Back up DaVinci Resolve on Mac.

Why DaVinci Resolve is hard to back up

Resolve keeps its projects in a disk-backed database, not in individual files on the timeline. Every project, timeline, and gallery still lives inside a database directory at ~/Library/Application Support/Blackmagic Design/DaVinci Resolve/Resolve Disk Database. The Media Pool holds references to external footage, not the footage itself. The CacheClip and ProxyMedia directories rebuild on demand. And when you hit File → Export → Project Archive, Resolve writes a .dra bundle — a totally different shape from the live database. A naive backup that copies the live database while Resolve is open will capture an inconsistent set of SQLite files; a backup that ignores the database entirely captures your footage but not your edits.

How macup handles it

macup separates the database from the media. The Disk Database folder is snapshotted during a quiet window when Resolve has released its locks — either overnight or when macup detects the application has quit. Your source media, LUTs, and gallery stills are backed up continuously because they never conflict with the database.

Cached renders, optimized media, proxy media, and gallery still cache are excluded by default. Resolve rebuilds them from the source, and they change every time you touch a node tree. You do not want to pay to upload them.

Fusion comps and .drp / .drt / .drb exports, when you save them to disk as part of your own archive workflow, are included. Chunked deduplication means that a lightly edited timeline saved twice a day produces kilobytes of new data, not another copy of the project database.

Recommended policy

A backup set configured like this covers the important things and skips the regeneratable ones:

name: DaVinci Resolve
include:
- ~/Movies/Resolve Media
- ~/Movies/Resolve Archives
- ~/Movies/Resolve Exports
- ~/Library/Application Support/Blackmagic Design/DaVinci Resolve/Resolve Disk Database
- ~/Library/Application Support/Blackmagic Design/DaVinci Resolve/LUT
- ~/Library/Application Support/Blackmagic Design/DaVinci Resolve/Fusion/Templates
exclude:
- "**/CacheClip/**"
- "**/ProxyMedia/**"
- "**/OptimizedMedia/**"
- "**/Gallery/StillsCache/**"
- "**/Fusion/Cache/**"
schedule:
mode: hybrid
mediaPool: continuous
projectDatabase: quiesced-nightly
quietHours: 02:00-06:00
destination: macup-cloud
retention:
daily: 30
weekly: 26
monthly: 24

Tune further in the macup dashboard per destination.

What you get back

Open the dashboard, roll the Resolve database back to Monday’s snapshot, and open the project to find the grading tree exactly as it was before an intern flattened a node. Source media and LUTs stay put on the current snapshot, so you only revert the database — not the footage.