# The Kdenlive Handbook

This documentation was converted from the KDE UserBase Kdenlive/Manual page.
&FDLNotice;
2013-03-10
0.9.6

The official description for this application is non-linear video editor, which means that it non-destructively edits your film. The original is not touched. The application records the details of which bits you want in your final file, and the output is created from the combination of original and that edit file.

KDE
multimedia
video

## Introduction

Kdenlive is an acronym for &kde; Non-Linear Video Editor.

It is a free software (GPL licensed) primarily aimed at the &Linux; platform. It also works on BSD Berkeley Software Distribution and MacOS as it relies only on portable components (Qt and MLT framework).

Non-linear video editing is much more powerful than beginners' (linear) editors, hence it requires a bit more organization before starting. However, it is not reserved to specialists and can be used for small personal projects.

Through the MLT framework, Kdenlive integrates many plugin effects for video and sound processing or creation. Furthermore Kdenlive brings a powerful titling tool, a DVD authoring (menus) solution, and can then be used as a complete studio for video creation.

### Video editing features

- Multitrack edition with a timeline and virtually unlimited number of video and audio tracks, plus facilities for splitting audio and video from a clip in multiple tracks

- Non-blocking rendering. You can keep working on a project at the same time a project is being transformed into a video file

- Effects and transitions can be used with ease, and you can even create some wipe transitions of your own!

- Simple tools for easy creation of color clips, text clips and image clips

- Automatic slideshows creation from pictures directories, with crossfade transitions among the images

- Configurable keyboard shortcuts and interface layouts

- and much more!

### Video Intro

YouTube video

## Installation

### Install binary packages

Multimedia packages are made available on many alternative repositories, often because of distributions restrictions on available codecs due to patents in some countries (mainly US for the moment).

Everything would be perfect in a wonderful world if package builders would contribute to official distributions, and multimedia editors chose only free codecs to promote their use worldwide ... So try to stick to distributions deliveries?

Most linux distributions provide recent binary packages of Kdenlive that can be installed from your Package Manager. However, in some cases you can find more recent versions in private repositories.

This page at the Kdenlive home has instructions on how to source these more recent versions depending on what flavour of &Linux; you run. Instructions for Debian, Fedora Gentoo, OpenSUSE, Slackware and Ubuntu are available.

#### Debian, Ubuntu and derivatives

Debian project ships Kdenlive packages since squeeze (6.0) release, however to benefit from recent updates and bugfixes you might consider upgrading to a testing release or even sid.

Ubuntu also offers Kdenlive since gutsy (7.10), but for similar reasons it could be preferable to upgrade to the latest release.

In both cases a simple `apt-get install kdenlive` should then work.

#### Fedora, RedHat and derivatives

RPM packages are not yet maintained in official branch, so you must go through an unofficial repository such as RPM Fusion or packman. Follow the sites recommendations to make them available and end with `yum install kdenlive`

#### Gentoo, Arch, BSD ports

Building scripts are ready for up-to-date systems, so run respectively `emerge kdenlive` or `pacman -S kdenlive` or `pkg_add kdenlive`, &etc;

#### Windows

There is no native Windows version of Kdenlive yet. However, you can use some virtualized &Linux; distribution to run Kdenlive on Windows. Some advices can be found on this page.

#### MacOS

Kdenlive and MLT can compile and run under &MacOS; X. Packages are available from the MacPorts project.

MacPorts is a source-based system - there is not a binary app bundle for Kdenlive. Therefore, Kdenlive and all of its numerous dependencies including multimedia libraries, KDE, and Qt must be compiled. This can take a long time and much disk space! Furthermore, it is not unusual for something not to build correctly; it is definitely not something for the novice, impatient, or faint of heart.

For more details see this

### Installing from source

If you want to test latest committed code or your personal patches, you will have to build Kdenlive (and probably MLT) on your own.

You can use your distribution's package building procedure to use its software management system to install/upgrade/remove the binaries and data, and eventually share your builds (and even contribute to package maintenance - refer to the respective distribution manual).

If you prefer you can build & install Kdenlive to a local area (preferably not `/usr`, but rather `/usr/local` or `$HOME/my_local_builds/kdenlive-last-release` or similar).

It is then recommended to use the build script on distributions older than Debian 6 or Ubuntu 10.04 and derivatives, you need to set `ENABLE_SWFDEC=0` in the config variables of the script

### Installing from Sunabs PPA

Olivier Banus (AKA Sunab) provides a personal package archive (PPA) of the latest development trees of Frei0r-plugins, MLT and Kdenlive. For details on how to install Kdenlive using this source see launchpad.net

See also Kdenlive homepage

## Quick Start

### Creating a new project

Kdenlive directory structure

Kdenlive directory structure

The first step is creating a new (empty) folder for our new project. I will call it `quickstart-tutorial/` in this tutorial. Then get some sample video clips, or download them from here:kdenlive-tutorial-videos-2011-avi.tar.bz2 (7 MB) If you prefer Theora (which you probably don’t since Ogg Video usually causes problems), you can alternatively download kdenlive-tutorial-videos-2011-ogv.tar.bz2., and extract them to &eg; a `quickstart-tutorial/Videos/` subfolder inside the project folder.

The image on the left shows the suggested directory structure: Each project has its own directory, with video files in the `Videos` subdirectory, audio files in the `Audio` directory, &etc; (read more)

(The tutorial from now on assumes that you use the sample videos provided, but it works with any.)

New Project dialog

New Project dialog

Open Kdenlive and create a new project (File New).

Choose the previously created project folder (`quickstart-tutorial/`) and select an appropriate project profile. The video files provided above are 720p, 23.98 fps. 720 is the video height, p stands for progressive scan in contrast to interlaced video, and the fps number denotes the number of full frames per second. If you are using your own files and don’t know which one to use, Kdenlive will suggest an appropriate one when the first clip is added Provided Configure Kdenlive Settings under Misc is set to Check if first added clip matches project profile , so you can leave the field on whatever it is.

### Adding clips

Project Tree: Adding video clips

Project Tree: Adding video clips

Now that the project is ready, let’s start adding some clips (&ie; the ones you downloaded). This works via the Project Tree widget; a click on the Add Clip icon directly opens the file dialog, a click on the small arrow shows a list of additional clip types that can be added as well. Video clips, audio clips, images, and other Kdenlive projects can be added via the default Add Clip dialog.

Kdenlive 0.8 window with the tutorial files

Kdenlive 0.8 window with the tutorial files

After loading the clips, Kdenlive will look similar to this. On the top left there is the already known project tree. Right of it are the monitors that show video; The clip monitor displays video from the original clips, the project monitor shows how the output video will look, with all effects, transitions, &etc; applied. The third, also very important, item is the timeline (below the monitors): This is the place where the video clips will be edited. There are two different types of tracks, Video and Audio. Video tracks can contain any kind of clip, audio tracks as well – but when dropping a video file to the audio track, only the audio will be used.

Saving a Kdenlive project

Saving a Kdenlive project

Let’s save the work via File Save. This saves our project, &ie; where we placed the clips on the timeline, which effects we applied, and so on. It can not be played. To be correct, it can be played using `melt yourproject.kdenlive`, but this is not the way you would want to present your final video since it is (most likely) too slow. Additionally, it only works if melt is installed. The process of creating the final video is called Rendering.

### Timeline

See also Timeline section of the manual

Now comes the actual editing. Project clips are combined to the final result on the timeline. They get there by drag and drop: Drag some Napoli (assuming you are using the files provided above, as in the rest of this quick start tutorial; If not, please make sure your screen is waterproof, and perhaps tomatoproof), and drop it onto the first track in the timeline.

First clips in the timeline

First clips in the timeline

Since some cutlery is needed as well, drop the spoon on the first track as well. Then drag the Napoli to the beginning of the timeline (otherwise the rendered video would start with some seconds of plain black), and the Spoon right after the Napoli, such that it looks like in the image on the left. (Where I have zoomed in with &Ctrl;Wheel.)

Timeline cursor

Timeline cursor

The result can already be previewed by pressing Space (or the Play button in the project monitor). You will see the Napoli directly followed by a Spoon. If the timeline cursor is not at the beginning, the project monitor will start playing somewhere in the middle; you can move it by dragging it either on the timeline ruler or in the project monitor. If you prefer keyboard shortcuts, &Ctrl;Home does the same for the monitor that is activated. (Select the Project Monitor if it is not selected yet before using the shortcut.)

Resize marker

Resize marker

Since after eating comes playing, there is a Billard clip. Add it to the timeline as well. The first 1.5 seconds nothing happens in the clip, so it should perhaps be cut to avoid the video becoming boring. An easy way Writing it this way suggests that there are several ways of cutting a clip. This is in fact true. for this is to move the timeline cursor to the desired position (&ie; the position where you want to cut the video), then drag the left border of the clip when the resize marker appears. It will snap in at the timeline cursor when you move close enough.

