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Media going offline simply means that DaVinci Resolve has lost track as to where the source file is. It’s easily remedied and nothing to be worried about, but sometimes Resolve will display a Media Offline error if it cannot ingest the file for one reason or another.
For instance, if you’re using the Free version of Resolve and import 10-bit footage from a Panasonic GH5, it’ll bring up the Offline error to indicate that you’re not able to use it.
While it appears to be a catch-all for Blackmagic to use to just indicate something has gone wrong, it rarely ever indicates what has gone wrong. Usually, though, this is just a simple fix of relocating the source files.
Fix Any Loose Connections
We can do this in a few ways and the simplest solution is to just first check that the USB device you’ve got connected to the computer hasn’t come loose. Plug it in again and in Resolve right click the media that’s gone offline and press “Relink”, this will scan the PC for the original file if it can’t find it immediately. Once that’s done, it’ll be able to be used again.
Media Offline: Relink Files
Sometimes you might have accidentally moved the source footage from one place to the other, resulting in Resolve ‘losing it’. The one thing to do now is to simply relink it with the same method above.
Right-click on “Relink Media”.
If there are multiple clips missing, you can highlight them all in the Media Pool by either clicking in and pressing CTRL+A or clicking and dragging over the required clips.
If the file could not be found, Resolve will once again do a comprehensive search for each file that’s missing.
Recover Deleted Clips
Okay, you’ve made a mistake and deleted the original clip and it’s no longer in your recycle bin or storage device. Resolve has flagged it – rightfully – offline and you’ll need to begin tracking it down.
If it’s an image or video you downloaded from the internet, as long as you can find the original file and have it match the name that you imported it into Resolve with, it should realign and bring it back into the fold.
However, if it was an originally created clip – filmed or screen captured – you might be out of luck in this case. There’s methods of file retrieval as detailed by Microsoft, but you’ll absolutely need to have two drives, external or internal.
Windows Recover Media
To do this, you’ll need to do the following with a Command Prompt and running it as Administrator.
Type chkdsk X: /f, replacing X with the drive you want to search.
Once completed, proceed to the next prompt and type ATTRIB -H -R -S /S /D X:. (replacing X with the letter of the hard drive.
To copy paste this into Command Prompt, copy and paste as usual here and then just right click into the black box.
