I have been working on a project for the last 26 days. A lot of hard work and time went into this project. I was almost done with the entire video but suddenly it said “my computer is low on memory, close other……” and it shut down my shotcut window. I opened it again and BOOM!! All my work on the timeline was completely gone and disappeared. The timeline shows as if I never edited a single thing. It looks like a brand new untouched timeline while all the clips are still present in the playlist. PLEASE HELP SHOTCUT. I cannot afford to restart my project from scratch again. IS THERE ANYWAY TO RECOVER MY PROJECT? Please HELP
You can upload your project file (.mlt) and we can look at it. One way to upload it is to rename it and add “.txt” to the end of it. Then, use the 
button in your post to upload it.
OMG REALLY? I have to upload the entire thing over here? Wow this would take forever 
I’m very disappointed 
I have a deadline and even if I restart the whole thing I’m scared it might happen again.
Not entire thing with videos, just the .mlt project file which is very small.
I have already restarted editing from the same file. Meaning since all the clips were still present I just started editing again from the same project rather than just starting a whole new thing. Just to let you know. I will upload it now in 2mins. Need to do it from my computer. And thank you for your response 
but I think it’s a lost cause. I also tried finding it on auto save mlt files via melty but no success.
does this work?
If you restarted editing then there’s not a lot to do now, the file is overwritten when you hit the save button. This is what I see in the timeline:
this is a disappointment I just couldn’t sit and wait for it to fix itself so I started editing again. shotcut has helped me a a lot but I guess this will be my last project on it as it is very unreliable. I’ve had some lagging problems but since it was open source free software I never complained. But loosing the entire project when I was just about to finish is just not reasonable. I thank you for your time sir. Appreciate your quick response.
This could happen with any software though, it’s a good idea to save often and from time to time save to a different file (I just do File - Save as (ctrl+shift+s) and add a v2 to my project after a day or some major iteration in my project). I don’t think I ever lost any significant amount of work this way.
No I always save my project. Like every 10mins I would press save. That’s why I don’t understand why it just completely wiped off my timeline. I cannot make sense of this. But thank you again.
That is a good practice. However, if something becomes lost, then you save over the work and it is gone forever. I recommend to read this post. It has good advice about saving with a new name so that you can go back to a previous version if something bad happens.
It is not too late to begin this practice today!
Sorry to hear about this. And sorry that you had a blanked out time line. We all learn and this is your learning experience. You may want to read more about Shotcut and how it actually operates. If you have $40 or just want there is a lot of places to learn Shotcut on YouTube. James Woo I paid the $40 or whatever to take his courses. You will understand more about the editor after doing so. For file management might I add another source of information. How To Organize Video Project Files: Simple Folder Structure To Save Time and Avoid Headaches - YouTube Lastly since you have a lot to learn about Shotcut and have learned some. Be warned that when you move folders in your system Shotcut will not be happy with the move as it will not automatically know where things are and may not even work for you depending on the move and various locations of files. Other than that I have found shotcut to be fairly bulletproof. Best to know where you are at with Shotcut as it is easy to get confused. Memorize CTRL-Z had you done this at the first problem then you’d have been better off. Also work in smaller segments and then combine if you are RAM Limited. Each segment can be rendered and then combined later for a larger project. Hope this all makes sense. I’m an advanced beginner at Shotcut and have loads to learn also. Have a great day.
Yes - when I’m doing a project, after I’ve done a few hours of work, I’ll copy the .MLT to another place (usually a USB, but sometimes my backup drive if it’s connected).
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