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Editing in DaVinci Resolve from the cloud

Import footage from your Empti drive into Resolve like any disk, with nothing to download first. Proxies keep 4K smooth on an ordinary connection.

Last updated 10 November 2026 · Checked with DaVinci Resolve 21

The short answer: your Empti drive is a disk in Finder, so DaVinci Resolve opens footage from it like any other drive. Import clips from /Volumes/Empti and edit. Nothing downloads first: Empti fetches only the parts of each clip Resolve reads. For smooth 4K, turn on Empti's proxies and Resolve picks them up by itself. This guide was checked with DaVinci Resolve 21 on macOS 26.

Import footage from the drive

  1. Copy your footage into the Empti drive in Finder. It uploads in the background, and you can start editing straight away.
  2. In Resolve, open the Media page and browse to the drive (under Locations, or /Volumes/Empti). Or choose File → Import → Media… (⌘I) and pick the clips there.
  3. Drag the clips into the Media Pool and onto a timeline as usual.

When you play or scrub, Empti downloads just the frames Resolve asks for, decrypts them on your Mac and hands them over. Parts you've played are kept in Empti's cache (Settings → Cache → Space for recent files), so going back over a section is instant.

Smooth 4K: let Empti make proxies

Streaming an original plays smoothly only while your connection keeps up with its bitrate. An iPhone 4K60 clip runs at about 48 Mbps (6 MB/s). A 1080p proxy at 8 Mbps needs about 1 MB/s, so it scrubs smoothly on a much slower line.

Turn proxies on

  • When Empti offers: the first time Resolve has clips open from a drive with proxies off, a card appears under the menu bar. Click Make proxies. It asks once per drive.
  • Or yourself: in Empti's Settings → Drives, open the drive's ⋯ menu and choose Make proxies for editing. It's off by default, and set per drive.

What Empti makes

  • A 1080p proxy at 8 Mbps for each video that needs one: .mov, .mp4 or .m4v files of 20 MB or more, larger than 1080p, at 16 Mbps or more.
  • Each proxy goes in a Proxy folder next to its original, with the same name: Clip.MOV gets Proxy/Clip.mov. That's the layout Resolve looks for. Finder hides the folder.
  • Frame timing, timecode, rotation and audio are copied from the original, so Resolve accepts the proxy as a match. HDR clips get 10-bit HEVC proxies; the rest get H.264.
  • Clips you have open in Resolve go first. In testing, a 4K clip had its proxy about 6 seconds after it was imported. The rest are made one at a time while the drive is otherwise idle.

Use them in Resolve

Resolve links each proxy by itself, without a re-import. You can see it in the Media Pool's Proxy column (1920x1080). To play from proxies, choose Playback → Proxy Handling → Prefer Proxies.

On more than one Mac

Proxies upload and sync like any file, so they're made once. Another Mac on the same drive uses them rather than making its own.

Storage, and removing them

Proxies come to roughly a sixth of a 4K original. They're free up to a quarter of your other files; Settings → Workspace shows how much they use. To remove them, choose Turn off and remove proxies… from the drive's ⋯ menu. That deletes the proxies Empti made and leaves any you made yourself.

Editing without a connection

Clips that aren't on your Mac can't be read offline. Before a trip, right-click the project's footage folder in Finder and choose Keep on this Mac. Empti downloads all of it and keeps it, so Resolve can play it with no connection. Choose Free up space on the folder when you're back.

If Resolve says "Media Offline"

  1. Check the drive is connected: click Empti's menu bar icon. If it shows Turn On the Drive…, Unlock Vault… or Connect Drive, click it. See Turning on the drive in macOS 26.
  2. Once the drive is back in Finder, select the clips in Resolve's Media Pool, right-click and choose Relink Selected Clips…, then pick the folder on the drive.
  3. Still offline? Contact support with your Resolve and Empti versions.

Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro

They open footage from the drive the same way, and Empti offers proxies when they have clips open too. Both can attach proxies from a Proxy folder by hand. We've only tested this guide in DaVinci Resolve so far, so treat these two as untested for now.