Comments on Source Clip not saving

System:

  • Shotcut version: 17.06.01

  • Both portable (32 and 64bit) as installer (only tested 64bit)

  • OS: Windows 10 version 1703

Problem:
When I add a comment to a source clip, this is not saved by Shotcut. Only comments made on timeline clips are saved.

Screenshot:

Ending on a positive note:
I really like this program. It is exactly what I need. Tested lots of video editing software for a project in development. Perfect features vs. lightweightness balance.

I’m not sure what you’re saying to be honest, neither do I understand what your screenshot is supposed to relay?
Unless you overwrite the ‘source’ (AKA: The original video) when you export/encode your edited clip then the source clip remains ‘the source’. In this way, Shotcut is ‘non-destructive’.

Thank you for your reply.

So what is the purpose of having a comments field in the properties of a source clip when it seems to have no function?

Say I have a project file with two clips in the playlist – what I called “source clips”. Double clicking on the first clip from the playlist opens that clip in the “source” tab of the media player. The properties pane will now show the details such as metadata of that clip. Above that is a field for comments.
However, any comments written there on a clip from the playlist won’t be saved. If after writing one, I subsequently double click on another clip, the comment will have disappeared when I revisit that annotated clip.

When I double click on a clip in the timeline and write a comment on it in the properties pane, this will be saved. So if I select the same clip from the timeline later, that comment will still be there.

Hopefully, this explanation cleared things up a bit :grin:

Your need to ‘Save’ the .mlt for the comments to be written to the .XML

Thanks for your reply.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to work either :frowning:

Works just fine here.

I’ve only just started using Shotcut, and I have a similar problem that I think has the same cause.

I’ve applied filters to the individual clips, and then gone to another clip in the playlist and come back to the first clip to find all the changes have gone.

It took me a while to work out what was going on here and I’ve decided that this is because the individual clips’ files can’t be changed – this is non-destructive editing. While you can apply filters and other functions directly to the individual clips this is only a preview. To really make changes the edits must be done on the copies of the clips in the timeline. If you do anything in the individual clips in the playlist you should treat this as a non-permanent preview; although I can’t see the point of this function: it’s just confusing.

In the latest version, it seems to work for videos in the timeline, but not in the playlist.

Let me see if I can shed some light on this topic. Perhaps I will be corrected but that also might be a good thing.

I would not expect to modify a source clip. If I share my editing chores with a colleague who also ran Shotcut I could send him my original clips and the project .MLT file and all the edits and filters should be recreated. If I wanted to send my project to someone who had an AVID professional system because he would, for instance, provide some color correction that Shotcut doesn’t have, I could send him my original clips and save out of Shotcut an EDL, an Edit Decision List, which a foreign editor could read and reconstruct. I would not expect the EDL to have information about which Shotcut filters were applied since the other editor wouldn’t know anything about them.

The Playlist is just a list. Experimenting, I see you CAN add filters to files in the Playlist and that might be useful for a quick Export/Conversion. But, normally you do your editing on the Timeline.

-=Ken=-

Ref my earlier comment: the clips in the playlist can be changed! After making changes you must click the ‘tick’ button (update) at the bottom of the playlist, then the changes persist. However, I can’t see a way to make comments in the properties panel persist, which was teh original question.