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Project and Timeline backups are only saved when changes have been made to a project. If DaVinci Resolve sits idle for any period of time, such as when your smart watch tells you to go outside and walk around the block, no additional project backups are saved, preventing DaVinci Resolve from overwriting useful backups with unnecessary ones.
Three fields let you specify how often to save a new backup, while the fourth lets you choose where the backups will be saved. These settings apply to both Project and Timeline backups.
— Perform backups every X minutes: The first field specifies how often to save a new backup within the last hour you’ve worked. By default, a new backup is saved every 10 minutes, resulting in six backups within the last hour. Once an hour of working has passed, an hourly backup is saved and the per-minute backups begin to be discarded on a first in, first out basis. By default, this means that you’ll only ever have six backups at a time that represent the last hour’s worth of work.
— Hourly backups for the past X hours: The second field specifies how many hourly project backups you want to save. By default, two hourly backups will be saved for the current day. Past that number, hourly backups will begin to be discarded on a first in, first out basis.
— Daily backups for the past X days: The third field specifies for how many days you want to save backups. The very last backup saved on any given day is preserved as the daily backup for that day, and by default daily backups are only saved for two days. Past that number, daily backups will begin to be discarded on a first in, first out basis. If you’re working on a project over a longer stretch of time, you can always raise this number.
— Backup location: Click the Browse button to choose a location for these backups to be saved. By default they’re saved to a “ProjectBackup” directory on your scratch disk, although you could change this to a volume that better fits into your data backup methodology. This folder contains both Project and Timeline backups.
Editing
The settings in this panel affect new timeline settings, editorial default values, trim behaviors, timeline UI appearance, and frame interpolation settings.
New Timeline Settings
These settings define the presets that populate the New Timeline Options window whenever you create a new timeline.
— Start Timecode: You can change the Start Timecode if a specific start time is required.
— No. of Video Tracks: Enter how many video tracks you want to have. You can also drag within this field to adjust the number of video tracks with a virtual slider.
— No. of Audio Tracks: Enter how many audio tracks you want to have. You can also drag within this field to adjust the number of audio tracks with a virtual slider.
— Audio Track Type: Choose the channel mapping you want the new audio tracks to use.
Automatic Smart Bins
These settings let DaVinci Resolve automatically create Smart Bins whenever clips with relevant metadata appear in the Media Pool, or whenever such metadata is added to clips that are already in the Media Pool. You can choose which Smart Bins are automatically created via a series of checkboxes.
General Settings
These settings define the timing of resolve-generated effects and editing operations.
— Standard generator duration: Defines the default duration of generators you edit into the Timeline, in Seconds or Frames. The default value is 5 seconds.
— Standard transition duration: Defines the duration of transitions, in Seconds or Frames, that you add to an edit point in DaVinci Resolve. The default value is 1 second.
— Standard still duration: Defines the duration of stills that you import such as TIFF, PNG and other supported graphic file formats, in Seconds or Frames. The default value is 5 seconds.
— Pre-roll time: Determines how much of the Timeline before the current position of the playhead to play when using the Play Around command.
— Post-roll time: Determines how much of the Timeline after the current position of the playhead to play when using the Play Around command.
— Audio subframe nudge: Determines the number of milliseconds or subframes are nudged when you use the Subframe Left/Right controls.
— Default handles length: The value used when creating a timeline with handles. The default is one second worth of frames.
— Default fast nudge length: The number of frames that are nudged when you use the Shift- Comma (,) and Shift-Period (.) keyboard shortcuts.
— Pre-playhead shadow length: The number of frames in the Timeline prior to the playhead covered by the Playhead Shadow, if enabled by checking the “Show playhead shadow box” in the User UI Settings preferences.
— Post-playhead shadow length: The number of frames in the Timeline after the playhead covered by the Playhead Shadow, if enabled by checking the “Show playhead shadow box” in the User UI Settings preferences.
— Timeline overlay retains the last performed action: Turn this checkbox on if you want DaVinci Resolve to always remember the last edit type you used in the Timeline Viewer Overlay, and highlight it on this Overlay whenever you drag another clip over the Timeline Viewer to let you know that the last edit you performed is the new default edit if you drop clips to the left of the overlay.
— Always highlight current clip in the media pool: When turned on, any clips at the position of the playhead on the Edit or Color pages will be automatically highlighted in the Media Pool.
— Sync the Master Timeline to the current frame: If you turned on “Automatically match master timeline with media pool” in the Color settings, then this option lets you make sure that whenever you open the Master Timeline, the playhead is at the same clip and frame that it was in the previous Timeline you were working on.
— Show offline reference for timeline gaps: If there’s a missing clip in a conformed timeline that results in a gap in the Timeline Editor, turning this option on sets DaVinci Resolve to show the corresponding frames of an “offline reference movie,” if one has been assigned to that timeline, instead of black. This can be helpful in emergency situations when you’re missing timeline clips right before a screening or review session; this feature lets you play or output the missing frames using the corresponding media from the offline reference movie, instead of outputting black.
For more information on using and assigning Offline Reference Movies, see Chapter 55, “Preparing Timelines for Import and Comparison.”