Get your missing clips back, fast.
Runs entirely on your own machine. Requires DaVinci Resolve Studio 19.1 or newer.
If you've ever opened a DaVinci Resolve project and seen a wall of red "media offline" clips, this plugin is for you.
Maybe you moved your footage to a new drive. Maybe someone renamed the folders. Maybe you re-ingested a camera card and now Resolve can't find anything. Whatever happened, Media Relinker points at a folder, looks at each file on disk, and figures out which missing clip it belongs to — even when the filename has changed.
Click Scan, review the matches, click Relink Selected. Done.
Note: This plugin requires DaVinci Resolve Studio. Blackmagic disabled the scripting UI framework (Fusion UIManager) on the free version of Resolve in version 19.1 (late 2024), so plugins with a graphical interface — including this one — no longer work there.
Resolve's built-in relink works when files have simply moved to a new folder but kept the same name. It matches by filename.
Media Relinker is for everything else — when filenames changed, folders were reorganised, or you've re-ingested camera cards so the originals and the replacements share nothing but the actual footage inside. It looks at the content of each file: timecode, duration, camera serial number, creation date, resolution, codec, and more. So even a completely renamed file can be matched back to the clip it came from.
Every offline clip gets a row. Each row shows the best match found on disk, a confidence percentage, and a side-by-side comparison of duration, frame rate, date, time, and resolution — with green / yellow / red ticks so you can see at a glance which fields agree.
Tick the matches you're happy with and press Relink Selected.
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Download or clone this repository.
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From the project folder, run the installer:
python install.py
On Windows it will download ExifTool automatically. On macOS run
brew install exiftoolfirst. On Linux runsudo apt install libimage-exiftool-perl. -
Restart DaVinci Resolve.
That's it. If you'd rather not use Python, there's a pure-Lua installer: lua install.lua (you'll need to install ExifTool yourself).
To uninstall, run python install.py --uninstall.
- Open a Resolve project that has offline clips.
- Go to Workspace → Scripts → Comp → Media Relinker.
- Click Browse folder… and pick the folder where your footage lives. You can add more than one. Tick Include subdirectories if your footage is in nested folders.
- Press Scan. This reads each file's metadata (it may take a few minutes the first time on a big library — subsequent scans are much faster).
- Look at the results. Rows at high confidence are ticked automatically. Rows at medium confidence are shown but not ticked — you decide.
- Press Relink Selected.
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| Show | Hide or show rows by confidence level (High, Medium, Low, No match). |
| History | See every relink you've ever done. Undo any of them. Or pick a different match from the alternatives captured at scan time. |
| Settings | Adjust how strict matching is, or how much each metadata field counts. |
| Clear cache | Forget all remembered metadata. The next scan will re-read every file. |
Does this work on the free version of DaVinci Resolve?
No, unfortunately not. In Resolve 19.1 (late 2024) Blackmagic disabled the Fusion UIManager on the free version, which is what this plugin uses to draw its window. Media Relinker needs Resolve Studio 19.1 or newer. It is not a licensing choice on our end — the UI framework simply isn't available on free Resolve any more.
Will it change my original files?
No. Media Relinker only updates where Resolve points to look for a clip. Your footage on disk is never moved, renamed, or modified. And every relink is logged, so you can undo it from the History window at any time.
How does it actually match clips?
It looks at the metadata embedded inside each file — things like timecode, duration, camera serial number, creation date, frame rate, resolution, and codec. The more of these that agree between your offline clip and a file on disk, the higher the confidence score. A perfect match on timecode and duration alone is usually enough.
What file formats work?
Anything ExifTool can read: BRAW, R3D, ARRIRAW, ProRes, DNxHR, H.264, HEVC, MP4, MOV, MXF, plus common image and audio formats (WAV, AIFF, JPG, TIFF, DPX, EXR, etc.). Files with accurate embedded timecode relink most reliably.
Can I relink proxies back to camera originals?
Yes, as long as they share timecode and duration. If your proxies don't carry much metadata, open Settings and lower the auto-match threshold.
What if it matches the wrong file?
You can untick it before relinking. If you've already relinked, open History and either revert it, or pick one of the alternative candidates that were captured at scan time.
The script doesn't show up in Resolve's Scripts menu.
Re-run the installer and restart Resolve. If that doesn't work, check that the script was copied to Resolve's Fusion/Scripts/Comp/ folder.
It says "No offline clips found" but I can see red clips in my Media Pool.
Media Relinker looks at video, audio and still clips. It skips Timelines, Compound Clips and Fusion Comps on purpose. If you only have those, there's nothing to relink.
Pull requests are welcome. The plugin is a few thousand lines of Lua split across about a dozen files — have a look around and open an issue if anything is unclear.
Tests live under tests/. Run them with lua tests/run_all.lua.
MIT. See LICENCE. The bundled JSON parser (vendor/json.lua) is by rxi, also MIT.