"Media Offline" in DaVinci Resolve

A broken link. Resolve stores each clip by its file path. Move the media, rename a folder, or open the project on a machine where the drive isn't mounted, and every affected clip goes "Media Offline" even though the files are perfectly healthy. The fix is not repair at all — right-click the clip or the Media Pool and choose Relink Selected Clips, then point Resolve at the folder. If your clips simply moved, do this first; there is nothing wrong with the files.

A decode failure. This is the case a repair addresses. The file is exactly where Resolve expects it, but it can't be decoded: the MP4/MOV container is damaged (a missing or truncated moov index from an unfinalized recording or an interrupted transfer), or the codec inside isn't something your Resolve build handles well. The free edition, in particular, has limited H.264/HEVC support on some platforms, and variable-frame-rate (VFR) footage from phones and screen recorders is a notorious source of intermittent "Media Offline" flicker because Resolve expects a constant frame rate. When the container is the problem, rebuilding it restores decoding; when the codec is the problem, you conform the clip instead.

Two quick checks separate them. First, confirm the clip is actually found: if Resolve offers to relink and the path is just wrong, it's a link problem, not a decode problem. Second, if the clip is found but shows "Media Offline" — often on some frames and not others, or as a clip that scrubs partway then drops out — look at whether it plays cleanly in a simple player. A clip that won't open anywhere and whose moov index is missing or truncated is a container fault: the frames exist in the mdat, but Resolve has no reliable map to them. That is the repairable case.

If the clip plays fine elsewhere but still flickers offline in Resolve, you likely have a codec/conform fault — commonly VFR, an unusual HEVC profile, or 10-bit 4:2:2 that your build won't decode. Rebuilding the container won't change that. The dependable fix is to transcode to an edit-friendly codec at a constant frame rate (DNxHR, DNxHD or ProRes), or to generate Optimized Media / proxies inside Resolve so it edits from a codec it fully supports. Rebuild the container when the file is broken; conform the codec when the file is merely unfriendly.

For the container case, the tool scans the surviving H.264 or HEVC stream, reconstructs the moov index and sample tables, and writes a clean, seekable MP4/MOV. Resolve can then decode and conform it normally, and it stops dropping to "Media Offline" on those frames. Where the file was truncated by an interrupted copy or a full disk, it salvages the frames written before the cut and closes a valid container around them, so a partly-transferred clip still comes back with the footage that made it. This all runs in your browser tab as the file is read from disk.

The honest limits: a rebuild can't make Resolve decode a codec your build genuinely doesn't support — for that, transcode or generate Optimized Media after repair. And frames never written after an interruption can't be recovered. What the repair guarantees is that the source footage — often graded client work or unreleased material — stays on your machine: it's read from disk and rebuilt locally, and you can watch the Network tab and confirm 0 bytes ever leave.