Setting Up Remote Rendering in Davinci Resolve 17

Hello everyone and welcome. This is Chris from Swatara. Something that can really get in the way of the creative process is render time. For Davinci Resolve in particular, when it's rendering you're not able to continue editing. However, if you're fortunate enough to have a second computer available, there is a way to remotely use that second computer to render your projects instead of tying up your main computer's resources. The steps in the Davinci Resolve 17 manual cover a lot of this, but doesn't cover the nitty gritty of getting your drives prepared to be visible on the network by both computers. This will be a tutorial from an artist's perspective and will be the easiest way to get up and running. I know there are probably better ways and methods available, but I wanted to keep things straightforward. We're going to go step by step through the process and also touch on some problems you may run into along the way. If there's anything I missed or if you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer them in the comments.

First, a few caveats. You will need the paid, studio version of Davinci Resolve installed on both computers for this to work. You'll also need a copy of Davinci Resolve Project Server which can be found through the link in the description. To find it on the page, click DaVinci Resolve and Fusion software under "Select a Product Family," head down to latest downloads, and download the latest version. Make sure all options are checked in the installer.

Another thing to keep in mind is network speed. I'm personally using remote rendering wirelessly, but I'm fortunate to have very strong Wifi with a fiber optic connection. If at all possible, use ethernet to connect both computers to your network.

Additionally, this tutorial will cover setting up a network between two PCs running Windows 10. I'm not personally familiar with how to do so between a Mac and a PC, but if you watch the next section it might help you on your journey.

For simplicity's sake as I'm going to be referring to both computers a lot, I'm going to use the terminology from the Resolve manual. The artist computer is the one you want to be able to edit and the remote computer is the one that will do the rendering.

Also, pardon the resolution on my remote computer. I use remote desktop to access it as it's in a different part of my home. 

One final thing are plugins. Both machines will need 3rd party plugins installed, otherwise your render computer won't be able to make complete sense of your project. I personally use Mocha Pro by BorisFX and will need to install that on my render computer as well. My workaround for this is fairly simple. I just duplicate my video tracks with the Mocha effects and then use render in place on the originals. This way the effects are baked in. Paying BorisFX a few more dollars a month is faster, but ehhh

If you're not familiar with networking computers and drives together, here's the overview of our goal. We need to set up a drive that can be accessible between both computers on your network. That way both computers can not only access your Resolve project files but also all the footage and assets you're using inside your project. One of the better options for this is to use something called a NAS, or network attached storage, which is a device specifically made for this purpose. Technically any drive connected to your computer should work, but if you must use something else, aim to use a drive that is permanently attached to your computer. For me, I have several SSDs in my machine and I'm currently using one of those as my networked hard drive. I know, I know. The Resolve manual specifically mentions using an SAN, or Storage Area Network for this purpose. This isn't something I'm personally familiar with, but I've linked an article in the description if you want to read more about this. I'm just a lowly freelancer.

At this point you'll want to make sure that both DaVinci Resolve Studio and DaVinci Resolve Project server are installed on both your artist and remote machines. Additionally, you'll want to make sure both copies of DaVinci Resolve are activated with a license code. The first step is to ensure that all the programs involved in this process have the ability to pass through the Windows Firewall. To do this, go down to the Windows search bar and type in Windows Defender Firewall or just firewall and open that up. Click on Change Settings. In the list below, you'll see check boxed for Private and Public connections. Some may prefer to be a bit more surgical, but I was able to get this working by ensuring all DaVinci Resolve services are checked in both the Private and Public columns. Then scroll down a bit further and ensure any and all services mentioning PostgreSQL Server are checked for both private and public. Once you've done that, click OK and ensure you've done this step on both your artist and remote PCs. This will ensure the services used by Resolve can properly communicate between computers. If you have issues even after making this change, you can open your firewall further, but do so with caution as it can allow unsavory people to connect to you as well.

The next step will be to give network access to the folder you wish to use between the artist and remote PC. This step takes place on your artist PC. Everyone has a different way of working, so this will look different depending on your workflow. When I receive footage from a client, I will copy that footage from their drive into my working hard drive. Within that drive are subfolders for each project which contain the footage and all other assets used in the project. The end goal here is to ensure that all drives that contain files referenced by your Resolve projects are available on the network. You may need to repeat this process depending on how many drives you work with.  So, with the top most folder of your working drive selected, you'll want to right click and choose Properties, go to the Sharing tab, and click Share. In the top box, type in "Everyone" and choose add. You'll want to make sure the permission level is set to Read and Write and then click share. Make note of the Network Path as you'll need to enter it in the next step. 

Now that we have our drive shared, we're going to need to map it. Resolve plays nicest when you've assigned a letter to your drive, such as how your default main drive is labelled "C" by Windows. In this step we're going to be mapping your newly shared folder so it can appear as a network drive on your remote computer. So for this step, hop on to your remote computer. Navigate to "This PC." At the top of that windows you should see a button labelled "Map network drive." Make sure nothing else is selected and click on it. The first drop-down menu will allow you to choose what letter you want assigned to your new drive. Once you've chosen one, enter that network path I mentioned before and click finish. If it gives you an error, double-check your spelling and also the formatting of the network path. You want to make sure it's identical to the one shown on your artist computer, even down to the direction of your slashes. 

