ronin-on-linux

Installing DaVinci Resolve on CachyOS (and Arch Linux)

6 min read

How to Use DaVinci Resolve

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

Install DaVinci Resolve (Free)

CachyOS has packaged the free version on pacman. (See missing codecs in troubleshooting section)

sudo pacman -Sy davinci-resolve (this only works on CachyOS)

DaVinci Resolve on AMD GPUs

If you have an AMD GPU, This FlipTheBitsTech video shows how to set up DaVinci free on AMD GPUs. https://youtu.be/u_b9PSNlkPA?si=oLO28RjYbS28vsu3

Install DaVinci Resolve Studio

DaVinci Resolve Studio takes more steps to install because it’s made for AlmaLinux/RHEL, not Arch/CachyOS.

Install Dependencies and Download DaVinci Studio

  1. sudo pacman -Syu git base-devel
  2. Download DaVinci_Resolve_Studio_[version_#]_Linux.zip from https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/support/family/davinci-resolve-and-fusion or the DaVinci Homepage.

Setup & Build DaVinci Resolve Studio with AUR Script

  1. git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/davinci-resolve-studio.git
  2. cp /Downloads/DaVinci_Resolve_Studio_[version_#]_Linux.zip /davinci-resolve-studio/
  3. cd davinci-resolve-studio
  4. makepkg -sric
  5. Studio is now installed but must be opened under sudo the first time to apply your License Activation Key.
  6. Run sudo /opt/resolve/bin/resolve and enter your license, close resolve.
    1. You may need to add the environment variables from the troubleshooting section below to your bash command if it doesn’t launch. (Don’t include env)
  7. Run the same command again in some cases, then close resolve again
  8. Finally open up Resolve from the application launcher and it should open and be licensed.

Troubleshooting and Best Practices

Makepkg Fails Sha265sum Check

This most likely happens when the maintainer of the AUR script has not updated the checksums to match those of the most current download (or) you are trying to install a newer/beta or older version than is expected in the PKGBLD script.

You can open the PKGBLD file in the davinci-resolve-studio folder that was created in the home directory to see what version of DaVinci it is looking for.

Replace the sha256sum keys with SKIP and change the version number to match your downloads version number.

Checksum Failure PSA

If your checksum verification fails, your version numbers match and you decide to skip the checksum, you acknowledge that you are proceeding despite knowing the risk that your download may have been compromised or corrupted. Redownloading or manually verifying your sha256sums is recommended before proceeding.

GPU Full Error

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. Add __NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia to the beginning of your bash command. Should now look like sudo __NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia /opt/resolve/bin/resolve.
  2. Right Click on the DaVinci App Launcher and select Properties. There should be a line to insert environment variables.
    1. Paste env __NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia
  3. (Alternatively) Open the desktop file of Davinci with nvim or nano sudo nano /usr/share/applications/DaVinciResolve.desktop
    1. On the Exec= line, add env __NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia before the appname %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 licensing.

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 __NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia

In many cases when using this in Wayland, you will have issues running DaVinci under sudo to activate the license because of the way Xwayland works, but I have found a janky work around. 1. sudo chmod 777 /var/BlackmagicDesign 2. sudo chmod -R 777 /opt/resolve 3. QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb __NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia /opt/resolve/bin/resolve 4. Then after you have entered the license key and its verified, you will need to reduce the folder privileges again: 5. sudo chmod -R 755 /opt/resolve 6. sudo chmod -R 755 /var/BlackmagicDesign 7. sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/BlackmagicDesign 8. It should then work fine.

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

If you attempt to import a config.ocio file in the Fusion or Color Page, occasionally it will fail and 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 4.5 LTS color management folder and config.ocio since It is only version 2. https://github.com/blender/blender/blob/blender-v4.5-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

Installing on Arch Linux

If you are installing on Vanilla Arch, at least 4 dependencies are old enough they are no longer included in the pacman repos.

When you run makepkg -sric it will give you a long list of missing dependencies. Try to bulk install all of them, and pacman will tell you which ones are no longer in pacman.

Remove those packages no longer on pacman and run that command with the rest to install most of the missing dependencies.

The others you noted down must be installed via the pacman archive or through paru or yay from the AUR. (Note, it takes forever to build them from AUR, so probably better to use the archive)

These were the four I had to install from the archive:

  1. # pacman -U https://archive.archlinux.org/packages/q/qt5-webchannel/qt5-webchannel-5.15.9+kde+r3-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
  2. # pacman -U https://archive.archlinux.org/packages/q/qt5-webengine/qt5-webengine-5.15.9-3-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
  3. # pacman -U https://archive.archlinux.org/packages/g/gtk2/gtk2-2.24.33-5-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
  4. # pacman -U https://archive.archlinux.org/packages/l/libpng12/libpng12-1.2.59-2-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

Once they are all installed, run makepkg -sric again and it should still work.

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