How to import EDL file?

Davo · December 6, 2016, 7:59pm

Hi,
I just downloaded your software and it is looking like a very nice piece of work indeed. Kudos to all involved.

I have tried out the Export EDL routine which seems to work fine but I can’t find a way to import it back into Shotcut. The reason I want to do this is that I have written an app that will generate an EDL from a collection of clips. I hope to use something like Shotcut to do the final polish and render.

Is it possible to import EDLs into Shotcut?

Thanks in advance,
Dave

tin2tin1266027 · December 7, 2016, 9:45pm

Atm. it is not possible to import Edl in Shotcut. What is needed is a node.js script to convert edl to mlt(the native xml format of Shotcut). Dan coded the edl exporter in node.js.

Alternatively you can consider saving as mlt from your app. Or simply use the Blender edl import script to import it into Blender.

Btw. what does your app do?

Davo · December 8, 2016, 11:53am

Thanks for a great answer which gives me 2 possible options. I did look at exporting to MLT but the format looks pretty daunting. I think I will try the EDL->Blender path for now and hope that Shotcut adds EDL import in future. I will add it to the suggestion box anyway.

My app strips out motion events from a collection of videos, such as bird feeders, CCTV, etc. At present, it outputs video only and generates a merged AVI containing all events. Saving to EDL will let me add sound and give me the option of not writing a huge uncompressed AVI to disk.

thanks again,
Dave

tin2tin1266027 · December 8, 2016, 1:18pm

When you were looking at the mlt format did you come acress these simple examples:
https://www.mltframework.org/docs/mltxml/

There is a project here which converts lwks files to mlt, maybe there is some useful code here:

github.com

wrzwicky/Lightworks-Converter/blob/master/ed5decode.py

#!/usr/bin/env python3

"""
"ed5decode" -- access to lightworks logging database
    
Copyright (C) 2014  Martin Schitter <ms+lwks@mur.at>

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
"""

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And finally there is a node.js project to generate mlt files:

If you go ahead with the Blender import script, you should be aware that it isn’t frames accurate and you shouldn’t use source filenames longer than 8 characters and no empty spaces in the filenames.

Sounds like an interesting project. Keep us posted.

Davo · December 8, 2016, 7:12pm

Thanks muchas for those links. It looks like MLT export might be doable with my coding ability. When I opened a simple Shotcut file I was overwhelmed with the information but there is probably a lot of stuff I can leave out.

My app is coming along really well. I had to rewrite the motion detection module because the third party module I used was a bit flakey. First results are very encouraging and I will post a sample video soon (touch wood).
Dave