Caution in using beta - worse case scenario?

I'm not a professional video editor, so it doesn't bother me if the app crashes.

But I'd be concerned if the beta were to totally mess up the code of my Project, to the point of the Project being irreparable.

When people warn against using betas, are we talking about just crashing, or that Projects can be totally ruined in their coding?

Projects could be totally ruined and project or even library corruption could occur - BMD is also free to make changes in later betas that might invalidate the work done using earlier betas. I haven't seen this last point myself, but you never know. You shouldn't do professional work with a beta release although others may disagree.

The bad things rarely happen but there’s no guarantee they won’t.
At a minimum one should make a backup of the DB before upgrading so that one knows there’s a valid project to go back to just in case. Exporting a drp for projects you care about is also a good precaution.

Before updating Resolve, whether or not it's a Beta, always backup your Libraries and all important/active projects to two separate locations, at least one of which should be off the system. You can use an external drive, a thumb drive, SD card or online methods like Dropbox, One Drive, etc.

If you ever need to uninstall and go back a version, you won't lose any work earlier than the update.

Unfortunately, I did not see your sage advice before installing the 19 Beta. In the past, I recall having to manually replace the older version of the app with the new version. So, that was my intention, to keep both versions and "try out the beta", only to find that it had replaced 10.6.6.

Now I can't render a large project I have been working on for a year due to error after error. I don't have time to rebuild it. I need help! -MK-

[Peter Chamberlain]

I’m assuming you have not turned or nor tried project or timeline backups?

Please start with details of your system, the nfo and resolve generated diagnostic logs. As per the FAQs, post a link to them here with the .drp for to problem project.

Hi,

Not being an expert code developer myself, I've been wondering:

- what does actually prevent Resolve developers from enabling us to install more than a single version of the system on the same Windows machine?

I understand perfectly Resolve is a large and comprehensive program, but if we - the user base - could install and use Betas (or simply new releases) for testing and learning while keeping an older, proven version for mission-critical work, it could benefit both parties (the user base AND the BMD development team)...

Piotr

I imagine one of the sticking points is that they currently share the same configuration files and library (database) so if a new version updates those files, the older version may not be able to access them any longer. On Windows there may also be DLLs (shared code libraries) that are shared between installations that get overwritten by a new install and become incompatible with the old installation (I have no idea if Resolve suffers from this particular issue, though because I've heard of people doing a side-by-side installation in Windows - it's just not recommended).

Having said this, since it seems you can install a beta version and then roll-back to an earlier version (except for updated projects and/or databases that were migrated), the issue with invalid configuration files does not seem to be a real issue (or is silently handled - I don't know).

I was not able to move back to 18.6, so I uninstalled and reinstalled 19 Beta. After doing so, I was able to render without issue. So, I don't know what caused the issue, but at least it is not preventing me from completing the project. As a side note, I am already enjoying some of the 19 Beta features,