Media Offline Issues PC

[Meadow Lark]

Using the latest Davinci Resolve 15 Free software on my PC. I opened a previously saved timeline for a wedding video highlights. I hoped to open it to make a few minor adjustments before I do one last render. All of the clips said Media Offline. All clips are red.  I haven't done anything different. All of the original video clips are still in the same place unmoved, untouched and working fine. I have lots of storage too.

I tried to clear the cached render but still no changes as suggested in a forum topic similar to my issue. It still shows No Media errors in all editing rooms - fairlight, color, etc. It won't play anything when I try to scrub or play. Any suggestions? I'm really disappointed in all the issues I've had to waste a lot of time troubleshooting in this program. I don't have a lot of time to spare with editing deadlines to meet. Please help. Thanks in advance.

Edited December 16, 2018 by Meadow Lark

[Bruno Mansi]

I assume when you say 'all editing rooms' you're referring to all the tabs, so your footage is offline in the media page.

One thing you could try is to make a new bin (in the media tab) and re-import all your footage once more into this bin. If all your clips appear and play correctly, we can assume there's nothing wrong with your media or the drives they live in.

Now have a look at your timeline and see if the new clips have corrected the problem.

[Meadow Lark]

It looks like I might have a bigger problem. All my videos files were stored on my external hardrive along with other important files! Suddenly I can't view any of my files on my external hard drive. Is this a common issue with Davinci. Does this software destroy hard drive files? Any recommendations? 

Edited December 16, 2018 by Meadow Lark

[Bruno Mansi]

I don't think you can really blame Resolve for your hard disk failing!

It's a fact of life that the only cast-iron guarantee a manufacturer can ever give about hard drives is that they will fail at some point.

It's at times like this that most of the people who frequent these forums will turn to their backups, which are part of the daily essential tasks that we perform. If you don't have backups, then you may have learnt a hard lesson about their importance.

Without backups, the only avenue left is to hope that the disk isn't the problem, but that it's a data or power cable problem. If your drive is partially working (so you can see some of your files) I would copy these off immediately to another drive. The files that won't recover might be salvageable using software like Spinrite, which uses specialised drive commands to try and read data on bad portions of the disk

If the disk is completely unresponsive, then it looks as if your drive has completely died. There are specialist recovery companies that try to recover your data, but they're going to be expensive. I've also heard of people who will transplant the platters of your dead drive to an identical drive, on the assumption that the data is still intact, but the old drive has suffered some sort of component problem or bearing failure. Again, it's not likely to be a cheap option. If something catastrophic has happened, like the heads hitting the surface of your platters, then it's game over.

[Meadow Lark]

Is Spinrite better than Recuva for .mp4 and .mov files? I'm just really concerned because it only happened after I deleted the project cache files in DavincI Resolve. 

Before trying Recuva, whenever I tried to safely remove the external hard drive it would say can't remove because it's in use with another program. I opened task manager to make sure all applications were closed and they were. I shut down my computer. Waited a few minutes. Removed the external hard drive and tried it in another computer. Same issue. Said it's open in another program, etc.

I did a deep scan in Recuva and tested a recovered video .mov file and a .mp4 file and they won't play back on any of my players. Windows media player. VLC media player, or QuickTime player.

I'm planning to buy another hard drive tomorrow to put the Recuva files on before I try anything else. Unfortunately that was my Christmas present spending money. Now I have to spend it all on a new hard drive.

Thanks so much for your advice.

Edited December 17, 2018 by Meadow Lark

[Bruno Mansi]

I've never used Recuva so I'm not able to advise, but it sounds similar to Spinrite. These programs can only do so much, and they basically work by trying to read damaged blocks of data by re-reading them multiple times, and getting the heads to approach that section of the disk from different directions. The hope is that if the data is still there but the heads are having trouble reading it, multiple attempts might just recover the data. If the data is irretrievably damaged or missing and can't be read, then nothing is really going to help.

Deleting cache files on a disk should never cause a total failure of the disk, so I think this was just a coincidence.

As far as your recovered mov file is concerned, I suspect Recuva didn't manage to recover 100% of the file, so it won't play. You could try one of the movie repair utilities that are available (eg Stellar) or try something like fix.video, where you upload the file and they fix it for you.

 

[jed]

I am new to resolve (16) and I cannot get the media not to show as MEDIA OFFLINE. I have tried multiple file types (MP4, H.264, H.265, .MOV) and it always says my media is offline. I have also tried to OPTIMIZE MEDIA and that hasn't worked. I am using my iPad Pro 11" shooting in 4K 60fps, Please help as I am loosing my freaking mind spending days in forums and trying a million fixes and none have worked (Yes I have uninstalled and re-installed Davinci Resolve 16)

[Abby Bader]

Hi Jed. We would need some more information to be able to help you with your problem, but I recommend to watch the media offline lesson in the conform series as it covers most of the media offline issues you can come across.