

[@DrPawfection]

Thanks Alex. I have had issues after moving from an ASUS to a Macbook. Media offline even though separate files and linked media. Your solution looks great

[@calicops951]

thank you Alex, you are the best. so glad we have you.

[@caspiansfriend]

It's time for me to archive a bunch of stuff of of my NVMe. But I was a little concerned that I might ruin a project that later I might want back. You explained the process so well! So, no worries. I'm going to archive the projects to a NAS and from there they will get cloud backup------> off site. Yes!

[@DanOTaylor]

Thanks man, used this a few times to move project archives between computers. Super helpful!

[@grahame8032]

Great video. I could not understand why my restore did not work correctly but your video solved the problem for me thanks.

[@roehaus1]

Another good one Alex!

[@badboy8526]

MrAlexTech is the best guy on KZbin!!!!!!!!!

[@zlarecords]

THX Alex ...best explanation ever. I was always struggling with media management on Resolve😅😅😅

[@get_your_memes_now]

PERFECT straight to the point Tutorial!

[@Dandelion-32]

Hi Alex How do you like the Air, now that you've had it for some time? Oh, and I'd just like to thank you for not littering your videos with constant background music. I love music, and appreciate it far too much to have it reduced to a constant polution.

[@TheLillianYoung]

This was very helpful. I have to take an edit out of state and this answered how to do that minus the cloud usage (v18).

[@storyfirstfilms149]

Absolutely the best explanation!

[@Kordanor]

Thanks a lot for this quick overview. It's surprising how most others just ignore the media...

[@HVACRSurvival]

Awesome! I just got the MacPro 16 m1pro, coming from PC... Thanks for the review as well!

[@geoffreymee7671]

Brilliant Alex! I've just finished my first DR17 Studio project and was stumped as to how to archive. Your style is so reassuring to those of us who know so little - accurate, clean instructions and ...wooo! - I then know how to do it. You are a great resource mate. I have been using your transitions to great effect as well. They are a real resource too. Thx

[@rogercarson5351]

You are a life saver, sir!

[@nikolaykim16]

That's a very convinient option, thank you!

[@damianoehme5391]

This is a fantastic channel. Thank you!

[@MrClydie_Po_Po]

Thank you!!! Brilliant and just what I needed 💕

[@tapashbanerjee8267]

Nice guidance❤

[@stuartflemingphotography6337]

Very nice tip. Thanks for sharing that. Always good to learn new ways to do things better. Thanks

[@PaulSaxbyPhotography]

Great video, thanks Alex that’s really useful info. How about a video explaining how to export to a Premiere xml file to round trip. I have colleagues who are still in the dark ages and insist on using Adobe products!!!!

[@Iaintsayinnothin..]

10/10 short and sweet tutorial

[@andywright2606]

Thanks Alex this will be really handy 👍

[@noopuramproductions9507]

Thank You , that was a life saver.

[@DTraub]

That was really helpful. Thank you so much, Alex!

[@johnford3825]

Very useful. Thank you. I know what I will be doing tomorrow.

[@boletin_el_wachyman]

Thanx a lot Alex!

[@raymondvanderwerf]

another great video....thx Alex.

[@Von_McKnelly]

Most helpful....thanks Alex.👍

[@fgzy123]

Would it work fine across different versions of DR? For example DR15 on one computer to DR17 on another? And that guy was right, you really don't seem to answer questions, but hopefully I'll catch you at a good time.

[@paraisosaudiovisuais]

Thank you for the video! Clear and right to the point!

[@indie12]

thank you. very helpful

[@THE_SMOKE_SHOW_]

Excellent thanks!

[@ronalddeleeuwvanweenen]

Thx man, great tip again!

[@telwingeorge]

Genius. Thank you

[@gsxrunit]

Great video would love to see u do some cool photoshop on pictures if possible

[@Benjamin-om3ih]

Alex, really stoked you made this cause I've been wondering about it for awhile. I have one question about this. Seems like DR use to have a funtion where you could move things jnto an archive instead of copy. What's to best way to ensure files are deleted from your main drive after you've archived?

[@robertaltman222]

Good to hear you explain this! If you continue to edit the project on the two computers do you simply need to update/export the project file and replace that within the project folders on the computers to keep them 'in sync' (assuming no new media has been added of course...)?? I want to round-trip projects so I hope that workflow will work...

[@FranciscaPires]

I had no idea that was possible ^^' thank you! That will be great to use once i get a drive for backups or if i ever need to work across different machines 👌 Thank you for basically teaching me (and many others) how to use resolve.

[@carbon_originals]

THANK YOU!

