ronin-on-linux

Installing DaVinci Resolve on Fedora

4 min read

How I Use DaVinci Resolve

See My Full DaVinci Resolve 3D, VFX & Color Grading Pipeline

Install DaVinci Resolve (Studio and Free)

  1. Download the free or studio version of DaVinci Resolve from https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve.
  2. Unzip the file into downloads folder. (Right click and extract). Bring the .run into the downloads folder
  3. Make sure the run file is executable. (Right click and check executable in Permission tab).
  4. Install Fuse2 if you didn’t during your Fedora setup sudo dnf install fuse-libs
  5. Run installer. It will prompt any missing packages you will need to install prior to running the installer.
    1. The most common packages it asks for are sudo dnf install apr apr-util mesa-libGLU
  6. sudo dnf install libxcrypt-compat to fix the missing libcrypt.so.1 error.
  7. Double click the .run file and install DaVinci.
  8. You will need to move/rename a series of outdated glib files DaVinci is made for RHEL binary distros still on version 8-9 which rely on older glibs.
    1. libglib-2.0.so
    2. libglib-2.0.so.0
    3. libglib-2.0.so.0.6800.4
    4. libgobject-2.0.so
    5. libgobject-2.0.so.0
    6. libgobject-2.0.so.0.6800.4
    7. libgio-2.0.so
    8. libgio-2.0.so.0
    9. libgio-2.0.so.0.6800.4
    10. libgmodule-2.0.so
    11. libgmodule-2.0.so.0
    12. libgmodule-2.0.so.0.6800.4

Troubleshooting

In most cases, running DaVinci will show a GPU full error in the edit page because it’s attempting to load on the motherboard Integrated graphics (iGPU) instead of your Discrete GPU (dGPU). Take note it is also best to run on an x11 system instead of Wayland for best performance.

  1. Right Click on the DaVinci App Launcher and select Properties. Check use dedicated GPU if available. This will generate a new desktop file in the home folder.
  2. Then open the DaVinci Resolve desktop file in ~/.local/share/applications/davinci.desktop There should be a line to insert environment variables.
    1. Replace the Exec= line with Exec=env __NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia /opt/resolve/bin/resolve %u

Media Imports with No Audio or Video

Missing Codecs

DaVinci Resolve Studio on Linux does not support AAC audio codec. It does support H.264/H.265 and all other codecs.

DaVinci Resolve (Free) on Linux supports limited H.264 and does not support H.265 codecs or AAC audio. It’s recommended that you use DaVinci Resolve Studio on Linux.

Why? DaVinci Resolve piggybacks off of a Windows or MacOS internal AAC license. Linux operating systems ARE compatible with AAC codec but do not license AAC at a system level, so DaVinci can’t piggyback off of that. They don’t fix this because the main VFX industry clients who use the Linux version for do not need AAC codecs and generally transcode their footage into editing formats anyways, so they don’t bother to purchase the license.

Record in Universal Formats or Transcode Footage

Many cameras can record in H264/H265 with PCM audio, fully compatible for Studio version. If you are recording screen on OBS Studio, you will need to set the audio codec to Opus or PCM.

Media from stock websites or cameras with unsupported codecs can be transcoded with ffmpeg, Handbrake or Shutter Encoder to AV1 or an editing format like ProRes or DNxHD on both free and studio versions (a common practice in the film industry).

Davinci won’t Start or Crashes on Wayland

Davinci is looking for certain elements from X11 that need to be pointed to XWayland in the Environment Variables.

Add QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb at the beginning of your Exec=env QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb __NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia /opt/resolve/bin/resolve %u in the desktop launcher file.

Importing config.ocio Fails (for Blender Color Space Transforms)

If you attempt to import a blender config.ocio file in the Fusion or Color Page, it will appear empty.

DaVinci Resolve on Linux currently uses /opt/resolve/libs/libOpenColorIO.so.2.4 meaning that it only supports importing OCIO files that are v2.4 and lower. For example, the current Blender config.ocio is ocio_profile_version: 2.5.1 so that can be an issue.

Use Compatible OCIO Version

Easy solution is to just find an earlier version of your file. In my case for Blender, I use the blender 5.0 color management folder and config.ocio since It is only version 2.4 https://github.com/blender/blender/blob/blender-v5.0-release/release/datafiles/colormanagement/config.ocio

If a config.ocio fails to import, you can also check its file health in the terminal to ensure it’s not corrupted or broken.

  1. ociocheck --iconfig /your/file/path/to/config.ocio
  2. If you need blenders current ocio, make a copy of its color management folder to your home folder ~/colormanagement/ and edit the config.ocio file and just change the version number to 2.4. (ANything that uses code from 2.5+ will break, but the ACES, Kronos and AgX color spaces still work.)

AlmaLinux Versions

AlmaLinux, Rocky and Red Hat 10 come with newer zlib libraries meaning you will experience the same installation issues as Fedora and other modern Linux distros. Prefer AlmaLinux 9.

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