How to edit from a NAS in DaVinci Resolve while traveling
Your footage stays on the studio NAS and your files are always there. The laptop opens them on demand from Resolve, with no waiting for a download or an upload; the parts you play, scrub or export come over as you touch them.
You can work on a cut in DaVinci Resolve from a hotel, a train or home while the footage sits on the studio NAS. KEIBIDROP shows the NAS folder on your laptop, and Resolve reads it like any folder; the same goes for Final Cut and Premiere. The setup: add it as a media storage location, keep a local disk as the first location, leave Direct I/O off, and import from it. Import reads the clip headers. Building the timeline reads one frame per thumbnail position. Playback and export read what they play or render, plus a window ahead. A jump reads the part you land on. Nothing is copied ahead of time.
Demo
Two minutes, recorded on 6 September 2026: a NAS in Timisoara serves a shoot, a laptop 400 km away imports four clips of 21 to 284 MB into Resolve, plays them, jumps between them, seeks, exports ten seconds, then scrubs by hand. Over the whole session, 438 MB of the 557 MB on the timeline crossed the internet, through the KEIBIDROP bridge on a home connection.
Click to watch the two minute demo on YouTube.
Before you start
- The NAS runs the KEIBIDROP container and serves the footage folder: run KEIBIDROP on a NAS.
- The editing machine runs KEIBIDROP with the NAS saved as a contact and the folder mounted: install, then connect two computers.
- DaVinci Resolve 18 or newer. The free edition is enough; the demo used Resolve 21 free.
Point Resolve at the mount
- Open DaVinci Resolve → Preferences → System → Media Storage.
- Keep a local disk as the first entry. Resolve writes its cache files, gallery stills and proxies to the first location unless a project says otherwise. With the mount first, every cache write would go to the NAS.
- Press Add and pick the mount folder, for example
/Users/you/NAS. It becomes the second entry. "Mapped mount" is for translating a share path between operating systems and is not needed here. - Leave Direct I/O off on the mount entry. It bypasses the operating system's file cache, which serves local RAID and SAN volumes; on a mount it works against the read-ahead.
- Save, then restart Resolve. Media storage locations are read at start-up.
Import and edit
Import from the mount as from any folder: the Media Storage panel, drag and drop, or File → Import Media. Build the timeline, play, scrub, colour, export. Export to a local folder or to the mount; an export to the mount lands on the NAS at the box's download speed.
What loads when
| Step in Resolve | What crosses the internet |
|---|---|
| Import | The clip headers. |
| Building the timeline | One frame per thumbnail position of the filmstrip, for every clip on it. This is the largest step before the first play. |
| Play | The frames being played, plus a window ahead so the playhead does not wait at the next block. |
| Jump or seek | The part you land on. The first frame after a jump into an untouched part arrives after one fetch. |
| Export | The frames the render reads. |
| Second pass over anything | Nothing. The parts already fetched stay on the editing machine. |
Keep the project local
The project library, the cache and the proxies stay on the editing machine (or in Blackmagic Cloud). Only the media lives on the NAS. This is the same split the cloud file-space services use, and the same reason: the project database wants a local disk, the media wants to stay where it is. See hand a database between machines for the library itself.
Limits
- The free edition of Resolve has no external scripting; its Workspace → Scripts menu and Console still run scripts inside Resolve. Nothing in this guide needs scripting.
- Restarting the KEIBIDROP daemon on the editing machine takes the folder away for about twenty seconds. A project that is open at that moment shows "Media Offline" on its clips from the mount; the clips come back with the mount, and a project reopen or a fresh import relinks them. Quit Resolve before restarting the daemon.
- The first play after a jump into an untouched part of a clip waits for its first fetch. The rest of that play is local.
- A session is exactly two peers: one NAS serves one editing machine at a time.
- A full copy of the whole shoot is bound by the NAS's upload speed. Opening and editing is not, because only the touched parts move.