In Project Files the filenames may have wrong path

[Timo Maaranen]

Hi!

I have many removable usb-disks on which I have stored the footages grabbed from DV tapes. There exists a problem which is not a bug. I have started a new project and imported files from /media/disk. After a while working I save the project. A few days later I continue. This time my usb disk has been somewhere else and now I plug it in my laptop and open the project file. Yes, now my disk appears to be in /media/disk-1 but in my project file the path is still pointing to the /media/disk. This happens me all the time.

This is not a very important thing but anyway I have wondered if it would be worth implementing to insert a mechanism that helps to correct the path to the resources in only one maneuver instead of correcting the path one by one to each individual file. If it is worth that, I think that I have one solution to this, just adding a little piece of code and an entry to the Project files menu... I wonder if anyone else has ever faced this annoying situation.

Regards Timo M.

[Helen McCall (wildnfree)]

Hello Timo

This is not a bug in OpenShot.

This is an easy problem to avoid. If you give your usb volume a Volume Label this will be used as the path to it.

If using USB disks to archive files/video etc, it is good practise to always label each volume so it can be easily recognised.

Helen

[Timo Maaranen (tim-kuntonetti)]

Ok!

But there still exists a problem which is not a bug... like I wrote in the first message.

I have not labeled my usb disks when I have used the command mkfs.ext3. As a result of this I now have many usb disks that are mounted not by label :( . I'm lucky because I have used only one of them with Openshot in only one project. And now I'm going to label my disks (thanks! It never occured to my mind):

sudo umount /dev/sdb1
sudo e2label /dev/sdb1 TERA-01
(unplug usb-disk and plug it again)

But in this one project I have almost 150 files. Somehow I'm going to change the beginning of the path. I have two solutions in my mind (I'm not going to change them manually one by one).

1: Give the user (myself) a possibility to a simple find/replace applied to the pathnames (very easy to implement - not many lines of code).

2: Make it possible to dump the data of the project into a textfile - it may be xml or not - and make it possible to read that data back to Openshot. When the data is in textfile I can use any editor to do what I need to (more complicated solution but may be a good choice in long run).

But in the future I will avoid this problem!

[Helen McCall (wildnfree)]

Hello Timo,

To label your USB voumes see the FAQ #759

This describes how to label all your USB volumes so they each have a unique Volume Label.

You do not need to change anything else if using the automounter.

Helen

[Helen McCall (wildnfree)]

I have converted this bug report to a question because it is not a bug report.

Helen

[Narcis Garcia (narcisgarcia)]

This is a problem to move a project from one path to another.
The paths written to project files should be relative and not absolute.

At least for the files located in the same or deeper folder as the project.