You'll want to then test this connection by attempting to access the folders and writing to them to double check that the connection is active between the two computers. If you run into any issues with this part, you may want to dive deep into tutorials that are specifically geared towards networking drives between PCs.

The next step is to set up Resolve and the Davinci Resolve project server to use a shared database. Practically, this means you'll be able to access all projects in the database on both machines. Since we'll be creating a new database, you will need to migrate any projects you want render remotely to this new database. The fastest way to do this is to open the project you want to export and go to file, export project. Save them in a memorable location and we'll come back to them shortly. There are several ways to set this sharing up, including the ability to run a headless server for your databases, but we'll be sticking just to connecting two Windows PCs with a graphical interface directly. More information on rendering on a headless machine can be found in the Davinci Resolve manual. 

To begin, make sure you're on your artist computer and open up the Davinci Resolve Project Server application. Click the New Database button at the top and name it whatever you'd like. Then with that new database you made selected, choose Enable sharing in the menu. This will ask you to authorize the changes. While you're still on the artist computer, open up Davinci Resolve. In the project area, click the icon to the left of Projects to expand your databases. At the bottom, click Connect Database. In the window that pops up choose PostgresSQL and enter the name of the database you just made and click connect. You'll now see a mostly empty database with an Untitled Project available which you can just leave where it is. At this point you can import those project files you previously exported by right clicking and choosing import project. 

Next is a step that may be unnecessary, but it's a problem that initially prevented me from completing my renders. They would fail every single time. For this step, we're going to make a modification to one of the files within that PostgresSQL installation on the artist computer. To begin, we'll go to our search bar and type in Notepad. Right-click on notepad in the results and choose Run as Administrator. We're then going to navigate to your Program files which is typically located on the C drive. Inside Program files we'll go to PostgresSQL, 9.5, or whatever version you're using, then data. Look for the file pg_hba. Before modifying it, make sure to copy it and save a backup of it somewhere. If you can't see it among the other files in the folder, you might need to switch the type of file notepad is looking for to all files. Inside there, you'll want to paste the entry I've included in the description right after all the other text. Then replace the "YourIPaddress" part with the IP address you found in the DaVinci Resolve Project server app that I suggested you write down. Click save and for good measure, restart your computer. As I mentioned, you might not need to make changes to this file, but if you have repeated errors when you try to hit Render on your artist computer, you may need to do this. 

Before you head over to your remote computer for the next step, we'll take a step back to the Davinci Resolve Project server. At the top you'll want to hover over file, then network interface, and write down the IP address you see there. Next, head over to your remote computer. We're going to open up DaVinci Resolve and make sure to open the projects window. Again, expand the sidebar so you can see your databases. At the bottom, choose Connect Database. Type in the name of the database you just made on your artist computer and enter that IP address I had you write down. Now, that database is linked between your two computers and if you've added projects to that new database, you should see them appear. You can open them up to test the connection further. If you get an error while trying to connect the database, make sure you double check that IP address from your artist computer and the spelling on the name of your database. 

This next step will apply to both the artist and remote computers. There are a couple of settings within Resolve you'll want to be aware of. Go into any project you'd like and go to Preferences, and then media storage. You'll want to ensure that your networked drives are added to the list. On my artist computer, I have my videos folder in addition to my networked drive. On my remote PC, I have the custom mapped drive letters added to my media storage. It'll be apparent if this isn't set up correctly as you'll end up with Media Offline messages in your timeline and remote renders. One thing I had to do to get it working was to relink the footage specifically to the networked drives on my artist computer to make it work. 

Now that we've done that, pat yourself on the back. The hardest part is over! For this next section, we'll begin on our remote computer. We're going to set our remote computer up to be able to receive renders from our artist computer. With the project page open we're going to right click anywhere there isn't a project and choose Remote Render. The remote computer should be good to go. You'll need to do this each time you want to start a remote render. 

Back on the artist computer, you'll want to open a project you'd like to render. This could be anything. For testing purposes, I'd suggest perhaps a shorter project just for the sake of time and being able to test out the connection. You'll first go to the Deliver tab as normal and choose the render settings you prefer. One thing to make sure of is to choose Native as your encoder if that option is available. My artist computer uses an NVIDIA graphics card and my remote computer uses AMD. If I chose NVIDIA from the dropdown it will error out immediately. For best performance, you'll also want to choose a location for your render that is not networked and attached to the remote computer. It's possible to save the renders directly to your artist computer, but this will result in slower render times. Finally, once you add to render queue,  there's an icon on your render in the queue that looks like a wifi icon. Click on that and choose the name of your remote computer. Then hit render! The project should load on your remote computer and begin rendering. Once it's finished, you can drop the file on one of your networked drives and have access to it on your artist computer. And hopefully that should be it! I absolutely love having this ability, especially when juggling multiple clients. 

As I mentioned before please leave any questions you might have in the comments and I'll answer as many as I can! Take care and stay healthy!