[@SteveMartinUSA]

This looks like a really cool way to safely backup a project to a backup drive, including the media files used in the project. One thing worth mentioning is that you have to check either "media files" or "proxy media". Sometimes I just want a quick backup of my projects (without media), before upgrading DaVinci for example. Would "Export Project" do that in 17.1?

[@ianharper6015]

Thank you for another clear and useful video. When archiving, does DVR archive all the media in the media pool or only those used in the creation of the final video? Thanks.

[@tonguedrumrelax2308]

Thank you so much!

[@bjornlehmann8451]

Hi Alex - thanks for your great tutorials ! Do you know if there´s an easy way to archive the project without the unused clips ? Thanks Bjoern

[@abouttheravadabuddhism]

Thanks!

[@sak_1017]

Thank you

[@cyrilsfilmtube3180]

Its working ❤

[@apeel2008]

Thanks for the excellent tutorial. I have a few questions I hope you can answer. 1) When creating project archives, does the folder structure used for the original media get reproduced in the archive, or is all of the media files transferred to a single folder. For example, if I put Music, Photos, Graphics, Footage, etc all In separate folders in a parent folder called ‘Media’, will the archived media be put into Music, Photos, Graphics, Footage, etc folders in a folder called ‘Media’ on the archive destination disk ? 2) if #1 is yes, then If so, when restoring the project, will the folder structure be brought over again? 3) Finally,, is ALL of the media in a project archived, or only that media which actually appears in a timeline transferred to the archive? In other words, if I have some footage that is in the media pool of a project but was not actually put into a timeline, is that ‘unused ‘ footage also archived? Note: I am still using Davinci 16, so please advice if the answer to these questions are different depending on DV 16 vs 17.

[@RadioCAE]

Great help!!! The only thing: you're talking a bit too fast for us German audience. But I'll play the video on 2/3 speed and then understand your advices on a "silght lower level". Cheerio!!! 😁

[@SnehithPamarathi]

Hi Alex, great tut as always, btw is there an option/feature called script sync in resolve avid script sync ?

[@IT_Engineer877]

thanku bro

[@stonehillmtb1964]

Great video as usual. A good introduction to test this at home. But, when you restore an archieve from e.g the desktop, where do the restored files end up?

[@MrAlexTech]

The media files stay on the desktop, or wherever the Archive file was located. That's what I mean, you need to move them Archive file to the location you want the media files to remain. I use the Desktop on my laptop as it's only got 1 drive, but for my PC I'd put it on another drive etc. The actual Project file, gets imported into the database.

[@Noemsyn]

Is there a way to just archive the timeline with the trimmed and edited media? I don't want to include all of the original media, just the cut and trimmed portions of the media to save space.

[@WatchThatFirstStep]

Thanks for the short and direct explanation of the process. I do have a few questions, though. Does the exported media in the project archive include the entire source clip or just the portions used in the project at the time of export? The video shows your local disk is 250 GB, and the Resolve hard drive is 500 GB. Why would you choose to live like that? The DaVinci Resolve training books say working with media on an internal hard drive is best practice. Have you used a removable external during edit/grading, and how difficult or slow was it?

[@wanderingdestination]

Does the new location you restore to contain any bins you setup to keep footage organized? I.e. I keep a bin/ folder per camera, drone,gopro , etc

[@buzzedlunne6668]

Hi Alex, daft question - why did you not select the Export project instead of Export Project Archive?

[@claudiogsantosjr2695]

Mr. Alex what format does the external hard drive needs to be in if you’re switching between Mac and Windows?

[@practical_theory]

Does this also include the luts I've used in the project?

[@exploringgodscountry]

I want to move the whole folder for the project as well as unused clips in the folder and maintain my original folder structure. I cannot figure out how.

[@mrfroopy]

Since I am just switching from Avid, where are all the incremental saves, the equivalent stored so if I crash I can go back to say an hour earlier of work?

[@IthacaDon]

Question: I am archiving because I want to free up space on my laptop drive. I've archived to a NAS and to a portable SSD. What is your procedure to delete the project, media files and cache from my laptop drive?

[@zackallen8759]

Only question with archived folders/projects etc... if It was archived in an older version like 18.x and I now restore it with a newer version 19.x.... what issues if any do I need to prepare for?

[@boahandarrowsproductions4326]

Does this keep all the edits and such as well?

[@edrugmanmusic]

Thanks for the video Alex! Would this be a good way of working on the same resolve project together with another person? I’m hoping to move to resolve 17 from Prem but could do with workflow that allows a colleague to edit with smaller proxy footage then send it back to me. Just pondering the next workflows at the moment before trying things out. I have heard you can do xml export too but anything simpler or using Dropbox would be much easier. Also I wondered if you know if studio and the free version can work on the same project? Thanks for the great videos always!