Overlapping clips

Overlapping clips

To add a transition between eating (the Spoon) and playing billard, the two clips need to overlap. To be precise: the second clip should be above or below the first one and end some frames after the second one begins. Zooming in until the ticks for single frames appear helps here; it also makes it easy to always have the same transition duration, like five frames in this case.

You can zoom in by either using the zoom slider at the bottom of the Kdenlive window, or with &Ctrl;Mousewheel. Kdenlive will zoom to the timeline cursor, so first set it to the position which you want to see enlarged, then zoom in.

Transition marker

Transition marker

Now that the clips overlap, the transition can be added. This is done either by right-clicking on the upper clip and choosing Add Transition or, easier, by clicking the green triangle that appears when you hover the mouse over the lower right corner of the Spoon clip. The latter, by default, adds a dissolve transition, which is in this case the best idea anyway since the Spoon is not required for playing anyway.

The dissolve transitions fades the first clip into the second one. See also Transition section of the manual.

Let’s add the last clip, the Piano, now, and again apply a dissolve transition. When adding it on the first track of the timeline, you need to click on the new clip’s lower left edge to add the transition to the previous clip.

#### Effects

Effect List

Effect List

The Piano can be colourized by adding an effect to it. Select the piano clip, then double-click the RGB Adjustment effect in the Effect List. If it is not visible, you can get it via View Effect List.

Once the effect has been added, its name will be added to the timeline clip. It will also be shown in the Effect Stack widget.

Effect Stack with RGB adjustment

Effect Stack with RGB adjustment

To get a warm yellow-orange tone on the image, fitting the comfortable evening, blue needs to be reduced and red and green improved.

The values in the effect stack widget can be changed by using the slider (middle mouse button resets it to the default value), or by entering a value directly by double-clicking the number right to the slider.

Effects can also be added with the Add new effect icon (framed in the image on the left) in the Effect Stack; It always refers to the timeline clip that is currently selected. By unchecking the checkbox they are temporarily disabled (the settings remain though), this is &eg; useful for effects that require a lot of computing power, so they can be disabled when editing and enabled again for rendering.

For some effects, like the one used there, it is possible to add keyframes. The framed watch icon indicates this. Keyframes are used for changing effect parameters over time. In our clip this allows us to fade the piano’s colour from a warm evening colour to a cold night colour.

Keyframes for effects

Keyframes for effects

After clicking the keyframe icon (the clock icon framed in the previous image), the Effect Stack widget will re-arrange. By default there will be two keyframes, one at the beginning of the timeline clip and one at the end. Move the timeline cursor to the end of the timeline clip, such that the project monitor actually shows the new colours when changing the parameters of the keyframe at the end.

Make sure the last keyframe is selected in the Effect Stack’s list. Then you are ready to flood the piano with a deep blue.

Moving the timeline cursor to the beginning of the project and playing it (with Space, or the Play button in the Project Monitor), the piano should now change the colour as desired.

Keyframing was the hardest part of this tutorial. If you managed to do it, you will master Kdenlive easily!

See also Effects section of the manual.

#### Music

Audio fadeout

Audio fadeout

Since the clips do not provide any audio, let’s search for some nice piece of music, on your local collection or on web pages like Jamendo. The audio clip should, after adding it, go to an audio track on the timeline.

The audio clip can be resized on the timeline the same way as video clips are. The cursor will snap in at the end of the project automatically. To add a fade out effect at the end of the audio clip (except if you found a file with exactly the right length) you can hover the top right (or left) edge of the timeline clip and drag the green disc to the position where fading out should start. This green disc is a shorthand for adding the effect Fade Fade out. Both ways lead to the same result.

### Rendering

Rendering dialog

Rendering dialog

A few minutes left, and the project is finished! Click the Render button (or go to Project Render, or press &Ctrl;&Enter;) to get the dialog shown on the left. Select the desired output file for our new video with all effects and transitions, choose MPEG4 (works nearly everywhere) and a bitrate of 2000k (the higher the bitrate, the larger the output file and the better the quality – but since the bitrate for the input clips was 2000k already, using a higher one would not improve quality and is therefore unnecessary), and press the Render to File button.

Rendering progress

Rendering progress

After some seconds rendering will be finished, and your first Kdenlive project completed. Congratulations!

## Tutorials

- See the Quick Start page for step-by-step tutorial on basic Kdenlive functionality.

- The Video tutorials are available on-line

- The Video tutorials are available on-line (youtube.com)

- The Wikibooks manual.

## Project and File management

1. The Project Tree

2. Project File Details

3. Settings

4. Annotating

5. Archiving

6. Backup

7. Clips

8. Importing

9. Management

### File Structure

As already pointed out in the Quickstart, we suggest using a different project folder for each project. Kdenlive will generate the following folders for caching in the project folder:

- `proxy/` for the proxy clips that have been generated

- `thumbs/` for thumbnails to all used clips

- `titles/` default location for the titles saved outside the project file

- `.backup/` for your project's automatic backup files

These directories can be deleted if not required anymore (for example for saving space on the harddrive). Kdenlive will create them again when you load the project the next time.

The `titles/` directory is the default directory for saved `.kdenlivetitle` title files. Make sure that you did not save any important files in there before deleting it.

Source clips can be located anywhere. Still, here are some thoughts about their location:

- Material (images, clips, audio) that is used for one project only can be put into a subdirectory of the project folder as well. This keeps all important files together, and searching for the files takes less time.

- Material that is used by multiple projects are convenient when kept together. I’ve got a video collection the same way that I have a photo collection.

### The Project Tree

The Project Tree is a tab in Kdenlive which lists all the clips that are associated with the project.

Clips can be dragged from the Project Tree to the Timeline

Text Box labeled 1 is a filter which filters the clips visible in the tree by name

Icon labeled 2 is the Add Clip Button - adds Video or Audio clips to the project tree

Drop Down labeled 3 is an Add Clip drop down list, it allows you to add other clip types to the project tree

Icon labeled 4 brings up the properties for the clip that is selected in the project tree

Icon labeled 5 deletes the selected clip from the project tree (but not from the file system)

Icon labeled 6 toggles docking of the Project tree.

Icon labeled 7 closes the project tree. The project tree can be made visible again from the View menu.

The number in brackets after the length of the clip is the number of times this clip appears in the timeline. In the screen shot the home_movies_vol23a2.dv clip is 23 min 14 secs long and appears in the timeline one time.

#### Project Tree - Right Click Menu

The images below show the menu items available when you right click a clip in the project tree. The images show the 0.9.2 and the 0.9.3 version of the menu. In version 0.9.3 of Kdenlive the transcode submenu item is replaced by a clip jobs submenu item.

ver 0.9.2 of Kdenlive | ver 0.9.3 of Kdenlive

The menu items that appear on right click on an item in the project tree are also available from the Project Menu.

1. Add Clip

2. Add Color Clip

3. Add Slideshow Clip

4. Add Title Clip

5. Add Template Title

6. Create Folder

7. Online Resources

8. Extract Audio

9. Transcode

10. Stabilize (ver 0.9.2)

11. Clip Jobs > Stabilize (ver 0.9.3)

12. Clip Jobs > Automatic Scene Split (ver 0.9.3)

13. Reload Clip

14. Proxy Clip

15. Clip in Timeline

16. Clip Properties

17. Edit Clip

18. Delete Clip

### Project

Kdenlive projects consist in a singe `.kdenlive` file (in XML format), gathering :

- target video and audio properties

- references to all the source materials (and to their lighter proxies work copies)

- clips arrangement on the timeline, with effects applied, and everything to get the final result

Project files are associated with a working directory, in which Kdenlive will generate proxies and thumbs, so that an overview of your media always show up quickly (if you move your project file, you should declare the directory change in the project properties).

### Project Settings Dialog

This is reached via Project Settings in the Project Menu. This dialog has 3 Tabs.

#### Project Settings Tab

Project Settings dialog

Project Settings dialog

The Project Settings dialog is shown when you start a new project (File New). This allows you to set all basic properties for your project. You can also edit the properties of your current project in Project Project Settings.

##### Project Folder

As recommended in the Quick Start section, you should create a new folder for your project. This folder will hold all temporary files that are used during the editing of your project (thumbnails, proxy clips, etc).

##### Video Profile

The video profile will define the format of your project. A list of predefined formats is available in Kdenlive, for example DV / DVD PAL, HD 1080i 25 fps, &etc;

The profile defines the video resolution, as well as display ratio, color space and a few other parameters.

