Solution for DaVinci Resolve 17 Linux/Ubuntu Video Codec Problems

DaVinci Resolve is the world’s only solution that combines editing, color correction, visual effects, motion graphics and audio post production all in one software tool.

Despite being easy to install on Ubuntu 20.04 importing and working on majority of the video clips is failing. This is due to the lack of support of codecs in the DaVinci Resolve free version.

Therefor we need to utilize ffmpeg to convert videos before editing. It's a bit annoying but not that big of a deal.

Here is how you do it

ffprobe davinci_codecs_original.mkv

This will give us information about resolution. In this case it's 1920x1080

ffprobe version N-100080-g7a95cf86ff Copyright (c) 2007-2020 the FFmpeg developers
  built with gcc 7 (Ubuntu 7.5.0-6ubuntu2)
  configuration: --extra-cflags=-I/usr/local/include --extra-ldflags=-L/usr/local/lib --pkg-config-flags=--static --enable-nonfree --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libvpx --enable-libopus --enable-opencl --enable-libxcb --enable-opengl --enable-nvenc --enable-vaapi --enable-vdpau --enable-ffplay --enable-ffprobe --enable-libxvid --enable-libx264 --enable-libx265 --enable-openal --enable-openssl --enable-cuda-nvcc --enable-cuvid --extra-cflags=-I/usr/local/cuda/include --extra-ldflags=-L/usr/local/cuda/lib64
  libavutil      56. 61.100 / 56. 61.100
  libavcodec     58.114.100 / 58.114.100
  libavformat    58. 64.100 / 58. 64.100
  libavdevice    58. 11.103 / 58. 11.103
  libavfilter     7. 91.100 /  7. 91.100
  libswscale      5.  8.100 /  5.  8.100
  libswresample   3.  8.100 /  3.  8.100
  libpostproc    55.  8.100 / 55.  8.100
Input #0, matroska,webm, from 'davinci_codecs_original.mkv':
  Metadata:
    ENCODER         : Lavf58.29.100
  Duration: 00:00:10.73, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 658 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (High), yuv420p(tv, bt709, progressive), 1920x1080 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 60 fps, 60 tbr, 1k tbn, 120 tbc (default)
    Metadata:
      DURATION        : 00:00:10.733000000
    Stream #0:1: Audio: aac (LC), 48000 Hz, stereo, fltp (default)
    Metadata:
      title           : simple_aac_recording
      DURATION        : 00:00:10.645000000

Run a second pass moving the index (moov atom) to the beginning of the file.

ffmpeg -i davinci_codecs_original.mkv -vcodec copy -acodec copy -movflags faststart davinci_codecs_mooved.mp4

Convert into MOV format with pcm_s16le audio codecs:

ffmpeg -i davinci_codecs_mooved.mp4 -vcodec dnxhd -acodec pcm_s16le -s 1920x1080 -r 30000/1001 -b:v 36M -pix_fmt yuv422p -f mov eligible_for_davinci_resolve_import.mov

Now eligible_for_davinci_resolve_import.mov is ready to be imported into a DaVinci Media Pool.