Should I export XML, AAF or EDL to DaVinci Resolve?

None of the three is good, they just fail differently. EDL carries a cut list and nothing else, no multiple tracks and no effects. AAF is richer but Avid-oriented and poorly suited to this route. XML is the least bad of the three and still sits far below your actual edit. A native .drp project file sidesteps the problem entirely, because there is no impoverishing step left.

Can I do this without Premiere Pro installed?

Not through XML, since you need to open the project in Premiere to export it. That is exactly the case where reading the .prproj file directly is the only option: the project file stands on its own, with no active subscription.

Will my effects and grade come across?

No, and be wary of anyone promising otherwise. Premiere effects and Resolve effects are not the same objects. What travels reasonably well is geometric transforms, opacity, blend modes, speed changes and audio levels. Grading, Fusion compositions and third party effects do not travel.

Are mixed frame rates and resolutions a problem?

This is one of the most fragile areas of XML, because each source's frame rate has to be described correctly for the destination to know how to read it. We read every media item's resolution and frame rate from the project and write them individually, so a timeline mixing 23.976 and 50p keeps each clip's real format.

[ Troubleshooting ]

Premiere XML import into DaVinci Resolve is not working

Media not found, missing clips, wrong framing, split stereo, a one hour offset. The five classic failures, what actually causes each one, and how to get out.

The short answer

Almost every failed XML import between Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve comes down to the same thing: XML is an impoverished description of your edit. It carries a list of clips, in and out points, and a handful of parameters. Anything Premiere handles through a mechanism with no direct equivalent in Resolve is dropped silently, with no warning. Knowing what gets dropped, and why, is enough to fix most cases in minutes.

Resolve cannot find the media

Clips not yet found, an empty timeline full of red boxes, having to relink by hand

Why it happens

XML contains no media. It contains file paths, written exactly as they were on the editing machine. The moment a path changes, and it almost always does, Resolve has nothing left to open.

The usual causes are a different drive letter, a network volume mounted elsewhere, a moved folder, or a project cut on a mac and opened on windows. Premiere may also have referenced proxies rather than the original rushes, in which case the paths point at a cache that was never copied.

How to get out of it

Import your footage into the Media Pool BEFORE importing the timeline. This is the single most useful thing on this page: Resolve matches clips against what is already in the pool, by file name. The other way round, it tries to open a path that does not exist and gives up.
If you already imported, select the red clips in the Media Pool, right click, Relink Selected Clips, then point at the parent folder. Resolve searches subfolders.
If you were working with proxies, switch back to the original rushes in Premiere before exporting, otherwise you are exporting cache paths.

No converter can invent files that are not there. What ours changes is that a .drp arrives with the bin structure and the real metadata for each media item, so name-based matching works instead of failing on a dead path.

Clips arrive too big, too small, or wrongly framed

Set to frame size does not carry over, 4K zoomed inside an HD timeline, black bars that were not there

Why it happens

Premiere has two distinct ways of fitting a clip to the sequence, and only one survives the export. Scale to Frame Size actually changes the clip's scale parameter, a value XML carries. Set to Frame Size is automatic Premiere behaviour, an internal flag, and that flag has no equivalent in the interchange format.

The result is that a clip Premiere was fitting for you arrives in Resolve at 100 percent scale. A 4K source in an HD timeline therefore looks heavily zoomed in, and an HD source in a 4K timeline looks small and centred.

How to get out of it

In Resolve, open Project Settings then Image Scaling, and set Mismatched Resolution to Scale entire image to fit. That handles every clip at once rather than one at a time.
For a single clip, right click in the Media Pool then Clip Attributes, Video tab, and adjust the input scaling.
Before exporting from Premiere you can also bake the automatic fit into real values by applying Scale to Frame Size, which does carry over.

This one depends heavily on which resolutions are in play. Our converter reads the real resolution and frame rate of every source and writes them individually into the Resolve bin, which is the precondition for Resolve's own scaling rules to behave.

