Entire project wiped after accidentally hitting CTRL+W and CTRL+S at the same time

Bug
1

What is your operating system?
Windows 10

What is your Shotcut version (see Help > About Shotcut)? Is it 32-bit?
21.06.29

Can you repeat the problem? If so, what are the steps?
I accidentally hit CTRL+W at the same time (or very quickly after, either way it was one press) I hit CTRL+S to save the project. It closed the project and brought me to the window to open projects or start new ones. I double-clicked to re-open the same project, and now the entire timeline is missing. Everything was deleted from the project file and I lost hours and hours of work.

Now the project shows an invisible timeline of 10 minutes, and Filters shows something that says “_hide”.

image
image1810Ă—966 35 KB

Absurd project-wiping bug aside, why “close” is a shortcut right next to “save”, I have absolutely no idea. It makes no sense to make “close” that easily accessible at the same place you’re trying to “save” a project. Who needs to close a project that quickly?

And why am I able to close a project while saving it, corrupting the whole file?

I am gutted.

2

Unable to reproduce, and I do not see how. Actions like these are not processed in parallel. One must follow the other, and closing a project with modifications presents a dialog that cannot be accepted or dismissed by Ctrl+S. Sorry but we can only fix reproducible bugs. I am not going to remove close or change its shortcut: these are standard shortcuts for nearly all apps. If you lost hours of work, then you do not have a backup system in place. Your operating system has one; please use it. These can often save versions every hour or similar.

3

I am not going to remove close or change its shortcut: these are standard shortcuts for nearly all apps.

That’s fine. I can use a different editor.

If need be I can attach the project file if you’re interested at all at looking at the actual bug or what happened, but based on your reply you have entirely dismissed this as an impossible PEBKAC error of a post so I don’t know what I expected. Thanks for replying at all I guess.

4

I would be interested to see the project file.

I tried to reproduce this problem by holding CTL and then mashing S & W at the same time. But doing that always results in either the “Save XML” or the “The Project has been modified. Do you want to save your changes?” dialogs - meaning that either the W or S comes first and the appropriate dialog is displayed. Maybe there is just one more step that I am missing.

@7minutesdead Can you create a dummy project and create the problem again? It would be very helpful to know the exact steps to cause the problem.

5

Able to reproduce with 21.08.29, Windows 10

Video Mode 1080, 30fps

Steps for me:

  1. Open Other (I chose red) (Set for 13 seconds)
  2. Added text simple “RED”
  3. Saved file: Red color.mlt (3.7 KB)
  4. CTRL+W (closed the project)
  5. CTRL+S (opened up the windows 10 file save dialog box, which I had to name the file)
    Red color 2.mlt (565 Bytes)

Closed/Re-Start Shotcut, then opened up Red color 2.mlt
Empty file for me with a white screen.

shotcut_2021-09-12_18-03-53
shotcut_2021-09-12_18-03-53878Ă—741 14.9 KB

I made a new project, blue color, and after CTRL+W, then CTRL+S, I clicked on the file name I created for the original file, and it does give me a warning of overwriting that file name.
shotcut_2021-09-12_18-07-02

Edit: Trying to reproduce where it shows the length of the project, and I can’t make it happen. It did it for me once.

Edit: I finally got it to work. When pushing down on CTRL, you have to simultaneously hit W & S together. Ended up ruining the Red color project file, which is here:
Red color.mlt (923 Bytes)

Although not quite sure this is a bug, rather just a keyboard slip.

1 Like
6

Thanks for the help. I have reproduced @7minutesdead 's report. Here are my steps:

  1. Create a new project (I used the red clip)
  2. Save the project and give it a name.
  3. Hold CTL
  4. Quickly hit “W” and then “S” in quick sequence.

I was missing step #2 when I was trying to create the problem.

7

OK, I reproduced it now, and Brian submitted a fix I reviewed and accepted for the next version 21.09.

8

To cut down on the amount of work needed to create a project that gets corrupted in some way, save your project regularly (e.g. every hour) to a new project name e.g. File->Save As myproject_2.mlt

Also, consider backing up your filesystem files incrementally on a regular (say once a day) basis. I have a Windows system and use an excellent (free) backup solution called SyncBackFree. See this very clear tutorial on how to use it:

1 Like