Why I built Resolve Vault.

Every DaVinci Resolve editor has felt it at some point — a corrupted project, or the sinking realization that you never backed it up before something went wrong. For me, it wasn't a hypothetical. It cost me real work.

I had auto-backups enabled in Resolve — like most people, I assumed that meant I was covered. What I didn't realize is that Resolve's backup system isn't a safety net the way you'd expect from other software: backups live inside Resolve's own project database, they get cleaned up automatically on a retention schedule, and — critically — deleting a project deletes every backup that ever belonged to it, too. There's no separate, independent copy sitting outside that database unless you put one there yourself.

I found this out the hard way, after the fact, on a project that mattered. Nothing to recover from — just gone. I wrote up exactly how Resolve's backup system actually works, in detail, after digging through it properly: Resolve Backups: A Detailed Explanation. If you want the full technical breakdown of retention settings, database backups, and exactly when Resolve does and doesn't protect you, that article is the deep dive.

Resolve Vault is the practical fix I built for myself afterward. It runs quietly in the background while you work, exports a real .drp file of your active project on whatever interval you choose, and keeps that copy completely independent of Resolve's own database — on your disk, and optionally synced to Google Drive or Dropbox the moment it's created. If Resolve's own backups ever fail you the way they failed me, there's still a real, separate copy sitting where Resolve can't touch it.

I'm not a software company — I'm a colorist who got tired of relying on memory to protect my own work, and built the tool I wished already existed. I hope it saves you the same lesson it cost me.

— Hugo Soares

Never lose a DaVinci Resolve project again.

One-time license. Runs quietly in your menu bar.