You should carefully choose your project format and select the one that fits better with what you want to output. All video operations on the project (like compositing, scaling, etc) will then use this profile. Advanced users can create custom project profiles in Settings -> Manage Project Profiles.

For example, if your goal is to create a DVD, you should use a DVD profile with the correct frame rate (PAL / NTSC) and display ratio (widescreen or not).

##### Tracks

You can select the default number of audio and video tracks that your project will have. You can always add or remove tracks in an existing project.

##### Thumbnails

The Audio and Video thumbnails are shown in the Timeline. They can also be enabled / disabled through buttons in the status bar.

##### Proxy Clips

Proxy clips is a feature that can be used if your computer is not powerful enough to display and edit your source video clips (similar to offline or reduced quality editing in other software). This is especially useful when working with full HD AVCHD sources that require a lot of resources.

When the Proxy Clip feature is enabled, Kdenlive will automatically create reduced versions of your source clips, and use these versions for your editing. Then, when you want to render your project, Kdenlive will replace the proxy clips with the originals for a full resolution rendering.

The Generate for videos larger than x pixels option will automatically create a proxy clips for all videos added to the project that have a frame width larger than x. This also applies to images.

You also have the choice to manually enable / disable proxy clips for each clip in your project tree by right-clicking on the clip and choosing Proxy Clip.

You can choose an Encoding profile for the proxy clips, which will define the size, codecs and bitrate used when creating a proxy. The proxy profiles can be managed from the Kdenlive Settings dialog (Settings Configure Kdenlive Project Defaults).

#### Project Files Tab

From here you can manage the files that are part of the project. You can clear the proxy files and thumbnails and delete unused clips.

Note: the Unused Clips - Delete files button deletes file from your hard drive not just from the project tree. If you just want to remove unused clips from your project but not delete them from your hard drive - use Project > Clean Project.

#### Metadata Tab

Screenshots below show the Metadata tab for two different versions of Kdenlive. Version 0.9.6 introduces buttons to add and subtract metadata fields.

ver >=0.9.5 | ver <= 0.9.6

Metadata set up here will written to the files rendered from the project if Export Metadata is checked in File Rendering.

#### Notes

Sometimes, you want to keep some notes about your project to remember ideas or things to do. For this task, Kdenlive provides a Notes widget that is available through View Project Notes.

It is basically a small text editor, but also has the ability to create links to some places in your project's timeline. To add a timeline link as shown in the snapshot below, right click in the Notes widget and choose Insert Current Timecode. That will add a clickable link to the current project monitor timecode.

You can also provide annotations using Guides or Markers

#### Archiving

The Archiving feature (Project Archive Project, see Project) in Kdenlive allows you to copy all files required by the project (images, video clips, project files,...) to a folder, and alternatively to compress the whole into a tar.gz file.

Archiving changes the project file to update the path of video clips to the archived versions.

This can be useful if you finished working on a project and want to keep a copy of it, or if you want to move a project from one computer to another.

The resulting tar.gz file can be opened directly in Kdenlive. Kdenlive will uncompress it to a location you specify before opening it.

#### Backup Feature

Backup widget

Backup widget

The Backup widget, found in Project Open Backup File allows you to restore a previous version of your project file.

In case something went wrong (corrupted project file, unwanted change, ...), you can now restore a previous version of the file using this feature. Just select the version you want and click Open.

The backup files are automatically created each time you save your project. This means that if you save your project every hour, the backup widget will show you a list of all the saved files, with a small image of the timeline at the time you saved the project.

Kdenlive keeps up to 20 versions of your project file in the last hour, 20 versions from the current day, 20 versions in the last 7 days and 20 older versions, which should be sufficient to recover from any problem.

#### Clips

##### Clips (Video, Audio and Images)

The button (Add Clip) brings up the Add Clip Dialog where you can choose video, audio or still image clips to add to the project tree.

The button labeled 1 toggles File Preview on and off. The slider labeled 2 adjusts the size of the preview icons. The Import image sequence checkbox labeled 3 enables the import of a series of images that can be used to make a stop motion animation. The Transparent background for images checkbox labeled 4 - is for ???

You can add other types of clips by choosing a clip type from the menu brought up from the drop down button next to the button.

##### Color clips

Color clips are images of a single color that can be added to the project tree. They can be useful to provide a background on which to place titles.

Add color clips by choosing Add Color Clip from the drop down button next to the button.

This brings up the Color clip dialog from which you can choose a color and a duration.

Clicking OK adds the clip to the project tree. The clip can then be dragged to the time line. The duration of the color clip can be adjusted on the timeline.

##### Title clips

See Titles

##### Slideshow clips

Slideshow clips are clips created from a series of still images. The feature can be used to make an animation from a collection of still images or to create a slideshow of still images. To create the former - use a short frame duration and to create the latter use a long frame duration.

To create a slide show clip choose Add Slide Show Clip from the Add Clip drop down list.

From the Slideshow clip dialog choose Filename pattern as Image selection method.

Browse to the location of the images that go to make up your slideshow and select the first image that will make up the slideshow. The subsequent images that are to be used in the slide show will be selected based on some sort of filename algorithm that predicts what the next image file name should be.

For example if the first image is `100_1697.jpg` then the next will be `100_1698.jpg`, &etc;

Select an appropriate frame duration - this defines how long each image will appear for.

Then hit OK. A video file made up of all the images in the folder from where you selected the first frame file from will be added to the project tree.

You can then drag this video to the timeline.

Center crop: automatically fills the output video frame with the images while maintaining their aspect ratio by cropping equal amounts from a pair of edges. Said another way, it removes the black bars that will appear when the photo orientation or aspect does not match the video's.

Animation: adds preset slow smooth pan and zoom effects also known as the Ken Burns Effect. You can choose no animation, pans only, zooms only, or a combination of pans and zooms. Each option also has a low pass filter to reduce the noise in the images that may occur during this operation. Low pass filtering is much slower, so you should preview without it, and then enable it to render.

##### Create Folder

see Create Folder

##### Online Resources

see Project Menu - Online Resources

##### Stop Motion

See Stop Motion Capture

##### Proxy clips

Activating proxy clips

Activating proxy clips

Proxy clips are one of the most useful inventions for editing if you are not working on a ultra high-end machine. The trick is that the original clips are replaced by clips with lower resolution clips, with a less complex codec. Video decoding, &eg; of H.264 clips, requires a lot of computing power, but computing power is required for rendering effects in real-time. If insufficient is available, replay will stutter. Proxy clips will require hardly any computing power at all, which allows fluent replay.

Proxy clips can be enabled / disabled for the current project in the Project Settings (Project Project Settings).

To enable proxy clips by default for new projects, go to Settings Configure Kdenlive Project Defaults Enable Proxy Clips.

See also Project Settings page

As soon as proxy clips are enabled, they can be generated for specific project clips in the Project Tree widget via the context menu Proxy Clip. After you select Proxy Clip for a clip a job will start to create a proxy clip. You can tell the progress of this job by looking at the little gray progress bar that appears at the bottom of the clip in the Project Tree - see picture. Clicking Proxy Clip again disables the proxy for this clip.

Once the proxy clip creation has completed the proxy clip will appear with a P icon in the Project Tree.

When rendering to the output file, you can choose whether to use the proxy clips as well. It is by default disabled, but for a quick rendering preview it is useful.

##### Clip Properties

You can display and edit clip properties by selecting a clip in the project tree and choosing Clip Properties from the Project menu or from the right-click menu.

###### Video Properties

###### Advanced Properties

The Advanced tab displays... well ... the advanced properties of the clip. You can edit the advanced properties here. For example you can use Force aspect ratio to tell a clip that seems to have forgotten it was 16:9 ratio that it really is 16:9 ratio.

Advanced Clip property options are:

- Force aspect ratio

- Force frame rate

- Force progressive

- Force Field order

- Decoding threads

- Video index

- Audio index

- Force colorspace

- Full Luma range

###### Markers

You can use the Markers tab to add markers for certain points in the source file that are important. However, it is probably easier to add markers to your clips via the clip monitor because using it allows you preview the file at the location where you are adding the marker.

Once markers are put in your clip you can access them in the clip monitor by right clicking and selecting Go To Marker (see picture.) Also note how the markers appear as red vertical lines in the clip monitor (see yellow highlighted regions in the picture.) You can turn on the display of the marker comments in the time line too - See Show Marker Comments

Markers can also be added to clips on the timeline. Right click the Clip and choose Markers Add Marker. Markers added this way also appear in the clip in the project tree.

##### Generators

###### Countdown

This generates a clip of a countdown timer that you can put into the timeline.

