Bug 343386

Summary:	Wishlist: Make Paths to videofiles relative in KF5
Product:	[Applications] kdenlive	Reporter:	Paul Konecny <paul>
Component:	Rendering & Export	Assignee:	Jean-Baptiste Mardelle <jb>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	snd.noise, wegwerf-1-2-3
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Arch Linux
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Paul Konecny 2015-01-27 18:56:43 UTC

Hi, no idea if this is possible, but as I'm moving between my computers a lot lately I noticed that the paths in the kdenlive project file are absolute and not relative. 

I don't know if this is an issue the kdenlive crew is able to fix or if the problem is mlt.
Maybe there is a way to save relative paths in the project file and to convert them to absolute when needed. 
For instance:
1. *.kdenlive is opened 
2. Kdenlive (program) gets the paths in a reverse lookup manner (or so)
3. Kdenlive tells mlt the new absolute path to the files and does not point mlt to the relative paths in the project file

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1 Wegwerf 2016-08-05 17:53:09 UTC

Paul, the resource references in MLT/Kdenlive are actually relative ... but to MLT's "root" ... which seems to be the user's $HOME. This looks to me to be an MLT issue upstream, as MLT is the one serializing the Kdenlive project. The Kdenlive project information is just piggybacked onto it, with most information already coming from inside MLT/timeline and only those remaining project information MLT lacks gets piggybacked.

The only way may be to set a different root property of the MLT XML serializer; maybe we could use the base directory of the .kdenlive project file. However, I'm unsure as to what this actually will buy us: when moving a project file together with its media files, the rebase still becomes necessary, as MLT will trip over the root= attribute not pointing to the new location of the project file anymore. So we would need to ask the user to locate the media clips anyway. Not perfect, but there doesn't seem to be any other option left, at least with the current MLT XML de/serializer architecture.

Paul, could you agree to closing this long-standing bug report, on the assumption that the above analysis is correct?

Comment 2 farid 2016-10-04 19:22:45 UTC

Hi Paul,

As a workaround to what your are saying I have used a lot lately the archive project feature. 

Also does Wegwerf's answer settle the bug report? If so please close it.

Regards

Comment 3 Paul Konecny 2016-10-06 08:25:29 UTC

Hi guys, sorry it took me so long to get back to you. 
I was burried in my thesis over the summer...
I just tried Wegwerf/DiveO's solution and I think it does what I wanted. 

Thanks Guys!