…and the best thing is you can be part of it. Join us and help build the best free video-editor in the world 
4 Likes
Perhaps a little more info on where/how to help would be useful?
1 Like
Although all help is welcome, imho what is most needed is a hand on the dev front. There are many issues open to cherry pick from. On the user side, besides reporting and triaging bugs, there is an effort to rewrite the effects and compositions panels and feedback is most welcome.
One can get in touch on telegram Telegram: Contact @kdenlive or #kdenlive on IRC.
1 Like
Hello @frd
First off, I am a huge fan of Kdenlive.
I have used it in the very long past on Linux (Kubuntu - Kde desktop) and at the time it was THE best open source editor IMHO. Really an outstanding piece of software if you ask me 
At present, I am not really sure what are its best selling points compared to other promising open source video editor (Shotcut, Pitivi, Olive, Flowblade etc).
Compared to Shotcut and Olive, which also leverage the QT toolkit, I am wondering what might be the benefits of choosing one software instead of another for a software programmer?
Shotcut, for instance, looks extremely stable on Windows 10 whereas Olive has got great reviews for its upcoming features (e.g. a now node editor “similar” to DaVinci Resolve) but it is now in an alpha stage and far from being usable.
To make it short, can you list some interesting features pertaining only to Kdenlive which might be interesting for a developer - advanced user?
This summer, for example, a student, sponsored by the Google Summer of code program, has added a new Titler to Kdenlive. However, I do suppose there are many more juicy options to add to the list…
In conclusion, please, do share your knowledege about Kdenlive with us and NO, I do not want to start a battle or a flame about the best open source video editor since this is extremely subjective and related to personal preferences. In essence, I am hopeful to increase the general awareness about Kdenlive…
Is it usable now? Hype for the future is just hype.
So, I am not a sales man so don’t think I can sell you strong points for you to use Kdenlive, but I can tell why I use it. Take it with a grain of salt though since I am also a core team member… Well I have tested floss video editors since 2007, and back in the day Kdenlive was and still is the most usable tool to finish a project, despite its shortcomings. That to me is a strong factor because I make part of my living editing videos. Over time with more prefessional people joining the project we have built a vision and a roadmap of where we need to go, so there is a transition happening in the project to make it a pro tool and not just for casual editing. Hence the 3 point editing system has been implemented and soon to follow the advanced trimming tools. More recently a mixer is being added as well as a redesign of the effects UI is being worked on. This tools are to be improve workflows in fiction and documentaries. There is still a long road ahead but we will get there.
On a personal note, Olive is interesting but not usable yet, Pitivi never managed to use it because of crashes, Flowblade seems cool but don’t like it’s paradigm last I tried it, Shotcut was very interesting when I discovered it but I like Kdenlive’s workflow more.
IMHO:
- 3 point editing
- Advanced trimming (soon)
- Audio mixer (wip)
- Logging workflow
- Keyboard centric workflow
- Production proven
- Big community
- New Titler (soon)
*New engine (long term)
In conclusion, I use Kdenlive because it works for me, I do not care so much about about GPU processing hype at the moment (Kdenlive’s shortcoming) since my focus is storytelling and for that I barely use effects. It suits my needs… any one should use whatever fits them best, there is no war between the projects. Test them all and choose your tool.
1 Like
Thank you for the heads up. Although Kdenlive is already awesome 
I had a bit of a look to Shotcut. It’s very similar to KDEnlive, since they are both based on the same MLT framework. KDEnlive seems to expose more of the MLT modules though – one thing I missed on Shotcut compared to KDEnlive was the Curves module, particular for the hue-to-hue mapping. It would be better to have a couple more control points though to fine-tune the hue mapping – 2 of the control points need to anchor the two ends on the mapping curve, leaving only 3 points to cover the remaining 5 primary/complementary colours.
I like that KDEnlive has an ACS CDL module, but the interface could probably be improved. Mathematically it is very similar to the Lift-Gamma-Gain module, the main difference being that the ACS CDL has an Offset rather than a Lift parameter. I’m wondering if it might be good to add an Offset parameter to the existing Lift-Gamma-Gain widget. That way the same widget could be used for either ACS CDL model or for the traditional List-Gamma-Gain model, by setting either the Lift or the Offset parameter to zero. This would probably require some tweaking to the MLT framework though, so if we wanted to do something like this without impacting other clients we may need to implement a new MLT filter to take a 4-way input.
I think Shotcut has better GPU support than KDEnlive, but I have a pretty grunty laptop, and together with proxy clips KDEnlive still works quite well, and I think KDEnlive will remain my non-linear video editor of choice for the time being.
1 Like