The font number in the dialog is a font size in pixels. However Kdenlive displays the font in a zoomed in fashion and thus lower numbers appear to be lower quality. See the pic below which is a font number 10 compared to the screen shot above which is font number 576.

It appears that you need a pan and zoom effect to make the font of the countdown smaller

###### Noise

This generates a video noise clip - like the snow on an out of tune analogue TV.

##### Full Luma

###### Advance Clip Property - Full Luma Range

A clip can have its full luma flag set from the Clip -> Advanced properties

From this forum post by Yellow

The full luma option refers to video sources with luma recorded outside of the typical 'broadcast', 'restricted' 16 - 235 8bit range.

This option fixes problems round tripping video files with luma outside of the 16 - 235 8bit range. By default when we import a video it is handled and displayed based on the 16 - 235 range, levels below ie: 0 to 15 and those above 235 to 255 are compressed to 0 and 255, so shadows get overly dark and highlights saturated, in the preview within Kdenlive for camera sources that are full range.

Then when we render out, those levels remain in the final video, compressed shadows and saturated highlights, so there is a mismatch between the levels in the video we import compared to that exported. This only really matters for round tripping to an external application.

For any playback on DVD's, bluray and including the web like Vimeo or Youtube our video levels in the final rendered output should be in the 16 - 235 range, otherwise we see so called 'gamma shifts', 'washed out' or saturated playback depending on playback handling.

However really we want to have control of the levels adjustment in Kdenlive &ie;: 0 - 255 into 16 - 235 so full luma option changes the handling of the files and preview / scopes are based on an alternative YCbCr to RGB calculation.

By setting the full luma on, which should only be done for camera sources known to be full range 0 - 255 or even 16 - 255 such as FS100, Nex5, HV20, HV30 and probably many more consumer cameras. Canon and Nikon DSLR's too but a little more complicated, we can export video with the levels as imported, BUT and it's a big but, that is without doing any RGB operations in Kdenlive, so no effects, color correction &etc; If any effects are added then the output will be restricted range again.

For me I use full luma all the time, it allows roundtripping a video edit and maintaining levels for grading in an external application that offers 32bit float precision. When it's necessary to otherwise happy with Kdenlive's SOP/SAT and scopes.

ToDo

ToDo

## Timeline

Timeline pane

Timeline pane

The timeline is the central part of Kdenlive. It is made of 4 different areas (see screenshot).

- 1 - Track resizing icon. These 2 icons allow you to increase or decrease the height of the tracks. The default height of tracks can be configured in Kdenlive's Settings dialog.

- 2 - Timeline ruler. This shows the time in frames or in hh:mm:ss notation. The area highlighted in green is called the selection zone, and is useful if you want to render only a part of your project. Left clicking in the timeline ruler will move the timeline cursor and seek to that position. The Timeline ruler context menu allows you to manage Guides.

- 3 - Track header. This box shows some options for a track. First is the track name (Video 2 in the screenshot). That name can be changed by simply clicking in it. Below are icons to Lock the track (prevent adding / removing clips), Mute the track, and Hide video from this track. Right clicking in the track header will give you a context menu allowing to manage (add / delete) tracks.

- 4 - The track itself, this is where you can drop your clips.

### Timeline Cursor/Position Carat/Playhead

This indicates the position we are displaying in the . You can scroll the position by dragging the Timeline cursor (aka Position Carat or Playhead).

With version 0.9.4 dragging the timeline cursor will play the audio of the clip (a.k.a. Audio Scrubbing). This feature only works if you have checked use Open GL for video playback in Settings>Configure_Kdenlive>Playback

### Tracks

The timeline is made of tracks. There are two kind of tracks: audio and video. The number of tracks is defined when creating a new project in the Project Settings Dialog. Adding a clip in timeline can be achieved by dragging it from the Project Tree or the Clip Monitor.

### See also

- QuickStart-Timeline

- Editing

- Grouping

- Guides

- Right Click Menu

### Editing

Editing is done in the Timeline. Add a clip by dragging it from the project tree or the Clip Monitor. Once a clip is dropped on a track, it can be moved (drag and drop it) to another place on the track or on another track.

#### Seeking through your project

The timeline cursor shows your current position in the project. It can be moved by clicking / dragging in the Timeline ruler or in an empty area of the timeline. Other ways to move the timeline cursor are:

- The keyboard right / left arrows

- Rotating the mouse wheel while the pointer is over the timeline ruler or over the project monitor

- Editing the timecode in the project monitor timecode widget

- Clicking the up or down arrows on the project monitor timecode widget

- Dragging the position carat in the project monitor

#### Cutting a clip

To cut a clip, the easiest way is to place the timeline cursor where you want to cut the clip, then select the clip (left click in it) and use the menu Timeline Current Clip Cut Clip (default shortcut: &Shift;R).

Or Right Click Cut Clip

Alternatively - use the Razor Tool.

#### Resizing a clip

A clip can be resized from start or from end by dragging its left or right edge. If you want a more precise resize, you can place the timeline cursor wherever you want the resize to end, and use the menu Timeline Resize Item Start (default shortcut: 1) or Timeline Resize Item End (default shortcut: 2)

To even more precisely control the length of a clip double click it in the time line and adjust its duration using the Clip duration dialog. You can have frame level accuracy with this method.

You can also resize a clip by cutting it with the Razor Tool and then deleting the bit you do not want.

#### Removing Space Between Clips

Right click in the space between the clips and choose Remove Space. Be aware however that if you have clips on multiple tracks in the time line and they are not grouped - then removing space may disturb the alignment of the clips between the different tracks - the space is only removed from the timeline where you clicked. Under this situation it may be safer to use the Spacer Tool.

#### Bottom Tool Bar

There is a toolbar under the timeline that controls various aspects of the editor.

The first 6 buttons on this toolbar belong to two groups of three buttons. These are the same settings that are controlled by the Tool menu.

Active buttons are light blue with a box around them.

Edit Mode Group (one of these can be active)

1. Normal Mode

2. Overwrite Mode

3. Insert Mode

Tool Group (one of these 3 can be active)

4. Selection Tool

5. Razor Tool

6. Spacer Tool

Zoom Tools

7. Fit Zoom to Project

8. Zoom project including (L to R) zoom out, zoom level and zoom in

Ungrouped (These toggle on and off independently)

9. Split Audio and Video Automatically

10. Show Video Thumbnails

11. Show Audio Thumbnails

12. Show marker comments

13. Snap

##### Normal Mode

In this edit mode you can not drag clips on top of other clips in the same track in the timeline. You can drag them to another track in the time line but not into the same track at the same time point as an existing clip. Contrast this to overwrite mode.

##### Overwrite Mode

In this edit mode you can drag a clip into a track where there is an existing clip and the incoming clip will overwrite the existing clip over the length of the incoming clip.

The bottom of the picture shows how the track shown at the top changes after a clip has been dragged into it while the project is running in overwrite edit mode.

##### Insert Mode

This is not implemented yet.

##### Selection Tool

Use this to select clips in the timeline. The cursor becomes a hand when this tool is active.

##### Razor Tool

Use this to cut clips in the timeline. The cursor becomes a pair of scissors when this tool is active.

##### Spacer Tool

Use this tool ( ) to temporarily group separate clips and then drag them around the time line to create or remove space between clips. Very useful. Experiment with this tool to see how it works.

In the above example these clips are not grouped. However, the spacer tool groups them temporarily for you so you can move them all as a group.

##### Fit Zoom to Project

This will zoom the project out so that it all fits in the timeline window. This is the same function that is triggered by Timeline Menu item, Fit Zoom to Project.

##### Zoom project

The magnifying glasses zoom in or out on the timeline. The slider adjusts the zoom by large increments. These same settings that are controlled by the Timeline menu items, Zoom In and Zoom Out.

##### Split Audio and Video Automatically

When this is on and you drag a clip to the time line, the audio in the clip will end up on an audio track and the video on a video track. This produces the same effect as selecting the clip, right click Split Audio. With this off and you drag a clip onto the timeline both the audio and video tracks are combined into one video track.

##### Show Video Thumbnails

When on, the video clips in the timeline will contain thumbnails as well a filename. Otherwise they just have the clip filename.

##### Show Audio Thumbnails

When on, the audio clip will have a wave representation of the audio data as well as a filename. Otherwise they just have the clip filename.

##### Show marker comments

This toggles on and off the display of the comments saved inside markers (gold and inside the clip in the picture below) and inside guides (purple above the timeline in the picture below).

##### Snap

When this feature is on, dragging the beginning of one clip near to the end of another will result in the end of the first clip snapping into place to be perfectly aligned with the beginning of the first. As you move the two ends near each other, as soon as they get within a certain small distance, they snap together so there is no space and no overlap. Importantly this occurs even if the clips are in different tracks in the timeline.