Some clips do not arrive at all

Half the timeline is empty, gaps where clips should be, whole layers missing

Why it happens

Premiere's XML exporter silently omits whatever it cannot express. It shows no warning, it simply writes a file shorter than your edit.

The usual casualties are adjustment layers, nested sequences, unflattened multicam clips, titles, and synthetic items such as colour mattes or transparent video, which have no source file to reference.

How to get out of it

Flatten multicam clips before exporting, committing to the final angle.
Bring the contents of nested sequences up into the main timeline, or export each nested sequence separately.
Write down separately what your adjustment layers were carrying, because you will have to rebuild them, and replace synthetic items with real files if their position matters.

This is the failure where going through the project file rather than XML changes the most. We read the .prproj directly, without depending on Premiere's exporter, so nested sequences, compound clips and adjustment layers are seen and carried rather than omitted.

Audio arrives split, out of sync, or silent

A stereo pair turned into two mono tracks, compound clips with no sound, audio that drifts

Why it happens

The two applications do not describe audio the same way. Premiere thinks in channel configuration at the clip level, then channel assignment at the track level. Resolve thinks in tracks that carry a channel count.

When XML flattens that model, a stereo source that lived on a single track often comes out as two mono channels, and Resolve creates two tracks. For compound clips the audio is carried inside the composed clip, and flattening can lose the reference.

How to get out of it

In the Resolve Media Pool, right click the clip then Clip Attributes, Audio tab, and redeclare the format as Stereo with the two source channels you want.
For a constant offset across the whole timeline, check the start timecode first, described just below: drifting audio is often a timecode problem in disguise.
For compound clips, break them apart in Premiere before exporting if their audio matters.

We carry multichannel audio routing by reading the original channel groups from the project, along with levels and their keyframes.

The timeline starts in the wrong place

An offset of exactly one hour, a large gap before the first clip, timecode that does not match

Why it happens

A Premiere sequence does not necessarily start at zero. Broadcast convention often puts the start at 01:00:00:00, and XML carries that start timecode. If the destination reads it as an absolute position while you expected zero, everything sits one hour out.

The second source of drift is drop frame notation. At 29.97 and 59.94, a timecode written with semicolons does not count frames the same way as one written with colons. Mixing the two makes the timeline drift across its duration rather than shifting as a block.

How to get out of it

Read the sequence start timecode in Premiere, then match the Resolve timeline to it before importing, under Timeline Settings.
An offset of exactly one hour is almost always this, not an editing mistake.
If the drift grows with duration, it is drop frame: check that both projects use the same convention.

A large gap at the head of a timeline is not always a bug. If the editor genuinely started cutting at eight minutes, that is faithful. Compare against the original sequence in Premiere before concluding anything.

Frequently asked

Should I export XML, AAF or EDL to DaVinci Resolve?: None of the three is good, they just fail differently. EDL carries a cut list and nothing else, no multiple tracks and no effects. AAF is richer but Avid-oriented and poorly suited to this route. XML is the least bad of the three and still sits far below your actual edit. A native .drp project file sidesteps the problem entirely, because there is no impoverishing step left.
Can I do this without Premiere Pro installed?: Not through XML, since you need to open the project in Premiere to export it. That is exactly the case where reading the .prproj file directly is the only option: the project file stands on its own, with no active subscription.
Will my effects and grade come across?: No, and be wary of anyone promising otherwise. Premiere effects and Resolve effects are not the same objects. What travels reasonably well is geometric transforms, opacity, blend modes, speed changes and audio levels. Grading, Fusion compositions and third party effects do not travel.
Are mixed frame rates and resolutions a problem?: This is one of the most fragile areas of XML, because each source's frame rate has to be described correctly for the destination to know how to read it. We read every media item's resolution and frame rate from the project and write them individually, so a timeline mixing 23.976 and 50p keeps each clip's real format.

Skip the XML step entirely

Analysing your project is free and unlimited: you see your real sequences, tracks and clips before paying anything.