Workaround: Kdenlive crashes on startup after the Recovery dialog

Help
,
1

Kdenlive on Windows 11 crashes on startup after recovery dialog — possible fix

I had a problem where Kdenlive suddenly crashed while I was editing. After that, every time I opened Kdenlive, it showed the recovery window saying the previous session had not closed correctly.

No matter which option I selected, Kdenlive crashed again.

Reinstalling Kdenlive and updating to the latest version did not fix it.

In my case, the problem was caused by a saved setting that tried to restore the Project Monitor in fullscreen mode during startup.

Possible fix

This worked for me on Windows 11.

1. Close Kdenlive completely

Make sure Kdenlive is not running.

2. Open PowerShell

Press:

Windows key

Type:

PowerShell

Open Windows PowerShell.

3. Make a backup of the configuration file

Copy and paste this command:

Copy-Item "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\kdenliverc" "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\kdenliverc_backup_before_fullscreen_fix" -Force

4. Clear the problematic fullscreen setting

Copy and paste this command:

(Get-Content "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\kdenliverc") |
ForEach-Object {
    if ($_ -match '^project_monitor_fullscreen=') {
        'project_monitor_fullscreen='
    } else {
        $_
    }
} |
Set-Content "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\kdenliverc"

5. Open Kdenlive again

Now try opening Kdenlive normally.

In my case, Kdenlive started correctly after this.

What this command does

It does not delete your whole Kdenlive configuration.

It only changes this line:

project_monitor_fullscreen=1:Something

to:

project_monitor_fullscreen=

This prevents Kdenlive from trying to automatically restore the Project Monitor in fullscreen mode during startup.

If something goes wrong

You can restore the backup with:

Copy-Item "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\kdenliverc_backup_before_fullscreen_fix" "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\kdenliverc" -Force

Notes

This fixed the startup crash on my system, but I do not know yet if it is the final internal root cause.

My current understanding is that the crash may be related to Kdenlive restoring the Project Monitor fullscreen too early during startup on Windows.

1 Like