Clips will also snap to the cursor position, markers and guides.

### Grouping

Grouping clips allows you to lock clips together so that you can move them as a group and still retain their positions relative to each element in the group.

#### How to Group Clips

You can select multiple clips in preparation for grouping them by holding shift and clicking the mouse and dragging in the timeline.

To group the selected clips select Timeline Group Clips or right click the selected clips and choose Group Clips.

#### Cutting Grouped Clips

Grouping is also useful if you have a separate Audio and video track and need cut and splice both tracks at exactly the same point (&eg; for audio sync reasons).

If you cut the video clip using the Razor Tool when there is an audio clip grouped to it then Kdenlive cuts the audio clip at the same point automatically.

| >> |

#### Removing Clip Grouping

To remove the grouping on clips - select the group of clips and choose Timeline Ungroup Clips.

##### FAQ

Q: How to delete sound track only?

A: Right-click on clip, choose Split Audio, the audio will move to an audio track but be grouped with the video track.

Right click again and choose Ungroup Clips.

Then you can delete the audio only track.

Alternatively you can keep the audio in the clip and use the Audio Correction Mute effect to just mute the soundtrack on the clip.

Yet another method is to select Video only from the Clip Menu.

### Guides

Guides are labels on the timeline that can be added by right clicking at a spot on the timeline scale and choosing Add Guide. You can put a comment in the guide and make the comment display by choosing Show Marker Comments in the Timeline menu or by clicking on the Show Marker Comments button.

Guides in the pic below are the purple flags. Not to be confused with markers (gold in the picture below). Guides are static on the timeline and are stationary when clips are moved around. Markers are inside the clips and move with the clips.

Guides can be used to define regions for rendering - see Rendering With The Guide Zone Option

#### Clip in Timeline - Right Click Menu

This is the context menu that appears when you right click on a clip in the timeline. A different menu appears if you click in empty space in the timeline.

Clip in Project Tree will cause the selected clip to be highlighted in the project tree.

- Group Clips.

- Ungroup Clips.

- Split Audio.

- Set Audio Reference and Align Audio to Reference are used to align two clips on different tracks in the timeline base on the audio in the tracks. This is useful if two cameras recorded the same scene simultaneously. Kdenlive can use the almost identical audio track to align the two clips.

- To use this feature:

- Select the clip that you would like to align to.

- Right click, select Set Audio Reference.

- Select all the clips that you would like to get aligned.

- Right click and select Align Audio to Reference.

- Cut Clip. Selecting this will cause the selected clip to be cut at the location of the position carat. See also cutting a clip.

- Copy.

- Paste Effects.

- Markers.

- Add Transition.

- Add Effect.

#### Empty Space in Timeline - Right Click Menu

A different menu appears if you click in empty space in the timeline.

## Alphabetical List of Effects and Transitions

Effect or Transition Name | Type | Category
--- | --- | ---
3 point balance | Video effect | Colour Correction
addition | Transition | -
addition_alpha | Transition | -
Affine | Transition | -
Alpha gradient | Video effect | Alpha manipulation
Alpha operations | Video effect | Alpha manipulation
alpha over | Transition | -
Alpha shapes | Video effect | Alpha manipulation
alphaatop | Transition | -
alphain | Transition | -
alphaout | Transition | -
alphaxor | Transition | -
Audio channels | Audio effect | Audio
Audio Wave | Video effect | Misc
Auto Mask | Video effect | Blur and hide
Balance | Audio effect | Audio
Baltan | Video effect | Misc
Bezier Curves | Video effect | Colour Correction
blend | Transition | -
Blue Screen | Video effect | Alpha manipulation
Blur | Video effect | Blur and hide
Box Blur | Video effect | Blur and hide
Brightness | Video effect | Colour Correction
Brightness (keyframable) | Video effect | Colour Correction
burn | Transition | -
Cartoon | Video effect | Misc
Charcoal | Video effect | Fun
Chroma Hold | Video effect | Colour
color_only | Transition | -
Color Distance | Video effect | Misc
Color Selection | Video effect | Alpha manipulation
Composite | Transition | -
Contrast | Video effect | Colour
Copy Channels | Audio effect | Audio
Corners | Video effect | Distort
Crop (ver <=0.9.2) | Video effect | Crop and transform
Crop, Scale and Position (ver >=0.9.3) | Video effect | Crop and transform
Curves | Video effect | Colour Correction
darken | Transition | -
Defish | Video effect | Distort
Delay grab | Video effect | Misc
delay0r | Video effect | Misc
Denoiser | Video effect | Enhancement
difference | Transition | -
Dissolve | Transition | -
Distort | Video effect | Distort
dodge | Transition | -
Dust | Video effect | Fun
Dynamic Text | Video effect | Misc
Edge Crop (ver 0.9.3) | Video effect | Crop and Transform
Edge glow | Video effect | Misc
Equaliz0r | Video effect | Misc
Fade from Black | Video effect | Fade
Fade in | Audio effect | Fade
Fade out | Audio effect | Fade
Fade to Black | Video effect | Fade
Flippo | Video effect | Misc
Freeze | Video effect | Motion
Gain | Audio effect | Audio correction
Gamma | Video effect | Colour Correction
Glow | Video effect | Blur and hide
Grain | Video effect | Fun
grain_extract | Transition | -
Greyscale | Video effect | Colour
Hard Limiter | Audio effect | Audio correction
hardlight | Transition | -
Hue shift | Video effect | Colour
Hue | Transition | -
Invert | Video effect | Colour
K-Means Clustering | Video effect | Misc
keysplillm0pup | Video effect | Misc (ver 0.9.2) or Alpha manipulation (ver> = 0.9.3)
Lens Correction | Video effect | Distort
LetterB0xed | Video effect | Crop and transform
Levels | Video effect | Colour Correction
Light Graffiti | Video effect | Misc
lighten | Transition | -
Luminance | Video effect | Misc
Mask0Mate | Video effect | Alpha manipulation
Mirror | Video effect | Distort
Mono to stereo | Audio effect | Audio
Mono to Stereo splitter | Audio effect | Audio
multiply | Transition | -
Mute | Audio effect | Audio correction
Nervous | Video effect | Misc
Nikon D90 Stairstepping fix | Video effect | Enhancement
Normalise | Audio effect | Audio correction
nosync0r | Video effect | Misc
Obscure | Video effect | Blur and hide
Oldfilm | Video effect | Fun
overlay | Transition | -
Pan | Audio effect | Audio
Pan and Zoom | Video effect | Crop and transform
Pixelize | Video effect | Distort
pr0be | Video effect | Misc
pr0file | Video effect | Misc
Primaries | Video effect | Colour
Regionalize | Video effect | Misc
Regionalize | Transition | -
RGB adjustment | Video effect | Colour Correction
rgbnoise (>=0.9.5) | Video effect | Misc
RGB Parade | Video effect | Colour
Rotate (keyframable) | Video effect | Crop and transform
Rotate and Shear | Video effect | Crop and transform
Rotoscoping | Video effect | Alpha manipulation
Saturation | Video effect | Colour
Saturation | Transition | -
Scale and Tilt | Video effect | Crop and transform
scanline0r | Video effect | Misc
Scratchlines | Video effect | Fun
screen | Transition | -
Sepia | Video effect | Colour
Sharpen | Video effect | Enhancement
sigmoidaltransfer (>=0.9.5) | Video effect | Misc
Slide | Transition | -
Sobel | Video effect | Misc
softlight | Transition | -
SOP/Sat | Video effect | Colour Correction
Speed | Video effect | Motion
Square Blur | Video effect | Blur and hide
Swap channels | Audio effect | Audio
Techicolor | Video effect | Colour
TehRoxx0r | Video effect | Misc
threelay0r | Video effect | Misc
Threshold | Video effect | Misc
Threshold0r | Video effect | Misc
Timeout indicator (>=0.9.5) | Video effect | Misc
Tint | Video effect | Colour
twolay0r | Video effect | Misc
UV Map | Transition | -
value | Transition | -
Vectorscope | Video effect | Misc
Vertigo | Video effect | Misc
Vignette | Video effect | Misc
Vignette Effect | Video effect | Fun
Volume (keyframable) | Audio effect | Audio correction
Wave | Video effect | Distort
White Balance | Video effect | Colour Correction
White_Balance(LMS) (ver>=0.9.3) | Video effect | Colour Correction
Wipe | Transition | -
Xfade0r | Transition | -

## Transitions

Transitions govern how Kdenlive cuts from one clip to the next. You can add many different transition effects using Kdenlive's transitions.

### How To Add a Transition

To add a transition, adjust clips in the time line so that the end of one overlaps with the beginning of of another.

| And then right click in the time line at the overlap point, select Add Transition and then choose one of the transitions from the flyout.

