Urgent! Whole project turned black!

So as I was adding an audio track to me project, somehow it turned my whole project black. I can’t see anything in the preview pane as well as when I export all I can hear is the audio and can’t see my images. help!!! Ive been working on this for hours

Hi Salim,
I guess you have inadvertently hidden your video track. Look at the icons on your video track (bottom left of screen). If there is an open eye, you will see your video, if you click it it becomes a closed eye and your video will be totally black.
This short video I made might illustrate clearly:

Jon

I have this same issue.

I was copying filters from one clip in my timeline to a number of other clips. I did not have a clip selected and clicked the paste function to copy a Audio fade in and out and a Video fade in and out. The preview window went black no matter where I am in the timeline. The video exports black. Audio is still there.

I have toggled the track visibility as shown above on and off for both tracks in my timeline.

Any new tracks added have the same problem.
Any new clips added to any timeline have the same problem.
My entire project is black with only audio!

Figured it out kinda.

I opened up the .MLT in a text editor and removed some filters. BACK UP your .MLT before trying this!

Look for <tractor id=“tractor0”

inside the <tractor tag are some filter tags.
I deleted everything that was a filter inside the area. basically delete everything that starts with <filter id= to the

After I’d done this one of my two tracks reappeared. The other still was black, however upon adding a new track and moving my clips to the new track the problem went away. I deleted the problem track after moving everything up.

I’ll have to redo some filters probably but for the most part my work is still there, especially all the cuts etc. Hours of work saved!

GB3, Thanks a whole lot for this post. It saved my 4 hour project. The solution really works fantastic. Regards, Ron

Hey, how’d you open the .MLT? I’ve looked everywhere on my computer but I can’t seem to open it.

First, find where you saved the .mlt

You accidentally pasted the filters onto the Timeline Master Out track. Read about that in the v17.11 release blog post.
To others affected by this, you do not need to edit MLT XML in a text editor. Simply, click Master in the the top left corner of the Timeline. Then, look at Filters.
If that did not fix it, check each of your tracks by looking for the Filter icon on the track head.

1 Like

Joined this forum to say thank you.

Same happend to me and this answer helped save many hours of project.
Thank you for the program.

what do you mean by look at filters?

Open the Filters panel and look to see what has been used.

how can i tell what has been used. (sorry I’m just starting shotcut)

As mentioned here…

im looking at master filters and it is blank. what does that mean?

Select the master as stated (the section in the track head):
Then look in the filters panel to see what has been used.

how do i get to the screen where it shows the filters cause i may have done it wrong also i dont have the filter button to the right of master

i think i got there actually and there are no filters to master

I actually didn’t know this is a feature.
The O.P. made a mistake by putting filters on the Master, instead of the clip or track (V1, V2, A1, A2, etc…).

I’m thinking others are making filter mistakes by just selecting the track thinking it’s a bug. I know I would never have thought about this.

Master is selected. Notice the red outline?
master 1

V1 is selected. Notice the red outline?
master 3

Clip is selected. Notice the red outline?
master 2

If a filter has been applied to a track (not a clip and not Master), then the track head will also show the filters icon to indicate this. Again, see the blog post I mentioned and its screen shot:

https://shotcut.com/blog/new-release-1711/