Davinci Resolve on NixOS

Here’s how I got DaVinci Resolve 19 running smoothly on my NixOS setup. This guide covers the basic installation, creating a launch script for NVIDIA GPUs, and handling common video formats that the free version doesn’t support on Linux.

⚙️ Installation

Firsty added the davinci-resolve package to my machine within configuration.nix

users.users.ca4mi = {
  # ... other user settings
  packages = with pkgs; [
    davinci-resolve
    # ... other packages
  ];
};

🚀 Forcing Resolve to Use the NVIDIA GPU (PRIME Offload)

Nixos machine is already configured to use NVIDIA PRIME with render offload mode enabled. This allows the integrated GPU to handle the laptop while keeping the NVIDIA card ready for demanding applications.

Then created a custom launch script. This script sets the necessary environment variables to force the application to run on the dedicated GPU.

resolve-launcher.sh:

#!/bin/sh
export __NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1
export __NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD_PROVIDER=NVIDIA-G0
export __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia
export __VK_LAYER_NV_optimus=NVIDIA_only

exec davinci-resolve "$@"

Making the script executable with chmod +x resolve-launcher.sh.

🎬 Handling Incompatible Media

The free version of DaVinci Resolve on Linux has licensing restrictions and doesn’t support common formats like H.264/H.265 (.MP4) or AAC audio. To import footages, first need to convert it into an editing-friendly format that Resolve can handle, like DNxHR in a .mov container.

I use FFmpeg for this conversion. First, ensure it’s installed packages in configuration.nix:

# somehow installed it systemPackages but u can install it user or whatever 
environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
  # ... other packages
  ffmpeg
];

Then

ffmpeg -i your_video.MP4 -c:v dnxhd -profile:v dnxhr_hq -c:a pcm_s16le -pix_fmt yuv422p converted_video.mov

Replace your_video.MP4 and converted_video.mov with your input and desired output filenames. Now you can import the .mov files.