See QuickStart - transition

### Transition Tab

If you select the transition in the timeline its properties will appear in the Transition tab. (If this is not visible then use View Transitions to add it.)

You should preview your transition to make sure it is running in the direction you expect. For example if it is a dissolve transition and it is running in the correct direction then the first clip should cross dissolve into the second clip. But if it is in the wrong direction the first clip will suddenly disappear (replaced by the second track) it will then fade back in and then it will abruptly jump to second clip. If your transition is in the wrong direction just select Reverse check box in the Transition tab.

### How to create transitions with a single click

There is a short cut for creating transitions between two tracks that overlap. If you hover the mouse over the overlaping region on the time line a green triangle will appear. Clicking this adds a dissolve transition between the tracks.

YouTube video

### Automatic Transitions

By default new transitions are created as Automatic Transitions. This means that if you adjust the overlap between the two clips involved in the transition then the length of the transition will automatically adjust to cover the region where the clips overlap.

You can toggle off this feature on a transition by selecting the transition and choosing Automatic Transition from the Clip menu. When Automatic transition is off and you move a clip to change the overlapping region then the length of the transition does not automatically adjust.

### List of Transitions

See also Effects and Transitions for an alphabetical list of effects and transitions.

See also alpha operation transitions for a comparison of the various alpha operation type transitions (addition, addition_alpha, alphaatop, alphain, alphaout, alpha over and alphaxor) .

1. addition

2. addition_alpha

3. Affine

4. alphaatop

5. alphain

6. alphaout

7. alpha over

8. alphaxor

9. blend

10. burn

11. color_only

12. Composite

13. darken

14. difference

15. Dissolve

16. dodge

17. grain_extract

18. hardlight

19. Hue

20. lighten

21. multiply

22. overlay

23. Regionalize

24. Saturation

25. screen

26. Slide

27. softlight

28. UV Map

29. value

30. Wipe

31. Xfade0r

### FAQ

Q: How to add a cross fading effect?

A: Make clips on two tracks overlap in time, then pull the green dot popping-up in the corner of the bottom clip (see Transition).

### Affine Transition

Generates image rotation in 3D space, skew and distortion.

Provides keyframable animated affine transformations with dissolve functionality.

YouTube video

To rotate the image add a keyframe and enter values for rotation. The units are 10ths of degrees. (&eg; 900 = 90 degree rotation).

To add a dissolve change the opacity to zero percent.

### Composite Transition

The composite transition combines the video data from 2 video tracks into one. This transition is used in combination with Alpha Channel information supplied by one of the Alpha Manipulation Effects or by the use of a Wipe File. This Alpha Channel data describes how the two video track data should be combined. Until you define some alpha channel data using an Alpha Manipulation Effect or a Wipe File, changes in the Composite transition settings will have no visible effect.

Alpha operation options are Over, And, Or and Xor

Over Operation produces this (after you deal with the messed up preview - see hint below)

Xor Operation produces this (after you deal with the messed up preview - see hint below)

I am not sure I understand what the And and Or Alpha operations do.

#### Hint for previewing the alpha manipulation effects

The preview in Project monitor goes all strange when you select the composite transition in the time line or the video 1 in the time line.

What the project monitor looks like when you have just selected the composite transition in the time line. This is not what the rendered video will look like.

To get a look at what the video will render as you need to click Video 1 and then Video 2 in the timline.

What the preview looks like once you select Video 2 in the timeline. This is what the rendered file will look like

#### Tutorial 1

See this tutorial that describes how to use

- Alpha Manipution>Blue Screen

- rotoscoping

- Composite Transition.

- Crop and Transform -> Pan and Zoom effect

- Enhancement -> Sharpen Effect

- Alpha Manipulation>Alpha Operations

#### Tutorial 2 - composite transition and Blue Screen

Tutorial showing how to use the Blue screen function, composite transition and Keyframes to animate one image moving over another in the Kdenlive video editor

YouTube video

#### Tutorial 3 - Video Masks

This tutorial uses the composite transition and a custom video mask (A.K.A. a Wipe File or matte) to create an effect where you can make it appear that one video is playing on the screen of a still of a computer monitor.

The mask / matte is created with GIMP.

Save your mattes to `/usr/share/kde4/apps/kdenlive/lumas`.

It would appear that you need to stop and restart Kdenlive in order for it to pickup new matte/wipe files saved in the above directory.

There appears to be a defect in this functionality that means when the composite is on 100% Opacity the wipe file does not work. You need to change it to 99% to make the effect kick in.

YouTube video

Screen shot of composite transition using a custom wipe file to mask out a section of video - as described in Tutorial 3

Aspirational goal - a compositing experiment made using detonation films free sample effects

YouTube video

### Hue

This is the Frei0r hue MLT Transition.

Perform a conversion to hue only of the source input1 using the hue of input2.

### Transitions - Wipe

In this transition one shot replaces another by traveling from one side of the frame to another or with a special shape.

YouTube video

If the transition is to use a shape then this is chosen with the Image File option.

You can install new wipe files from Download New Wipes on the Settings menu.

This clip has some examples of the different wipes Kdenlive is capable of.

YouTube video

See also Composite Transition

### addition transition

Frei0r-addition

Perform an RGB[A] addition operation of the pixel sources.

### Addition_alpha transition

Frei0r-addition_alpha

Perform an RGB[A] addition_alpha operation of the pixel sources

### alpha over transition

Yellow clip has a triangle alpha shape with min = 0 and max =618.

Green clip has rectangle alpha shape with min=0 and max =1000

Alpha over is the transition in between

### alphaatop transition

Frei0r-alphaatop

The alpha ATOP operation.

Yellow clip has a triangle alpha shape with min = 0 and max =618.

Green clip has rectangle alpha shape with min=0 and max =1000

alphaatop is the transition in between .

### alphain transition

Frei0r-alphain

The alpha IN operation.

Yellow clip has a triangle alpha shape with min = 0 and max =618.

Green clip has rectangle alpha shape with min=0 and max =1000

alphain is the transition in between

### alphaout transition

Frei0r-alphaout

the alpha OUT operation

Yellow clip has a triangle alpha shape with min = 0 and max =618.

Green clip has rectangle alpha shape with min=0 and max =1000

alphaout is the transition in between

### alphaxor transtion

Frei0r-alphaxor

The alpha XOR operation.

Yellow clip has a triangle alpha shape with min = 0 and max =618.

Green clip has rectangle alpha shape with min=0 and max =1000

alphaxor is the transition in between

### Transitions - Screen

This is very much like blue screen but it works with footage filmed against a black background.

Timeline showing how to apply the Screen transition

This video composites a video of fire filmed on a black background into another bit of footage using the Screen transition.

YouTube video

### Alpha operation transitions

The addition, addition_alpha, alphaatop, alphain, alphaout, alpha over and alphaxor transitions all perform alpha operations between the two video tracks. These transitions only have an effect if the videos on the tracks have alpha channel information in them.

The Alpha Channel information is supplied by one of the Alpha Manipulation Effects. This Alpha Channel data describes which regions of the video track is transparent and how transparent it should be. Until you define some alpha channel data using an Alpha Manipulation Effect changes in the alpha operation transition settings will have no visible effect.

The alpha operation transitions define how the two different alpha channel information should be combined to produce the final image. These operations are implementing the operations described at Wikipedia page on Alpha Compositing.

In the examples below the yellow clip has a triangle alpha shape with min = 0 and max =618. This translates to 0% opacity outside the triangle and 61.8% opacity inside the triangle. Ie the alpha channel in the yellow track say show all the track underneath outside the triangle and show 38.2% of the underneath track inside the triangle

The Green clip has a rectangle alpha shape with min=0 and max =1000. This translates to make the clip 100% transparent outside the rectangle and 0% transparent inside the rectangle.

alphaxor

alphaout

alphain

alphaatop

alpha over

## Effects

Effects in Kdenlive can be used to modify the audio and video properties of the source material.

You add effects to clips by choosing them from the Effects List and dragging them onto a clip in the timeline. Or by selecting a clip in the timeline and choosing Add Effect from the Timeline menu or Add Effect from Clip in Timeline right click menu . For more detail see QuickStart - Effects

The effects that are in play on a given clip can be viewed and edited via the effect stack that displays when the clip in question is selected in the timeline.

### Effect List

Make the Effects List visible from the View menu (View Effect List)

Figure 1

Figure 1

To have a brief description of the effect display at the bottom of the list - click the button as highlighted in figure 1.

To add an effect to a clip simply drag it from the Effect List to the clip on the timeline.

