EDL — Edit Decision List

When CINELERRA-GG saves a file, it saves the EDL, Edit Decision List, of the current project but does not save any media (Non-Destructive Editing). Edit decision lists, more commonly referred to as the EDL, are generated by CINELERRA-GG for storing projects. The EDL contains all the project settings and locations of every edit. Instead of media, the file contains pointers to the original media files on disk. EDL files are specific to CINELERRA-GG.

The EDL files generally have an extension of .xml. The purpose of the EDL is to separate the media from all of the editing operations so that the original media remains intact. When the .xml file is loaded, changes to the attributes of the current project are made based on the EDL. Edit decision lists are text files which means they can be edited in a text editor. EDL and XML are used interchangeably.