Dynamic Project Switching In DaVinci Resolve

Day 20: 25 Insights in 25 Days Holiday Marathon

A Little Known Way To Make Project Switching Faster

If you work with DaVinci Resolve long enough, with enough large projects, and have the need to switch between them for a variety of reasons – saving a still/PowerGrade, copying a node from one project and pasting into a new one for instance, you’ll quickly become frustrated.

When opening large projects, Resolve can take a long time to load!

Here is a real-world situation that I face all the time as I grade of lot of broadcast series – I’m grading the current episode of the series and I realize there is a shot that I’ve seen before.

This shot might be in a recap from a previous episode or it might just be a particular piece of b-roll that’s used several times over the course of the series. Regardless, I often have the need to go searching for shots, and even individual nodes.

If you often have to switch between Resolve projects, like me you’ve probably spent a lot of time WAITING!

The reality is, on an hour-long show with say 900 shots, I might save 150-200 stills, then there is render caching, thumbnails to update and so on. Each project has quite a bit to load and this load time increases the larger the project.

Enter Dynamic Project Switching.

Lots Of RAM Goes A Long Way

Really, the only requirement for Dynamic Project Switching to work well is lots of RAM in your computer.

The thing to understand about Dynamic Project Switching and why it works so well is that the loading of projects and that process of loading is placed into RAM.

If you have a 200MB project, you’ll need about that amount of free memory (probably more) to actually allow that project to reside in memory. If you load 5,6, or 7 projects all with Dynamic Project Switching then you’ll need even more RAM dedicated to that storage to make things work efficiently.

To be completely honest, I’m not quite sure exactly what goes into RAM and what does not, but on my systems, I have between 32GB and 128GB of RAM and Dynamic Project Switching works wonderfully.

For me, the discovery of this feature has saved me a lot of time, and who doesn’t want more time?

As always – questions, comments, or additional thoughts please use the comments below

– Robbie

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Comments

Creator

Discussion
December 20, 2014 at 2:10 pm #33674

Robbie Carman
Participant

This is the discussion thread for the Insight: Dynamic Project Switching In DaVinci Resolve
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Discussion

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Jason Bowdach
Member

December 20, 2014 at 5:23 pm

are you simply copying and pasting nodes between projects? is there another way to copy over a full node tree I’m missing.?Thanks
RobbieCarman
Guest

December 20, 2014 at 5:26 pm

Well, for me the big thing about this functionality is just the speed to jump between projects. When I’m going back and forth its usually to find a shot/grade that I need in my current project. From there I do one of a few things 1. save as a still within that project that I can then pull in to my active project 2. Save as power grade 3. Export DRX 4. Copy the node.

Again Dynamic Switching for me isn’t so much about the exact way of pulling a grade/shot but more about the time saving that’s involved going back and forth.
Jason Bowdach
Member

December 20, 2014 at 6:17 pm

Gotcha! That makes a ton of sense, especially for webisodes or short “insights”, etc. Thanks!
Ed Rudolph
Member

December 20, 2014 at 7:31 pm

Great Insight!
Colin Travers
Member

December 20, 2014 at 8:51 pm

Great insight Robbie!
Patrick Inhofer
Guest

December 21, 2014 at 1:10 pm

Oh smokes, Robbie. I NEVER noticed that feature. Has it been there for a while? Great Insight.
Robbie Carman
Guest

December 21, 2014 at 2:12 pm

LOL! I know its a recent discover for me too. I’ve been using it now for a few weeks so, it might be with the 11.1.3 release or maybe one or two before. I can’t seem to find documentation on it, but glad I found it! It’s a really useful thing.
Tom Parish
Member

December 26, 2014 at 4:56 pm

Robbie – this is SUPER helpful. Truly, thank you. It’s going to save me a lot of time as it looks like 2015 is going to be a BIZZY year.
Verne Mattson
Guest

February 5, 2015 at 5:09 pm

Really helpful Insight Robbie!
Robbie Carman
Guest

February 6, 2015 at 12:21 am

you’re welcome!
diego yhama
Member

September 26, 2016 at 6:36 pm

nice, is there a way to copy timelines between projects?
Patrick Inhofer
Guest

September 27, 2016 at 5:49 pm

Command-C to copy. Command-V to paste (use Control- on a PC).

When pasting into the new project, be sure you’ve got a bin active where you want all the clips in the sequence to dumped into in the Media Pool.
Duke Sweden
Guest

September 22, 2017 at 7:32 am

I hope you’re still monitoring this. In v.14, the first time I used DPS, it worked perfectly. But starting the next day, when I open DaVinci and project manager opens, the default “Untitled project” has a red checkmark. Choosing 2 other projects only highlights them but doesn’t put a checkmark on them, and when I hit “Open”, only the “untitled project” opens. If I only choose one project, that will open, but 2 or more projects and none of them open except for “untitled project”. I’ve tried turning off DPS. Off or on, the default projects always has the red checkmark. I can’t understand why it worked the first day but now has this glitch.
Robbie Carman
Guest

September 22, 2017 at 10:52 am

Hi,

Not sure I totally follow. The Red check box simply indicates that is the selected project and ‘open’ and when you click open with the button that project will open. So without DPS enabled if you open a project and then open the project manager again you’ll see the project you’re working on has a check box.

This check has nothing to do with DPS

For DPS to work you must first open projects normally to be loaded into RAM. This initial load will take a bit longer than normal

1. Enable DPS by right clicking the project manager

2. Open up project # 1 Save it.

3. Choose the Project Manager and open up project #2 and save it.

4. From the File menu choose Switch Project. In the flyout menu you’ll see the two projects and can switch between them.
Duke Sweden
Guest

September 22, 2017 at 12:13 pm

Thanks for responding. Yeah I accidentally did it the correct way. What was throwing me off was no matter what I did, no matter which project was open when I closed DaVinci, whether DPS was on or not, The “Untitle Project” would always be the project that was supposedly the last one opened. Anyway, like I said, I stumbled upon the correct way to do it but thanks anyway. I appreciate the response.
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