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— Timeline sort order: A user setting that allows you to determine the default sort order of the Timelines that appear in the Viewer drop-down menus throughout DaVinci Resolve.
— Alphabetic: Sorts Timelines alphabetically A-Z.
— Creation Date: Sorts Timelines by oldest creation date first.
— Recently Used (default): Sorts Timelines by the last actively used Timeline first.
Project Save and Load
The Project Save and Load panel lets you control how projects are opened, and how they’re saved.
Load Settings
The Load Settings preference lets you control a key aspect of project opening performance, namely whether or not all timelines within a given project are loaded into memory at the time of opening.
— Load all timelines when opening projects: To improve the performance of longer projects with multiple timelines, the “Load all timelines when opening projects” checkbox in the Project Save and Load panel of the User Preferences defaults to off.
— When this checkbox is off, opening a project only results in the last timeline you worked on being opened into memory; all other timelines are not loaded into RAM. This speeds up the opening of large projects. However, you may experience brief pauses when you open other timelines within that project, as each new timeline must be loaded into RAM as you open it. If you open a particularly gigantic timeline, a progress bar will appear letting you know how long it will take to load. Another advantage of this is the reduction of each project’s memory
footprint, which is particularly valuable when working among multiple projects using Dynamic Project Switching.
— If you turn this on, all timelines will be loaded into RAM, and you’ll experience no pauses when opening timelines you haven’t opened already. However, projects with many timelines may take longer to open and save.
Save Settings
The Save settings allow you to control how DaVinci Resolve handles automated saving and project backups. These features can save you from the heartache of lost work resulting from an unexpected problem.
— Live Save: Enabled by default, Live Save is a progressive, fast, always-on autosave mechanism that “saves as you go.” All changes in the Cut, Edit, and Fairlight pages are saved as you make them.
All changes in the Fusion and Color pages are automatically saved when you switch to another clip, and also periodically and invisibly in the background while you work to ensure that your work is saved even if you haven’t switched clips in a while.
— Project Backups: Turning on the Project Backups checkbox in the Project Save and Load panel of the User Preferences enables DaVinci Resolve to save multiple backup project files at periodic intervals, using a method that’s analogous to a GFS (grandfather father son) backup scheme. This can be done regardless of whether or not Live Save is turned on. Each project backup is a complete project file, excluding stills and LUTs.
Once you’ve enabled Project Backups for a long enough time, whatever saved project backups have been created are retrievable in the Project Manager via the contextual menu that appears when you right-click a project, by choosing Project Backups. Opening a project backup does not overwrite the original project; project backups are always opened as independent projects.
Restoring a project backup in the Project Browser
— Timeline Backups: Turning on the Timeline Backups checkbox in the Project Save and Load panel of the User Preferences enables DaVinci Resolve to save multiple backups of a timeline at periodic intervals, using a method that’s analogous to a GFS (grandfather-father-son) backup scheme. This can be done regardless of whether or not Live Save is turned on.
If you want to revert to a previous backup of a timeline, simply right-click on the timeline in the Media Pool, select Restore Timeline Backup from the contextual menu, and choose the backup from the list of options. Backups are organized by date and time, making it easy to find the specific timeline you want to restore.
Restoring a timeline backup does not overwrite your current timeline. Instead the selected backup will be brought into the Media Pool as a new timeline, with the name “Backup” appended to it.
Restoring a timeline backup in the Media Pool