Dear Kdenlive developers!

I really like Kdenlive and after many years of using Blender VSE I've decided to switch to Kdenlive for all my video editing.

However - I've just lost quite some work after a random crash when I have made yet another cut in my timeline.
I beg you - please implement an autosave functionality that will spare the users re-doing all their work after such an even (as crashes are not rare with Kdenlive).
I'd argue that it's one of the most important features in creative applications - along with undo.

The lack of autosave and crash recovery results in unavoidable events of data loss and that's something that can very quickly turn artists away. Blender has a very rigid autosave function and even when it crashes that's never a big issue - I know I'll be able to recover my work.

I know we should save often. Everybody knows that, but sometimes you just catch such a good flow that you forget about it - and then...
You have to redo it all

- unfa

unfa wrote:The lack of autosave and crash recovery results

Seriously?

Yes, seriously. I have read somewhere in the forums that there is a KDE-related autosave function that should work once I have saved the project for the first time, but that doesn't work on my system. I'm using Linux Mint 18.3 with KDE5 desktop environment. So it's not like I dont' have most of the KDE environment.

I'd love to donate some money to a developer who can implement autosave and crash recovery in Kdenlive that won't rely on outside packages and configuration and can silently fail. I have lost some work already and redoing things is not fun. And I keep loosing my work with Kdenlive with every project I do. it's frustrating. I could setup a script to press Ctrl+S every minute for me, but that's really not a solution. I will have to do this probably, becasue I want to be productive and I like Kdenlive.

I don't want to be negative, but I think a creative program that doesn't protect user data in case of a crash is hard to be taken seriously. Because the crashes happen to everyone. I'm suprised there's no such function in Kdenlive already, since it's a long-going project.
And I want Kdenlive to be taken seriously. I have switched from Blender VSE, which has a lot of issues - but autosave in Blender is rock-solid. A Blender crash has never cost me more than 2 minutes of work. And I use it daily at work.

What can I do to make this happen?

Hello,
This function is implemented for years, but true there have been bugs here and there.
Last fix was for 17.08.2 (630f7bbfcf7fed53de85b3bccc2051da13391639): before that it failed with non-ascii chars in the project path.
Do you use a version older than this one? (if yes, try to download our AppImage)
Cheers,
Vincent

On the basis, you are using a recent edition...

Go to the settings menu and click the "configure kdenlive" button. In to the "misc" tab there is a check box called "Activate Crash Recovery (auto save)" make sure that is checked.

If you can't see a menu bar at the top, click "ctrl+m".

Here is how to restore backed up files https://userbase.kde.org/Kdenlive/Manua ... les/Backup

Alright, so I have found some backup files by accident in ~.local/share/kdenlive/.backup/

I am running Kdenlive 17.04.3 right now. I have tried the newest Appimage a few weeks ago, but I was in a middle of a project and a few effects I needed were gone, so I had to go back to the older version. I'll try switching to that one now. And try using that.

A friend of mine pointed me that the Kdenlive "features" page says there's auto-backup, so that got me thinking. I'd like to apologize for my violent reaction (I feel stupid).
I am glad Kdenlive has tools to prevent data loss in case of a crash, I'll try sticking to the newest version and if I notice any problems there - I'll let you guys now.

Thank you!

I have found out that even my older Kdenlive version was creating hidden backup copies, that I just didn't know how to find.

$ locate backup | grep '\.kdenlive$'

https://mastodon.social/media/01NrPgr3csq5Nevdmks