Hi everybody. I want to insist on a “little” feature that I want in shotcut app, and that is not currently available.
What I want is the possibility of physically delete a source file, after its editing without having to close Shotcut (even, would be nice can physically delete the proccessed file from shotcut). I explain myself, I use this nice program, mainly to trim recordings; trimming to gain disk space by saving only the desired scenes. So, after that mission accomplished, the source file, the “raw” file, is useless and is wasting precious disk space.
Currently what I have to do to perform that, is closing Shotcut and on windows explorer, marking and deleting it. I mean, if Shotcut is opened, even if source file is already closed, Shotcut won’t “release it”, it doesn’t let delete the file. So what I want is can to delete any processed file, without having to close shotcut. At least to me, having to close shotcut to delete any file, “cuts” my workflow. So for that reason is why I find useful that possible feature.
Thanks in advance for your attention.
CamiloAndresGil - I’ve struggled with this for a long time. I think this problem is unique to windows installations - other operating systems may not have this problem. What’s weird about it is that the file that hangs is not necessarily the last one edited - it can be any one in a series of files that were loaded into the playlist.
Even closing the project does not release the file.
r.
Yes, i think this is a behavior of the OS and normally is a must! If some file is ‘used’ by any application, it cannot be deleted as it would led to a malfunction of that application using this file. Also SC or other applications are normally not aware of the situation where you might have saved the result (e.g. exported the wanted video) or not - so it would be a mistake to delete files when they are open! That is also true for USB-sticks and any external drive! If you don’t properly release them, the file system could be damaged (happened to my USB-stick ones when i just unplugged it without previous releasing it! Can end up loosing all files/photos on the stick!
Warning in advance that I know few of programming, less of programming for multimedia; but currently I’m using OBS Studio to capture video from an USB HDMI capture device (Obviously hehe), and if I record something, but after stopping that capture (because obviously while it’s recording or paused the recording, the corresponding file cannot be erased, I perfectly understand that), I don’t want it, I just delete the corresponding file on windows explorer , without having to close OBS Studio every time I want to do that. So, ¿What’s different in the case of OBS Studio that Shotcut cannot recreate that behavior?
Shotcut is an editor. As such, it maintains a frame cache and keeps file handles open so that playback can be as responsive and smooth as possible, which is a concern that OBS doesn’t have.
Ok, thanks for the info. So if I understood you well, if Shotcut performs a deletion of that frame cache and closes file handles ONLY if the order is given (for instance, when you press “Close” option in the menu); ¿Could Shotcut delete the source file(s)? (or better said, ¿could windows let delete those files?)
In theory, that could work, but I don’t think it’s reliable today.
As for Shotcut deleting files, I can’t think of any place where it does that today. For us in the support forum, this is useful. When somebody writes in to say “Shotcut deleted or corrupted my videos!”, we know that didn’t happen because Shotcut doesn’t have any deletion code in it (that I can recall).
Having said that, the developers are working on a project management feature which may introduce a delete feature in the future. This is a good place to voice your ideas if that is something you would like to see.