I lost all the data in a huge mlt file

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Linux - Steam Deck OS

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23.05.07

I have no idea what went wrong. I poured a huge amount of hours into this project and I stupidly did not have a backup. The screen froze up for about 20 seconds and then it crashed, which I’m used to, I usually just open it back up and it auto-saved or, worst case scenario, it deletes a little bit of my progress. But this is different. This time, I opened up the file and 100% of the stuff I was working on is gone, replaced by a 10-minute project with no tracks and no content. If there’s any way I could recover the old file or look at the history of the file and restore an old version, that would be life-saving. Here’s the busted file if you want to look at it.

AI Dungeon Part 3 Part 1.mlt (924 Bytes)

That is frustrating and disappointing. Unfortunately, there is nothing hidden in the project file you uploaded that can be recovered.

Thanks for replying anyway

Ok apparently when I first found out that mlt files are just text, I just so happened to send this exact file to my friend in text form, so I mostly got it back. I think it was divine intervention.

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While you’re editing, you can at any time, save your current progress to a new file by doing Save As.
2023-06-03_20-31-50
This creates a new file that you name, saving your current progress to it, and no longer writes/saves to the former project file.

How did you extract the text and rebuild the mlt file? I would like to know if it ever happens to me.

I have had some pretty scary digital data losses and miraculously recovered them which had to have been divine intervention.