Hello, this is my first post on this forum. Glad to be part of the black magic community.
I am posting this because I am having a rather frustrating problem. I bought a Bmpcc4k last year and I have been loving the camera. The image quality is great and the colors and flexibility of raw is just fantastic, color grading is not exactly easy but it's definitely worth learning too.

I've been switching to editing entirely in resolve and this is where my problem lies.

I was using the activation code that came with my camera and using the studio version of Davinci, but when the newest version landed and I updated the software it asked me for my activation code again. This wouldn't be a problem, but recently I'd put the second license of Resolve on my surface pro to see how it would do, and I had left the sd card with the software and the activation key on my desk. The ayi (chinese housecleaner) that cleans my apartment took it for trash and threw it away. Now I'm sitting here with about 400GB of recent footage and I can't even get into the new studio version of Resolve which I have paid for and should have already been licensed and activated on my PC.

My question is two fold.

1. Is there a way for me to recover my activation code? Is there some way I can get support from Black Magic on the issue? I still have the original packaging of the camera, and I might even be able to find the receipt (not totally sure about that but it's possibly around here somewhere).

2. Why, in the name of all that is good and holy, does an update to an already activated version of Davinci Resolve require another input of the activation code? It's the same computer, the same drives, etc. Shouldn't something like licensed activation be carried over upon an UPDATE?

I'm sure I'll have a lot more questions in the future, reading through Davinci's training manuals recently (great resource for finding out what all the settings do and getting some hands on training with the software) and I'll probably need to refer to everyone here's expertise for color grading help as well.

I really hope there is something I can do other than purchase another license.

That code is like cash. You lose it, that sucks.

And updates do not trigger another activation. Something else was going on.

You sure the maid threw it out? Because a third activation will nullify the first.

What you need to do is to get in touch with BMD and send them your invoice showing the serial number of the camera, and add the camera's pics as well displaying the clear serial code, and hope for the best.

In each new version including Betas, I uninstall DR then reinstall it anew to avoid problems and I had never been asked to re-activated it.

However, I've been trying to deactivate it on Windows, as I use it primarily on Ubuntu Linux and it has been given me errors that I have no internet connection :/

With that being said, it could be a server's issue as well, so contact the support and let them help you figure it out.

I just received my Speed Editor from B&H here in NYC (finally), with a dongle for DaVinci Resolve 17.
So I go to start up my current version, #16 (upgraded from an original #15) — to update it to version 17 — and suddenly it won't start, and wants my activation ode.
It's around somewhere but, I am not going to find it right away; so I just wanted to say that I am entirely unimpressed, having tried to do the right thing by Black Magic and purchase the software — but now it has deactivated itself.
So I am not even going to bother unpacking the Speed Editor. Well I still have Premiere Pro on my Mac so I can go back to using that, or deal with the inconvenience of using the new dongle despite having paid for the software previously — and not having done anything on my end to deactivate it..

Not imprtessed

If you find your key code, it'll work or BM can fix it by resetting. So, why blame BM?

Yes I did find my key code, but no answer as to why my copy of DaVinci Resolve suddenly and unceremoniously deactivated itself.

I had been intending to donate the dongle version that came with the Speed Editor to a local arts collective. I've managed a pop-up gallery for them a few times, been the projectionist at their film festival a few times, and I desktop publish the film guide to their festival for them — they support local filmmakers-in-training, and I thought it might be a good freebee for some aspiring filmmaker who is still in high school but interested enough in the art to submit to the festival. Now, though, I don't feel all that good about DaVinci Resolve — thinking that it might just lock out someone who can't afford to replace it after having decided to support the company by purchasing hte software instead of just using the free version — so I think I'll just put that dongle, unopened, away with the key card to my original version.

I don't really need the software all that much myself, having bought it for a basic course in video production I took at the State University of New York's Empire State College; but I will be making a few tutorials in the near future, on things like, how to mask for specific frequencies that correspond to defined image areas using the Fast Fourier Transform (to better discern specific kinds of details on artifacts) so I probably wouldn't even have noticed this issue for a while, had I not received the Speed Editor today and decided to hook it up . . .

Who cares? You don't lose an activation, the third one will simply deactivate the first one, wherever in cyberspace it may be.
If not, contact support.

That's what I like about their licensing, you don't lose a license when a machine goes down or is stolen.

If you are using the same computer you where running dr16 when the ver 17 download dialogue shows up try clicking in the space for the s/n. in my case it always shows up, then copy.

Hope it works for you
Ricardo Marty

That's only if you registered a download previously (which you don't have to) and if the browser is set to remember the input.

I have a unique situation. My activation code is somewhere in my house. but I have no idea where. My copy of windows got corrupted or lost a start up file or something, so windows won't boot. so i run to best buy and purchase a new ssd. I install windows 10 on the new SSD. Download and install DRS18.5. Now i am looking for my activation key. Could it be stored somewhere on the old windows 10 SSD? I can look around at the files on my old SSD. i'm just not sure where to look. I'll keep looking around my attic but it's 120 degrees up there so i'm going to wait until the sun goes down. My whole day has been wasted thanks to Microsoft.
If yall know where the key is stored in the file system, that would be most helpful.

HomeSchoolDJ wrote:Could it be stored somewhere on the old windows 10 SSD?

I don't believe we can access it that way. I think you will need to find that card.

(And then take steps against losing it again. )