Hello there,
I am having a major problem with a Krita file I have been working on for the past month.
It is a 2D animation with several layers. Today when I tried to open the file, Krita wouldn't open it for the reason "not a valid Krita file".

I have browsed several forums which suggested that I convert the file into a zip file, repair it with a zip repairer, rename it into a .kra file and open it. I have tried it with several zip repairers with no result. I have tried to open the auto-save file (kra~) but I got the same error.

Another forum suggested that I update, so I updated to the latest version of Krita but had no result.
I uninstalled and re-installed it and also tried downgrading - but still no result.

At this point, I am just trying to get my pictures. I deeply appreciate the work behind Krita, but it is not very likely I will ever rely on it again. I just want to get my pictures and work in another program from now on.

So, in a forum I read that images can be extracted from the .kra file even without opening it in Krita. All you have to do is change the extension to .zip or .rar and open the zip file. I did that and I can actually see my frames in the "layers" sub-folder of the .rar folder that is my file. However, I can not figure out in what file type they are. I see files named "layer2.f2" ( and I suppose it means the second frame of the second layer), but there is no extension to the file. I extracted these files. but all programs I tried to open them into did not recognize them. I tried to add the extension .png or .jpeg, but that didn't work either.

I have uploaded the file here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/fq4didts7fbw ... fGhGa?dl=0

If anyone has a solution, please help me out, there are weeks of work on this.

I cannot access the file in question here.

Dropbox says "this folder is empty". Can you try again and check the link in a fresh browser session?

In case it's a Dropbox problem, you can try https://uploadfiles.io which will let you store and link to large files for a maximum of 30 days for a free unregistered user.

Hello, the file should be in the Dropbox folder by now, the connection was bad and the upload took some time.
Sorry for not replying earlier, I didn't get a notification about your answers. Thanks for taking the time!

Just by unzipping and rezipping your file I created a file that Krita could load. It's crazy big, though, at 10gb of memory when loaded. I'm uploading my version atm, but that'll take a bit of time...

Try: https://www.dropbox.com/s/e92ur4jxor72h ... d.kra?dl=0

It is very large in terms of memory usage but it's only 500 frames long. Part of this is probably the continuous animation of two of the layers. Is this a situation where it's a good idea to split it in two (or more) and then combine the shorter animations in a video editor?

Thank you very much for replying and for helping out.
I'm downloading the file from Dropbox and I will let you know as soon as I check it.
Was the problem caused by the size of the file? It was saved properly - the program didn't crash or anything.
I know the file is very large but it really helps to get the correct tempo if I can visualize everything simultaneously. I was intending of having two or three layers of coloring for each moving object as well - and this can only be done in the same file, so even if I separate the textured background and move it in a different file, I will still need more than one animated layer. I could maybe work in multiple files and limit the amount of frames I do in each of them?

Yes, the file just is too big. I've checked the code, and the zip file library we're using cannot read files that are bigger than 4GB: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_(file_format)#Limits

I'm going to try to rewrite the loading/saving code to use another library: https://stachenov.github.io/quazip/ -- that does support zip64.

I hope that boudewijn can get the zip64 support incorporated soon

I don't know how much RAM you have but you're already getting close to the limit for a 16GB RAM computer. Every layer of subtly changing shading and colouring that you add will keep pushing the in-memory size of your animation up and up and also the size of your .kra file by a significant amount.

It may be possible (but artistically undesirable) to combine colouring/lighting/shading layers into fewer layers.

Splitting the animation into two parts (or more) such as final frames 0-250 and 251-500 will give you roughly a halving (or less) of .kra size and in-memory size. You'd then have to learn how to use a video editor and would have disjointed mental/artistic effort as you work on the separate parts at separate times. Also, splitting the current file will place a larger load on krita and RAM as you copy/paste from your original to a part-section file. This would probably not be possible on a 16GB RAM computer.