[@aghist2154]

Thank you for another great tip. I have a question. With this backup method you don't need the same DB? If p.e. I want after 1 year to open the project and I don't have the same DB that I had when I made the archiving will be opened?

[@NickMirro]

When you restore, is DR extracting from compressed files? If so, what do you do when done working with the archive? Re-archive? I leave the location unchanged so what's happening in the archive folder? Are there 2 sets of project files, compressed and extracted Thanks!!!

[@SunriseWaterMedia]

When creating a project, are the video files copied elsewhere or do they remain where they were on my hard drive?

[@dessguy7199]

Does anyone getting red arrow on the icons of the archived media files on Windows? It only does it when archived on the same drive as the original media

[@evancarestia1409]

Hi! Can anyone tell me what to do if I have multiple projects that share the same media pool? I used the export archive method and it works great for the project, however I don't want to export the project archive for the second project because I don't want to copy all my media again onto the same drive.

[@SSGGraphics]

for me its saying unable to import what do I do?

[@STOGG]

The issue I'm running into is that i get an UNABLE TO IMPORT PROJECT error. And I'm not sure why

[@Doredar]

Hello. I have received a project file which was exported with the latest free version of Davinci Resolve. I am unable to import the project file with my Studio version 18.1.2. First I thought maybe the different version is the issue, but the projectfile itself is only 80kb which seems to be not a normal size it's too small it should be 1+ MB. Do you have any idea what could be the issue? Thanks a lot.

[@xyzct]

Before you export, you might want to remove any media files that weren't actually used in the project.

[@badboy8526]

Hi MrAlexTech, I am using Davinci Resolve 17 (free version). Every time I render for 4K video export, Davinci crashes and closes automatically. I have pretty much watched and tried all the youtube guides on this but none them seem to work. My next idead is to update my current Davinci Resolve 17 to the latest version and see if that fixes this problem. Meanwhile, do you know why this problem is occurring?

[@mpoweredfilms2456]

When I try to project restore I have major problems. :|( it keeps saying selected path doesn't seem too e a project archive? heeeeelp Me ;,(

[@apeel2008]

I have run into a problem that I hope you can help me with. When I do the export project archive, I get a dialog box message that states "FAILURE: Failed to create temporary folder!". with an Abort button as my only option. This error messages appears 3 times (after hitting abort each time). There is no archive created where specified. I am running Davinci 16.2.7.010 on a Mac running MacOS Mojave (10.14.6). I checked that permissions for the target disk/location is set to be ignored, and also have 'everyone' set to Read & Write. I have seen this issue reported many times but never saw a solution to it. Any idea? PS: I tested archiving in the past, and it seem to work fine before. Since that time I did have an internal HD failure and I restored (using time machine) to a different, external SSD. Davinci is otherwise working fine, but I keep getting this error message when trying to archive projects. Help!

[@bobmusikk]

I tried the archive thing, it didn't found the files for me. I prefer Timeline Media Management export then resave as a project, works 100%. EDIT : Well, my bad, the archive was into a folder I got to go into that folder to see the DRA files,, Sorry :) Still love the MediaManagement to reduce the size.

[@majorediting8164]

I just tried this but there are sooooooooo many files missing when I restore it. It seems as if a lot of the clips, .pngs etc were not archived, What am I doing wrong?

[@MrAlexTech]

Make sure you click on the actual DRA folder when restoring. Don't open the dra file and click the drp file. This will break it and lose the files etc etc. Click the actual DRA folder then click open and it'll work 🙂

[@majorediting8164]

@@MrAlexTech Actually, it appears that the crappy .rar extractor didn't work properly, so I'm good...BUT...not, I can't figure out how to transfer the license dongle from my desktop to my laptop. I did it before but when I plugged it in, I here the sound notification but no DaVinci Resolve Studio.

[@fredschenk_VVD]

If one doesn’t include the media files, only the proxy files, will that be an easy way to work with the project on another computer. And then backup only the project (even without proxy files) back to the first to finish it off?

[@Luagsch]

Wondering the same. Would be great for projects with multiple people involved or work on the go

[@roygertel]

Much more convenient is to do it in Premiere. They should change it as Premiere does it...

[@EFOOTBALL839]

I spend my most of time in "recording","","editing and uplaoding. I need all my brothers and sisters support 🙏.. Thank you.😢😣

[@Maremare680]

Wow, this guy doesn’t answer questions.

[@MrAlexTech]

Wow this guy leaves useless comments

[@Maremare680]

@@MrAlexTech Wow, you ACTUALLY answered to my comment, how awesome😂

[@MrAlexTech]

😁😁

[@BEXITER]

Thank you!

[@Smartybarty100]

It doesn't export compound clips. What to do?