### Effect Stack and its Menu

#### The effect Stack

Figure 2 shows the effect stack for a clip. The effect stack can be made visible from the View menu Effect Stack

Figure 2

Figure 2

Click the eye icon shown at 2 to temporarily disable the effect and toggle the button to the state shown at 1.

Click the empty eye icon shown at 1 to re-enable a disabled effect and toggle the button to the state shown at 2.

To remove an effect from a clip click the X labeled 3 in the image below. The arrow labeled 1 minimizes the effect in the effect stack. And the arrow labeled 2 brings up the menu shown. The image shows the menu in ver 0.9.3 which has the additional Create Region menu option.

#### Reset Effect

This reverts all the settings in the effect back to their default values.

#### Save Effect

This allows you to save the current effect and all its settings. The saved effect will appear in the Effect List in the Custom category.

#### Create Group

This creates an Effects Group. An effects group is a place holder for multiple effects. You can then save the group of effects - they will the appear in the Effects list in the Custom Section. You can then later apply the whole group of effects to other parts of the time line.

#### Create Region

New in ver >=0.9.3

The Create Region feature enables user to apply an effect to a part of a clip only. It is a really powerfull feature but currently the UI is not fully ready to get it's full potential.

Basically, you add an effect to a clip, for example Sepia. Then, you go in the effect's menu, select Create Region. This will now open a file dialog.

In that dialog, you need to point to an MLT clip with alpha transparency. This is where Kdenlive is not 100% ready because there are many ways we could create such clips using for example a threshold filter or rotoscoping. But as a start, let's say you can open any image with alpha transparency, or a title clip created with Kdenlive. Then, the sepia effect will only be applied on the non transparent areas of this region clip.

### Using Keyframes in effects

Many effects use the concept of Keyframe. Keyframes are user defined points in your clip where you want an effect to start, stop or change. You can set the parameters for your effects to different values at different keyframes and Kdenlive will then gradually change the parameters between the two keyframes so that by the time the video has arrived at the next keyframe it will have adjusted the parameter to match that key frame. It interpolates between keyframes.

See QuickStart - Effects for an example on keyframing the RGB adjustment effect

### Seek To Active Frame

Some keyframe controls have a seek to active frame button (labeled 1 in the screen shot A below). When seek to active frame is toggled on and you click on one of the key frames in the keyframe list then Kdenlive will scroll the preview window to that keyframe. In the example of the screen shot we have selected the keyframe at 9:20 in A and the clip position carat (highlighted in red box) shows the location of this keyframe. Clicking the keyframe at 10:00 in B shows how the clip position has moved.

### Effects Demos

You can find screen shots describing 33 of the video effects here

The following three YouTube videos display the effects of a number of the video effects available in Kdenlive (Spanish captioning)

YouTube video

YouTube video

YouTube video

Another YouTube video (English Captions)

YouTube video

See also this youtube play list from Franz M.P.

### Effects Categories

see also Effects and Transitions for an alphabetical list of effects and transitions.

You can find screen shots describing 33 of the video effects here

The effects are divided into the following categories

1. Alpha manipulation

2. Audio

3. Audio channels

4. Audio Correction

5. Blur and hide

6. Color

7. Color Correction

8. Crop and transform

9. Custom

10. Distort

11. Enhancement

12. Fade

13. Fun

14. Misc

15. Motion

The available effects are defined by `.xml` files found in `$KDEDIR/share/kde4/apps/kdenlive/effects` (&eg; `/usr/share/kde4/apps/kdenlive/effects`)

FAQ:

Q: How to duplicate an effect to use similar settings somewhere else?

A: Select your effect in the timeline, in effects stack widget choose Save, you get it available in Effects List Custom section

A: Other solution: select a strip containing the effect, Copy, then where you want to apply it again right-click and select Paste effect instead of Paste

Q: How to apply an effect on several clips (all) at the same time?

A: You can select multiple clips with &Shift; + drag (left mouse button) around them. Then right click and group clips (or &Ctrl;G)

### Effects - Alpha manipulation

#### General Information about Alpha Manipulation

As far as I am aware Alpha Manipulation effects are always used in combination with a composite transition. This because Alpha Manipulation is to do with manipulating the so called alpha-channel of images and videos. The Alpha channel is data that describes how two images are to be combined (or composited) into one. So you need a composite transition on the timeline to tell Kdenlive that you are compositing the videos from two different tracks into one image.

| This image shows two video tracks with no transition.The project monitor shows how the upper track takes precedence when no transition is in play.

| This image shows two video tracks with a composite transition in place but with no Alpha information to tell Kdenlive how to combine the images.With composite transition but no alpha info to describe how to composite the picture the top track still takes precedence.

| This image shows the situation with Alpha info now added via the blue screen method.So now that we have alpha information the second tracks image now shows through where the alpha channel says the image should be transparent.

Once you have some alpha channel data in play you can alter the settings in your composite transition to change how the images will combine. See composite transition page for details.

You can also combine two video tracks together using the screen transition (if one of them is filmed on a black background).

#### Hint for previewing the alpha manipulation effects

The preview in Project monitor might go all strange when you select the composite transition in the time line or the video 1 in the time line. (Reported at bug 2990 and fixed in ver >=0.9.5 of Kdenlive)

What the project monitor looks like when you have just selected the composite transition in the time line. This is not what the rendered video will look like.

To get a look at what the video will render as you need to click Video 1 and then Video 2 in the timeline.

What the preview looks like once you select Video 2 in the timeline. This is what the rendered file will look like

#### Effects in the Alpha Manipulation Category

1. Alpha gradient

2. Alpha operations

3. Alpha shapes

4. Blue Screen

5. Color Selection

6. Mask0Mate

7. Rotoscoping

8. keysplillm0pup

#### Compositing Reference Material

For some background the Wikipedia article in alpha compositing is usefull. See also Porter, Thomas; Tom Duff (1984). Compositing Digital Images. Computer Graphics 18 (3): p253–259 1984 pdf

#### Alpha gradient

This is the frei0r.alphagrad effect

see also Frei0r-alphagrad readme file.

This effect fills the alpha channel with a gradient.

#### Alpha operations

This is Frei0r alpha0ps - Display and manipulation of the alpha channel.

Use this to shrink, grow, threshold and visualize the alpha channel.

From the Frei0r-alpha0p readme file:

This plugin can shrink, grow, threshold and invert the alpha channel. It is mainly intended to improve keying edges.

It can also display the alpha channel in various ways, to enable quick assessment of the effect.

It is cascadable, so for example one can do a soft shrink first and then threshold, which gives a slightly different result than a hard shrink.

Parameters:

Display:

  what to display. There are seven options: Image, Alpha as gray, Gray+red, Selection on black, Selection on gray, Selection on white and Selection on checkers.This is intended for monitoring during adjustment mostly. After adjusting the parameters, it should be left on Image, which lets the unchanged input image through - this plugin is intended to change only the alpha channel...

Display input alpha:

  use input alpha for the display function above. (Check what alpha we are getting on the input)

Operation:

  select the operation to be done on the alpha channel. Currently there are six choices: NO OP, Shave, Shrink hard, Shrink soft, Grow hard, Grow soft, Threshold.

Shave try to remove the hairy stuff, and also shrinks the selection a bit.

The hard operations introduce no new values to the alpha channel, so if you have a hard key (only 0 and 255) it will stay that way.

The soft operations will introduce interpolated values, making the edge softer.

The shave, shrink and grow operations are quite slow, because they do many conditional operations on each pixel.

| Display Menu Options Display Menu Options | Operation Menu Options Operation Menu Options

Threshold:

  This is only used for the Threshold operation.

Shrink/grow amount:

  How far the shrinking/growing will extend.

Invert:

  Inverts the input alpha channel, transparent will become opaque and vice versa.

##### Tutorial 1

Shows usage of alpha operations - Shrink hard as well as the following effects: blue screen, denoiser and denoiser

YouTube video

#### Alpha Shapes

This is the Frei0r filter alphaspot

see also Frei0r-alphaspot readme file

Use this in combination with a composite transition to place areas of transparency onto an overlaying clip such that the underlying clip shows through in places defined by geometric shapes. By default the area of transparency is outside the shape that is is drawn. Inside the shape is an area of opacity where the overlaying clip is visible.

##### Shape Options

This controls the shape of the area of opacity that the effect will create.

Shape options are Rectangle, Ellipse, Triangle Diamond.

##### Tilt

This controls the angle the shape appears on the screen. The units are in 1000ths of a full rotation. eg a factor of 250 is one quarter of a circle turn and 500 is a 180 turn. ie 1000 tilt units = 360 degrees

##### Position X and Y

This defines the position of the shape on the screen

##### Size X and Y

Defines the size of the shape

##### Transition Width

Defines the width of a border on the shape where the transparency grades from inside to outside the shape

##### Operations

Operations define what is to happen when you have more than one Alpha effect on the clip.

