How to reconstruct an mlt project from its playlist

[rojoelxorro]

Hi! One of these days I was making an awesome video on Shotcut, but then something happened when I tried to export it: it never did. (And also the program disappared) So I thought: wait, if it doesn’t export on my computer maybe I can take the file to my brother’s computer and then, as that one is faster, it might export just fine. So, I moved the mlt project together with the resources, I mean music, videos, the playlist, etc, to the other computer, but when I opened it there… The project and the trims and all was fine, but nothing played, the playlist was empty. So I put the resources back on the playlist thinking “if I give the program the sources it’ll take them and do the same magic with the format it was edited”. But it didn’t happen either.

The thing is now, that I have the project and the resources of the edition and the edition but the preview doesn’t show anything, no matter what I do or in what way I put the resources on the playlist. What I want is the edited project to take the resources and reconstruct the video so I can finally export it and have it mp4 If someone can help me with some advice that would be fantastic, I really put a lot of effort on that video

If you didn’t quite understand the problem, here goes a clue: imagine you edit a movie to make an edit with a song and trim some bits to do it. Now imagine that you have the timelines and everything okay, but suddenly you lose the playlist of the project: what do you do? You go and get the media resources back in the playlist, right? Well I did that, but it didn’t work ANY IDEA ON HOW TO SOLVE IT?

[Austin]

I’m very confused about what the actual problem is because the terminology between “playlist” and “timeline” is a little loose. Exporting usually isn’t done from a playlist, but rather from the timeline. Is the timeline what is failing to preview? If it is the timeline being exported, then the contents of the playlist is not referenced and is completely immaterial.

Regardless, it sounds like the source videos are not in the location specified in the .mlt file. A quick way to verify this is to open the .mlt file in a text editor (even Notepad will work) and search for “resource” and look at the file paths. If a drive letter is embedded in the path (such as “E:\Folder\Video.mp4”) then the source files must be put back in that exact location on the E: drive. If the files are on a USB drive and the drive is given a different drive letter when attached, this would break the project. Use Disk Management to change the drive letter, or edit the .mlt file to point to the new drive letter. (Make a backup first of course.)

Read the section on “Absolute vs Relative File Names” in the Documentation for more info:

Project Management

Introduction Shotcut does not provide very much in the way of project management at this time. Rather, you are required to manage many aspects of this. There are a few things you should know: Shotcut saves to a project file in a text format called MLT XML. (Technical detail on that format can be found here.) The project file does not contain any of your media. Rather, it only links to your media files by file system path and name. There are 3 different kinds of projects: Clip If you put a…

[rojoelxorro]

Thank you SO MUCH for your answer Austin! I finally could move the files back to their location and make it fit with the text file and it all has been solved!