Another possibility (which may or may not be acceptable to you) is to reduce the size of the image. You have 1920 x 1080 at the moment. If you used Image -> Scale Image To New Size then you could reduce it to 960 x 540 (assuming that krita can do this on such a large animation without running out of RAM and hard drive file space to do its intermediate work). Then you'd have a .kra file and RAM usage of nearly 1/4 of the size of your current animation. That would give you plenty of extra space to add more layers or to do an easier time splitting operation.

Whatever you do, make sure you Save As regularly (and test that you can open that saved file in krita), just in case you hit more problems and keep a copy of the latest working .kra file on a usb stick or separate hard drive.

I am having a similar problem, except I don't get any pop up/error message at all, so I have no CLUE what the issue is. I click on my file, it starts to load Krita, the project won't show up yet, and then the whole program closes without a trace. It's like a car engine that struggles to start up when you turn on the ignition and then kaputs before it does. This is a very small file with only 2 layers (background layer and then a foreground layer I was drawing on). All I was doing was testing out different brushes and then saved the file for my reference. I still wanted to play around with it though, and it makes me very concerned to possibly run into this problem again when I'm working on a serious project with many layers, so if I don't figure this problem out now, I will definitely be giving up on Krita altogether.
~
For reference: I'm using a "Lenovo Flex 14 2-in-1 Convertible Laptop" that runs on Windows 10 and my Krita version is 4.2.9. I have an AMD CPU (Ryzen), which I heard caused some bugs, so I disabled vector optimization and the texture buffer. Neither of these things solved the problem. I'm completely stumped and having been trying to fix this problem for 2 days now, to no avail. Another thing to note is that I have Krita set to "openGL" which I heard also might cause problems? If that is the case though, what renderer should I switch to instead? "Software Renderer" (which the settings note is very slow) or "Direct3D 11 via ANGLE"? I don't know what either of these do or are, so I don't know what to get out of either and which would work best for my situation.
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EDIT: Krita did suggest "openGL" in the auto setting. I clicked directly on "openGL" afterward to fix another issue I was having that I was told that might fix.
EDIT 2: I tried creating a new project to see if it would work and Krita did the same thing. Just shut down. There seems to be a fundamental problem with Krita itself.

celinedaqueen wrote:I am having a similar problem, except I don't get any pop up/error message at all, so I have no CLUE what the issue is. I click on my file, it starts to load Krita, the project won't show up yet, and then the whole program closes without a trace. It's like a car engine that struggles to start up when you turn on the ignition and then kaputs before it does. This is a very small file with only 2 layers (background layer and then a foreground layer I was drawing on). All I was doing was testing out different brushes and then saved the file for my reference. I still wanted to play around with it though, and it makes me very concerned to possibly run into this problem again when I'm working on a serious project with many layers, so if I don't figure this problem out now, I will definitely be giving up on Krita altogether.

Could you share the file for us to inspect? Without the file it will be nearly impossible for us to know what is going on.

ghevan wrote:

celinedaqueen wrote:I am having a similar problem, except I don't get any pop up/error message at all, so I have no CLUE what the issue is. I click on my file, it starts to load Krita, the project won't show up yet, and then the whole program closes without a trace. It's like a car engine that struggles to start up when you turn on the ignition and then kaputs before it does. This is a very small file with only 2 layers (background layer and then a foreground layer I was drawing on). All I was doing was testing out different brushes and then saved the file for my reference. I still wanted to play around with it though, and it makes me very concerned to possibly run into this problem again when I'm working on a serious project with many layers, so if I don't figure this problem out now, I will definitely be giving up on Krita altogether.

Could you share the file for us to inspect? Without the file it will be nearly impossible for us to know what is going on.

Sure thing, how do I do that on here? Is there a place to upload files on the forum? Sorry if that's a silly question, I just am not sure how to do it.

No, there is no storage in forum. But you can use dropbox or Google Drive and paste the shared link here.