I have been putting together an hour DVD from 4 cameras and a separate audio feed, all with different formats. While kdenlive is a wonderful program it just let me down when I had almost finished the editing!, It has been crashing frequently but it always has been able to be restarted. I can't remember what I was doing at the time, but nothing unusual. Now it claims an "unexpected end of file" and does not load up. It works OK with other kdenlive files. I have turned of the thumbnails but with no effect.

I am using Kdenlive 0.8 with OpenSuse 11.3 with KDE.

I am hoping that someone has some clues how to recover from this, since it is a great task for me to redo it.

Is it worth transferring everything to my other computer which is running openSUSE 11.4 with Kdenlive 0.7.8?

can you send me the project file so that I can check what's wrong?

send it to: jb at kdenlive.org

regards

I have just discovered that the relevent .kdenlive file has nothing in it. I don't know why this happened, since the program crashed and I have not been playing with it since. I guess this is why there was an unexpected end of file. Doesn't sound good - I don't know whether there is any automatic backup anywhere.

There is, there was a post about it a few days ago:

http://www.kdenlive.org/forum/autosavecrash-recovery-location

j-b-m said the auto save location is here: $HOME/.kde/data/stalefiles/kdenlive/

Thank you so much for your help - I have now opened a backup file and I am back in business. This has saved me several days of hard work. I am making a DVD of Handel's oratorio "Messiah" and looking at the backup directory it is full of stuff. I picked the correct day and the largest file, and I think I lucked out there. But I would appreciate a bit more understanding how to understand what all the files are. Here is a selection of the most recent ones:

Messiah%20part%20one.kdenlive6Ebfile_%2Fhome%2Fdick%2FkdenliveddKC66Eb
Messiah%20part%20one.kdenlive6Ebfile_%2Fhome%2Fdick%2FkdenliveddKC66Eb.lock
Messiah%20part%20one.kdenliveRlRfile_%2Fhome%2Fdick%2FkdenliveprAu9RlR
Messiah%20part%20one.kdenliveRlRfile_%2Fhome%2Fdick%2FkdenliveprAu9RlR.lock
Messiah%20part%20one.kdenlivexVtfile_%2Fhome%2Fdick%2FkdenliveXBjQExVt
Messiah%20part%20one.kdenlivexVtfile_%2Fhome%2Fdick%2FkdenliveXBjQExVt.lock
Messiah%20Part%20Two.kdenlive5zFfile_%2Fhome%2Fdick%2FVideos%2FMessiah%2024yYoB5zF
Messiah%20Part%20Two.kdenlive5zFfile_%2Fhome%2Fdick%2FVideos%2FMessiah%2024yYoB5zF.lock
Messiah%20Part%20Two.kdenlive67gfile_%2Fhome%2Fdick%2FVideos%2FMessiah%202uPc6867g
Messiah%20Part%20Two.kdenlive67gfile_%2Fhome%2Fdick%2FVideos%2FMessiah%202uPc6867g.lock
Messiah%20Part%20Two.kdenlivebSvfile_%2Fhome%2Fdick%2FVideos%2FMessiah%202kX4MHbSv
Messiah%20Part%20Two.kdenlivebSvfile_%2Fhome%2Fdick%2FVideos%2FMessiah%202kX4MHbSv.lock
Messiah%20Part%20Two.kdenlivecULfile_%2Fhome%2Fdick%2FVideos%2FMessiah%2026SlVHcUL
Messiah%20Part%20Two.kdenlivecULfile_%2Fhome%2Fdick%2FVideos%2FMessiah%2026SlVHcUL.lock
Messiah%20Part%20Two.kdenliveDpVfile_%2Fhome%2Fdick%2FVideos%2FMessiah%202O7zZTDpV
Messiah%20Part%20Two.kdenliveDpVfile_%2Fhome%2Fdick%2FVideos%2FMessiah%202O7zZTDpV.lock
Messiah%20Part%20Two.kdenliveDRZfile_%2Fhome%2Fdick%2FVideos%2FMessiah%202mvNWLDRZ
Messiah%20Part%20Two.kdenliveDRZfile_%2Fhome%2Fdick%2FVideos%2FMessiah%202mvNWLDRZ.lock
Messiah%20Part%20Two.kdenlivehANfile_%2Fhome%2Fdick%2FVideos%2FMessiah%202vxdEJhAN
Messiah%20Part%20Two.kdenlivehANfile_%2Fhome%2Fdick%2FVideos%2FMessiah%202vxdEJhAN.lock

I see that there is the file itself and one with '.lock' after it. What does this mean. I picked the file without the lock tag. Also what are the numbers and annotation near the end of the name?

Do you recommend that I 'save as' a backup as part of the editing regime?

j-b-m may be able to answer as to what the files are, never had to use one myself.

As for backup, I always used to do "Save As" at intervals, so I could always go back if a file got corrupted. This was when I used Pinnacle Studio in Windows though, which crashed a lot and caused me no end of wasted time.

I haven't done this since using kdenlive, but if I ever got a corrupt file (nothing yet, fingers crossed), then I am sure I would start Saving As again. I find kdenlive much more stable than anything I have used before though.

Glad you got your file back, nothing worse than loosing hard work!