DRP archive and XML

Blackmagic Design publishes no description of this format. What follows comes from the UK National Archives’ PRONOM record fmt/2064 and from open-source tools that read and write exported projects, checked against exports from DaVinci Resolve 18.5 to 21. The element names are those of Resolve’s project database (the same Sm2… names appear as tables in a local project library’s SQLite file), and they change between versions.

The ZIP archive

A .drp file is a ZIP archive, so it starts with 50 4B 03 04. Its members are XML files:

Member	Holds
`project.xml`	The project: its name, settings and a reference to the media pool. Root element `SM_Project`.
`Gallery.xml`	Named after the Color page gallery of stills; its contents are not publicly described. It also carries the Resolve version.
`MediaPool/Master/MpFolder.xml`	The media pool’s Master bin, with its sub-bins, clips and timelines. Further folders under `MediaPool/` may hold other bins.
`SeqContainer/id.xml`	One file per timeline, named by its ID: the tracks and the clips on them.

PRONOM identifies a project by the presence of both project.xml and Gallery.xml. A timeline exported on its own (.drt, PRONOM fmt/2063) uses the same layout but has no Gallery.xml. Sources disagree on whether a .drt also has a project.xml: one tool treats its absence as the difference, while a Resolve 21.1 timeline export was found to contain one.

project.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!--DbAppVer="19.1.3.0007" DbPrjVer="14"-->
<SM_Project DbId="…">
 <FieldsBlob/>
 <ProjectName>…</ProjectName>
 <MediaPoolRef>…</MediaPoolRef>
 …
</SM_Project>

The XML declaration is followed by a comment giving the version of Resolve that wrote the file and the version of the project schema. PRONOM’s signature looks for the bytes <SM_Project (3C 53 4D 5F 50 72 6F 6A 65 63 74) within the first 128 bytes of the member.

Item	Meaning
`DbAppVer`	Resolve version and build, such as `18.5.0b.0031` or `21.1.0.0017`; `b` marks a beta.
`DbPrjVer`	Project schema version. Older Resolve versions refuse a newer schema.
`DbId` attribute	The record’s ID in the project database: 32 hexadecimal digits, or a GUID with dashes.
`ProjectName`	The project’s name.
`MediaPoolRef`	The `DbId` of the media pool.
`FieldsBlob`	Binary fields, as hexadecimal text (see below).

DbPrjVer	Seen with
13	Resolve 18.5
14	Resolve 19.1.3
15	Resolve 20.0.1
17	Resolve 21.0 and 21.1

Other values, and the versions in between, are not publicly recorded.

Media pool: MpFolder.xml

The root element is the Master bin, an Sm2MpFolder. Each element that is a database record carries a DbId attribute.

Element	Children seen
`Sm2MpFolder`	`Name`, `UniqueMediaPoolItemId`, `ColorTag` (such as `FOLDER_COLOR_NONE`), `Folded`, `FolderVec` (sub-bins), `MediaVec` (items).
`Sm2MpVideoClip`, `Sm2MpAudioClip`	`Name`, `MediaFilePath`, `UniqueMediaPoolItemId`, `MediaFrameRate`, a binary clip record, `FieldsBlob`.
`Sm2MpTimelineClip`	A timeline in the media pool.
`Sm2Timeline`	`Name` and `Sequence`, which holds an `Sm2Sequence` whose `DbId` the timeline’s tracks refer to.

Resolve links a media pool clip to its file through the path stored in the clip’s binary record, not the plain MediaFilePath text. In that record the path is framed as a 4-byte tag, a 4-byte big-endian length, then two length-delimited fields in protocol buffer style: 0A length folder, 12 length file name.

Timelines: SeqContainer

Element	Children seen
`Sm2TiTrack`	`Type` (0 video, 1 audio), `SubType`, `Flags`, `Sequence` (the `Sm2Sequence` ID), the clips in `Items`, and a user-defined name.
`Sm2TiVideoClip`, `Sm2TiAudioClip`	`Name`, `Start`, `Duration`, `In`, `Out`, `MediaRef`, `MediaFilePath`, `MediaReelNumber`, `MediaStartTime`, `MediaFrameRate`, `PrettyType`, `FieldsBlob`, the grade versions in `pLmVerTable`, and Fusion compositions in `CompositionTable`.

Start and Duration are whole frames on the timeline. With a start timecode of 01:00:00:00 at 24 frames a second, a clip at the start has Start 86400.
In and Out are source frames, written frame|hex, as in 47|0000eaffffffef3f. The part after the bar is a little-endian double in hexadecimal; its meaning is not known.
Frame rates (FrameRate, MediaFrameRate) are a little-endian IEEE 754 double written as 16 hexadecimal digits: 24 is 0000000000003840.
pLmVerTable lists grade versions, each a ListMgt::LmVersion with Name, HasCorrection and the grade itself as hexadecimal Body; pActive names the active one. The grade body is not publicly decoded.
A Fusion title’s composition is in CompositionTable/Sm2TiCompositionTable/CompositionBA.

Binary fields

Much of the project is in binary fields stored as hexadecimal text. What is known:

CompositionBA: a 32-bit big-endian size and a zlib stream. Inside is a map with UTF-16BE keys (count, 0_name, 0_mediaIdList, 0_data); 0_data holds a Fusion Composition { … } header, a NUL, a 32-bit little-endian size and a zlib stream of the tools in Fusion’s .setting text syntax.
FieldsBlob on a timeline clip is in a protocol-buffer-like encoding and repeats the start frame as a varint.
The marker blob of a clip (seen in the SQLite library rather than the export) has a header containing BlobData in UTF-16LE, a byte usually 0x81, then a zstd frame; inside, each marker has its source frame × 2 as a varint and its name in UTF-8.

The colour grade bodies, gallery stills, Fairlight data and most other blobs have no public description.

.DRP File Format – Archive and XML

The ZIP archive

project.xml

Media pool: MpFolder.xml

Timelines: SeqContainer

Binary fields