Insider Tips: What are Resolve’s Power Bins? And Where Did They Go?

Every week, Frame.io Insider asks one of our expert contributors to share a tip, tool, or technique that they use all the time and couldn’t live without. This week, Laurence Grayson looks at DaVinci Resolve’s Power Bins and shows you where they went in version 18.

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Given that Power Bins have been available in DaVinci Resolve for quite a while, some of the more experienced colorists among you might be sighing inwardly about this tip. But I think the tool is still worth flagging because it  isn’t visible in Resolve’s default UI—and it’s  been made even harder to find in recent updates. So you’d be forgiven for missing it.

What are Resolve’s Power Bins and where do I find them?

In short, a Power Bin is simply a location to keep assets that you want to make available across multiple Resolve projects. Calling them Power Bins is perhaps a little excessive, but they are extremely handy.

In earlier versions of Resolve, you’d enable them by clicking on View->Show Power Bins, but in versions 18 and up this menu setting has been removed. These days, you’ll find this setting in the ellipsis menu at the top of the Media Pool panel, instead.

You can add any media assets to these shared bins in the usual way—drag-and-drop, Import Media—and you can create as many sub-bins as you need to keep things organized in the way that works for you. Just bear in mind that dragging and dropping multiple assets from the timeline is possible, but doesn’t carry any adjustments made in your edit. So if you want to preserve these adjustments—like grades, audio, in/outs—you’ll still need to render the version you want before adding it to the bin.

Once added, any media files allocated to your Power Bins will be available in any project you’re working on, allowing you to create collections of reusable, common media files for easy access. Super easy, and really useful to have on hand.