Corrupted link in FAQ

Hello,
I(my friend) have a problem with pclx file. It was saved and now it can’t be opened. “Warning : Pencil cannot read this file. If you wanted to import images, use the command import.” error appears.
In FAQ I found that it is type of known issue, but it is not yet resolved.(am I right?)

So in the end of FAQ there is suggestion to try to open pclx in “Nightly Build from November 23rd 2015”. But link on that build is corrupted, I can’t download that build, but i need it so much.
My friend (11years old girl) created project with more than 400 frames and now it can’t be opened. I’m trying to rescue it…

Can you download that build somewhere for me to try it? Or if you have some other ideas what can be done, it will be good.

Thanks,
Eugenia

Hi Eugenia

The build which is suggested from the FAQ is old, try to get the latest build from here and see if it works
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0BxdcdOiOmg-CSVlqc3JNQV9hVGs

Download the top file or the latest one (in date)

If you still can’t open it, you can send me the file or upload it here, then i’ll check it out and see if anything weird is going on.

@zhenia Hi, this was a solution for one possibility of data corruption. As CandyFace suggests in the previous post, please try to use a new version from this link https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0BxdcdOiOmg-CcWhLazdKR1oydHM and select your friend’s operating system.

It is important that you also tell us which version of Pencil2D your friend was using, as well as the operating system. (example: Pencil2D June 27 2017, Windows 7) To view the Pencil2D version you have to click the HELP > ABOUT menu

The thing is, if your friend was using version 0.5.4 there’s nothing we can do, we have advertised and repeated several times in different places that such version is deprecated, we can’t support it because it’s just too old and it can literally erase all your work.

BUT If your friend created the animation in a newer version of Pencil2D there might still be hope.

This error you describe seems to be similar to one another user had this year and that has been fixed. So let me explain some steps you can try out.

IF your friend imported SOUND inside pencil2D, it’s possible it had characters without proper codification (like japanese, or russian) or even whitespace.

So if you have the PCLX filetype, you can open that with a compression software almost as if it was a ZIP file. Inside there will be a lot of files contained. If there are sound files with long or weird names, you’ll have to do the following:

  1. Make a copy of PCLX file
  2. On the copy file, change the extension filetype form PCLX to ZIP
  3. Use WinZIP, 7-ZIP, IZARC, or PeaZIP to extract the contents to a folder
  4. browse for the sounds inside the .DATA folder and change their names to numbers like 0001.mp3
  5. locate the main.XML file outside of the DATA folder (all of this should have been extracted form the original PCLX file) now use your notepad to open the XML file.
  6. On the XML file you should see the original names of the sounds, so change them according to the numbered name you gave them. IF you don’t see anything then close the file and go to the next step.
  7. take all the contents and re-pack them into a ZIP new file with the same name as the previous ZIP.
  8. rename the new ZIP file extension to PCLX.
  9. try to open it in a NEWER version of Pencil2D

Now, if this doesn’t work, try to upload the while file and send us a link so we can ask for help to the developers if anything can be salvaged.

For now we’ll be pending on your response. Let us know what happens.

Edit: I corrected steps 5 and 6 since there is no longer a file with PCL extension inside the PCLX container, but rather the file main with XML extension which serves the same purpose of being an “address book” for the images, however due to the codification issue, sounds don’t seem to be written in files that have this problem. They are written correctly otherwise.