It happens right when you're about to finish. You’ve spent hours grading that one shot, getting the skin tones just right, and then—boom. You hit play, and the Fusion composition goes black. Or worse, the render queue fails at 99%. You see that tiny, annoying notification: no frame available for mediaout1. It feels like the software is gaslighting you. You know the media is there. You can see it on your hard drive. But DaVinci Resolve is insisting that, for some reason, the final output node of your Fusion clip has absolutely nothing to give.
Honestly, it’s one of the most frustrating errors in the Blackmagic Design ecosystem because it’s so vague. It doesn't tell you why the frame is missing; it just tells you the result. Usually, this pops up when there is a disconnect between how Fusion processes frames and how the Edit page expects to receive them.
What Actually Causes the No Frame Available for MediaOut1 Error?
To fix this, you have to understand that Fusion is basically a separate engine running inside Resolve. When you look at a Fusion composition, the MediaOut1 node is the literal "doorway" back to your timeline. If that door is locked, or if there's nothing behind it, Resolve panics.
One of the biggest culprits is a simple frame rate mismatch. If your timeline is set to 24fps but your Fusion composition was somehow cached or created at 30fps, Resolve might try to pull a frame that technically doesn't exist in the Fusion buffer. It’s like trying to find page 31 in a 30-page book.
Sometimes, it's just a cache issue. DaVinci Resolve loves its Render Cache, but that cache can get "poisoned." If the software writes a corrupt preview frame to your disk, it will keep trying to read that broken file instead of re-rendering the actual node tree. You'll see the no frame available for mediaout1 error because the system is looking at a file that has 0kb of actual image data.
Then there’s the hardware side. If you're pushing your GPU too hard—maybe you're doing heavy temporal noise reduction or using a complex Magic Mask—the VRAM might fill up. When the GPU runs out of memory, it simply stops rendering the frame. Since MediaOut1 is the last stop, it’s the one that reports the failure.
The "Purge" Method: Clearing the Gunk
Before you start deleting nodes or reinstalling drivers, you need to clear the temporary data. It’s the "turn it off and on again" of the video editing world. Go to the top menu and find Playback > Delete Render Cache > All.
Does it feel like a waste of time to re-render? Maybe. But 90% of the time, this clears the "ghost" frames that are triggering the error.
Another weird trick that actually works is moving the clip. Select the problematic Fusion clip on your Edit page, nudge it up one track (to V2), and then move it back down. This forces Resolve to re-index the connection to the Fusion page. It sounds like superstition, but in the world of non-linear editors, re-establishing the database link to a clip often resets the MediaOut1 handshake.
Dealing with Global In/Out Points
Fusion handles time differently than the Edit page. In Fusion, your clip starts at 0. On the Edit page, your clip starts at whatever timecode it had in the source monitor. If you have trimmed a clip significantly, the no frame available for mediaout1 error might happen because Fusion is looking for a frame that is outside the "Global In/Out" range.
Open the Fusion page and look at your Keyframes window. You'll see a thin yellow line at the top. That’s your render range. If your nodes (like a Transform or a Blur) end before that yellow line does, MediaOut1 has nothing to output for those final frames.
- Check your MediaIn node.
- Look at the "Global In/Out" settings in the Inspector.
- Ensure the "Trim" isn't cutting off the end of your shot prematurely.
If you see a gap where the bar is gray instead of blue or white, you've found your culprit. You’re asking the software to show a frame that you’ve technically told it to ignore.
GPU Memory and Heavy Effects
We need to talk about VRAM. If you are working on a laptop with 4GB or 8GB of video memory, Fusion is going to struggle with 4K timelines. When you see no frame available for mediaout1, check your GPU usage.
If it’s pinned at 100%, try this: Go to Fusion > Fusion Settings > Memory and lower the amount of RAM allocated to Fusion. It sounds counter-intuitive, but sometimes giving the "host" app (Resolve) more breathing room prevents Fusion from crashing the output node.
Also, try disabling "Use GPU" on specific nodes like 'Optical Flow' or 'Vector Motion Blur' just to see if the frame reappears. If it does, your graphics card driver is likely the bottleneck. Update to the latest Studio Driver (not the Game Ready one) if you're on NVIDIA. The Studio drivers are specifically validated for the way Resolve handles OpenCL and CUDA calls.
The Proxy and Optimized Media Conflict
Sometimes Resolve gets confused between your high-res original media and your lower-res proxies. If you generated proxies and then moved the folder, the Edit page might still show the clip, but Fusion—which often wants to look at the source—can't find the pixels.
Right-click the clip in the Media Pool and select "Relink Media." Even if it looks linked, force it to find the folder again. This "re-refreshes" the pathing that MediaOut1 uses to pull data through the pipeline.
Specific Steps to Stop the Error Today
If you're staring at a black screen right now, follow this sequence. Don't skip steps.
First, go to the Fusion page and add a Saver node right before the MediaOut1. Try to render out a single frame as a PNG. If the Saver node works but MediaOut1 still shows an error, the problem is Resolve’s timeline integration. If the Saver node fails, the problem is a node inside your Fusion tree. This is the fastest way to isolate the issue.
Second, check your "Render Nodes" if you're on a network. Occasionally, a remote render node will try to pick up a job it doesn't have the assets for, failing the frame and passing that failure back to your main machine. Turn off "Use Render Members" in your preferences to see if a local render fixes it.
Third, look at your "MediaIn" nodes. If you've used a "Loader" node instead of a "MediaIn" node, the file paths must be absolute. If you moved your project from a Mac to a PC, a Loader node using a /Users/ path will fail on a Windows C:/ drive, resulting in the dreaded missing frame error.
Advanced Fix: The "Copy-Paste" Workaround
When all else fails and the software seems fundamentally broken, there is a "nuclear" option that almost always works.
- Go into the Fusion page of the broken clip.
- Select all nodes except MediaIn and MediaOut.
- Copy them (Ctrl+C).
- Go back to the Edit page.
- Find the original source clip in your Media Pool.
- Drag a fresh copy of that clip onto your timeline.
- Right-click it and "Open in Fusion Page."
- Paste your nodes and reconnect them to the new MediaIn and MediaOut.
This creates a fresh instance of the Fusion composition without any of the metadata "baggage" that might have been corrupted in the previous version. It's a bit of a pain, but it beats staring at a black screen for three hours.
Actionable Next Steps to Avoid Future Errors
To prevent no frame available for mediaout1 from ruining your next session, change how you set up your projects.
Stop using "Fusion Clips" for everything. Instead, try using "Adjustment Clips" on the track above your footage. You can do almost all your Fusion work inside an Adjustment Clip. This keeps the source media "clean" on the bottom track and makes it much easier for Resolve to cache the output.
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Also, always ensure your project frame rate is locked before you ever open the Fusion tab. Changing the frame rate of a timeline after you have built Fusion compositions is the fastest way to break the MediaOut1 link. If you must change frame rates, it is safer to start a new project and copy your clips over.
Lastly, check your disk space. Fusion creates massive temporary cache files. If your "CacheClip" folder is on a drive with less than 10% free space, Resolve will often stop writing new frames, leading directly to output errors. Clear your cache regularly and keep your workspace lean.