Where Does DaVinci Resolve Save Project?
DaVinci Resolve saves project files on Windows in C:/Users/<your user name>/AppData/Roaming/BlackMagic Design/DaVinci Resolve/Support/Resolve Disk Database, and Mac = Macintosh HD/Library/Application Support/Blackmagic Design/DaVinci Resolve/Resolve Disk Database.
For Windows, it could be also found in the “C:\ProgramData\Blackmagic Design\DaVinci Resolve\Support\Resolve Disk Database”.
For Mac, it could also be found in the “/Users/<your user name>/Library/Application Support/Blackmagic Design/DaVinci Resolve/Resolve Disk Database”
To find your accurate location, perform the below steps.
DaVinci Resolve Project File Location – How to Find it?
Step #1: Click on the “Project Manager” icon
Step #2: Click on the “Show/Hide Project Libraries” icon next to “Projects”
(“Show/Hide Databases” in the previous versions.)
Step #3: Right Click on your Project Library and Click on “Open File Location”
(Project Library is previously known as database in Resolve.)
After when you click on “Open File Location“, you’ll get the file path (also called the DaVinci Resolve database location) based on your OS.
Double click on “Resolve Projects” and go further till you find folders that are named after your projects.
Typically, this will be the path – “/Resolve Projects/Users/guest/Projects”.
(If you’re not able to locate the “AppData” folder, then it could be hidden. In your Windows File Explorer, check the box “Hidden Items” under the ” View ” tab in the taskbar).
Inside Resolve, when you click on “File > Save Project As“, this is the same location where your project file will be saved.
(Note: When you double click on any project folder, you’ll find the “Project.db” file, which is your actual project library file.)
So there you go!
How to Move / Export DaVinci Resolve Files?
When it comes to DaVinci Resolve, you can export the below based on your needs:
- Only the Project file.
- Entire project with media files.
- The entire project library or database (which is a collection of all of your project files).
- Only one timeline inside of a project.
If you’re interested in the above, then click on the below post for detailed and step by step instruction:
How to Move DaVinci Resolve Projects & Databases (Quick Tips)
Where Does DaVinci Resolve Save Media?
Saving source media files is up to you to decide. So the directory is the location of your choice.
But keep in mind that, if you have an internal SSD, try to save your media files over there for faster post-production work.
Conclusion
As per Blackmagic Design, DaVinci Resolve follows the concept of the “Project Libraries” (database) for project management.
A project library (database) is nothing but a collection of all of your projects.
By default, Resolve uses disk-database, which is nothing but a folder on your hard disk, whose location can be found by right-clicking the local database and clicking on Open File Location.
So once you know the location of your project files or database, you can then import, export your project files, and save your project files in the location of your choice, etc.
You may be also interested in the below posts:
Essential DaVinci Resolve Project Settings (For Beginners!)
Tips to Save Your Precious Work in DaVinci Resolve (IMPORTANT!)
Thank you!!
What an absolutely horrible way they decided to do this. Awful awful awful. Complete and utter insanity. Whose idea was this?!?!?!
Lets say you have hundreds of projects (this is normal) and want to move to a different workstation. You have to export each project one by one, manually?? This is a work flow nightmare.
With any other NLE you just grab the folder where everything is stored, copy to another drive and load it up piece of cake.
Been struggling to wrap my head round this for an entire day. Still confused as hell but your article helped a lot. Been using audio editors 20+ years… never seen anything as next level absurd as this.
Thanks for your comment. Actually instead of moving individual project files, you can move all of them by copying the folder at “C:/Users/your user name/AppData/Roaming/BlackMagic Design/DaVinci Resolve/Support/Resolve Disk Database/Resolve Projects”. This will have all of your project files.
For more detailed information, you can read this article – How to Move DaVinci Resolve Projects & Databases (Quick Tips)
Comprehensive and useful:)
Thanks for your valuable comment!
Just wanted to correct the article for Mac users — which I know is more of an afterthought here — but at least for my case, the Disk Database folder was in my USER /Users/*me*/Library/Application Support, rather than the root /Library/Application Support/ that it specifies here.
Thanks for letting me know. I have included your suggested folder location as well in the post.