Operations are Write On Clear, Max, Min, Add, Subtract.

- Write On Clear = existing alpha mask is overwritten

- Max = maximum( existing alpha mask, mask generated by this filter)

- Min = minimum(existing alpha mask, mask generated by this filter)

- Add = existing alpha mask + mask generated by this filter

- Subtract = existing alpha mask - mask generated by this filter

See the worked examples below to understand what these operations do.

##### Min and Max and Operations - Worked examples

These examples are performed on a simple composite transition with a video file on Video track 1 and a color clip (yellow) on Video track 2.

Alpha shapes effect draws areas of opacity onto the image. The addition of this filter (with the default settings of Min = 0 and Max =1000) makes the whole frame transparent except for an area of opaqueness where the top image can be seen.

The Max and Min controls adjust the opacity of the image inside and outside of the shape respectively. A setting of 1000 is 100% opaque. A setting of zero is 0 % Opaque (ie 100% Transparent).

Max control

The Max control regulates how opaque it is inside the shape. At Max= 1000 it is completely opaque inside the shape and none of the background image shows through

At Max = 500 it is semi transparent inside the shape and you can see the background bleeding through.

At Max = 0 inside the shape is completely transparent - the same as the rest of the foreground image - and you can see all background.

Min Control

The Min control adjusts how opaque it is outside the shape. When Min = 0 outside the shape is completely transparent (opacity of zero) and at Min = 500 we see some of the foreground appear outside the shape.

At Min = 1000 the opacity outside the shape is 100% and none of the background appears.

Combining Alpha Shapes - Operations

In this example I have a Triangle Alpha shape defined as shown and this is at the top of the effect stack with operation write on clear

Which appears like this on its own

And I have rectangle alpha shape as shown which is at the bottom of the effect stack. Note the Max = 500 - &ie; 50% opacity inside the rectangle

Which appears like this when on its own.

In the images below I demonstrate the effect of different alpha operations on the rectangle alpha shape.

Write on Clear - existing alpha mask is overwritten

add = existing alpha mask + mask generated by this filter.

Note that areas with 1000 + 500 opacity would be 150% opaque. But you cant get 150% opaque so they look the same as the 100% opaque areas

subtract = existing alpha mask - mask generated by this filter

Note that areas with 0 - 500 opacity would be minus 50% opaque. But you cant get -50% opaque so they look the same as the 0% opaque areas

max = maximum( )

min = minimum( )

#### Blue Screen

FilterFrei0r-bluescreen0r

This effect allows you to do Chroma Keying (Chroma key compositing/Green Screen) on Kdenlive. That is you can use the Blue Screen effect to generate alpha channel information allowing two video tracks to be combined using the Composite transition.

Alternatively you can combine two video tracks together using the screen transition (if one of them is filmed on a black background).

##### Tutorial 1

Youtube video on Chroma Keying which uses the Blue Screen effect

YouTube video

##### Tutorial 2

Another video on chroma keying / green screen. This one also shows you how to use rotoscoping to remove stuff you do not want from out of your frame. It also means you don't need to fill your whole frame with the green screen either.

Also uses

- Composite Transition.

- Crop and Transform>Pan and Zoom effect

- Enhancment>Sharpen Effect

YouTube video

##### Tutorial 3

Tutorial showing how to use the Blue screen function and keyframes to animate one image moving over another in the Kdenlive video editor

Also uses

- Composite Transition

- Keyframes

YouTube video

##### Tutorial 4

Shows usage of the following effects: blue screen, alpha operations - shrinkhard, denoiser and denoiser

YouTube video

##### See also

See also denoiser effect in the Misc group. The keyspillm0pup effect can be used to improve the edges of the blue screen effect - when edge problems are caused by keyspill. Keyspill is when the color of the screen used for colorkeying spills onto the subject due to light reflection.

See also denoiser which also does color based alpha selection.

see this thread for some discussion on chroma keying issues in Kdenlive

#### Color Selection

This is the FilterFrei0r-select0r filter written by Marko Cebokli August 2010.

This is color based alpha selection. For example, this offers you a blue screen/green screen/chroma-keying effect.

Color to select: the color to select. This is the center point of the selected color subspace.

Invert selection: When ON, the selected color will be transparent, as normally used with keying. When OFF (default) the selected color will be opaque, for example for alpha controlled adjustment of that color only.

Selection Subspace options are: RGB (Red Green Blue), ABI and HCI (Hue Chromacity Intensity)

Specifies in which of the three color spaces (RGB, ABI, HCI) the delta controls will work. Both ABI and HCI are separated luma/chroma. HCI is a cylindrical Hue Chromacity Intensity space, and ABI is a cartesian version thereof. Both suffer from chroma subsampling, and will give less sharp results than RGB.

Chroma subsampling is not a fault of this plugin. Frei0r plugins work in RGB 4:4:4. If you supply it with a truly 4:4:4 video, it will produce perfectly sharp alpha from all three color spaces.

HCI is slow, because it has to calculate atan2() and hypot() for each pixel.

ABI is based on the alpha an beta coordinates, upon which most of the Hxx type colorspaces are defined.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSL_and_HSV

Subspace Shape options are: Box, Ellipsoid, Diamond

Determines the shape of the color subspace. Options are: box, ellipsoid or diamond. Box is the biggest of them (by volume) and diamond the smallest. Imagine an octahedron inscribed inside an ellipsoid, which is in turn inscribed in a box. The tips of the diamond touch the ellipsoid, and the box, at the center of the sides of the box.

Edge Mode Options are: Hard, Fat, Normal, Skinny, Slope

Hard means the alpha channel will be thresholded to two values only, fully opaque and fully transparent. This is mainly useful for keying.

The remaining options (Fat, Normal and Skinny) create a gradual transition between transparent and opaque. Alpha will be a function of the difference of color from the selected color, with cutoff at the delta points. The fatter the choice, the more the selected areas are filled towards the rim. This is useful with alpha controlled color adjustment tools.

Operation options are: Write On Clear, Max, Min, Add and Subtract. This defines how to deal with an existing alpha channel in the clip. See for the meanings of these operations.

The min, max, add and subtract options allow cascading of select0r plugins (or combination with other alpha-writting plugins). These options combine the current selection with the pre-existing alpha of the source material. This way complex selections can be built.

Delta XXXX:

These three parameters determine the size of the color subspace along each axis. Bigger value means bigger tolerance on that axis.

For example, setting a high I delta (in ABI and HCI), will allow the selection of a specific color in both light and shadows, but will also discard most of the high-bandwidth luma signal, making the selection less spatially accurate.

##### See Also

See also which does color based alpha selection but is a bit simpler.

This page covers some Color Theory to help understand Hue, Chroma, Luminance &etc;

#### Mask0Mate

FilterFrei0r-mask0mate

Creates an square alpha-channel mask

YouTube video

I don't think this sample file actually shows what Mask0Mate does.

#### Rotoscoping

##### What is Rotoscoping?

In the visual effects industry, the term rotoscoping refers to the technique of manually creating a matte for an element on a live-action plate so it may be composited over another background. Wikipedia

Use this effect in combination with a composite transition to draw a region on one video track which will be transparent and allow the video track underneath to appear.

##### How to draw the region in Kdenlive?

The region is drawn by creating a Bézier_curve on the frame.

Add nodes to the Bézier curve by left clicking the mouse.

Close the curve by clicking back on the first node added.

Remove nodes by right clicking on them.

Insert extra nodes in the curve by clicking on the line between nodes.

Change the position of the curve by dragging the middle control point of a node.

Adjust the shape of the curve by dragging the control handles. These are the two dots on the ends of the straight lines that appear on the curve (see screen shot above).

To define if it is the inside or the outside of the curve that is transparent toggle the invert checkbox.

##### How to move the mask to follow the action - keyframes

To make the drawn mask follow the action in a clip...

Move the position in the clip by dragging the carat on the time line (1 or 3 in screenshot below) or by using the time code control in the rotoscope effect (2 in the screenshot)

Click add key frame (5 in the screen shot).

Now adjust the position of the nodes in the curve to match the action.

Kdenlive will calculate a path to move the nodes from the position they were in the previous key frame to the position you put them in at this keyframe. So you do not have to draw a curve for every frame in the clip.

To remove a key frame move to the frame with the key frame using the Go to previous keyframe (4) or Go to next keyframe (6) and then click the red X that the add key frame (5) becomes when you are on an existing keyframe.

This effect is based on the MLT FilterRotoscoping

##### Rotoscoping options greyed out

When you first add the rotoscope effect the keyframe options in it are greyed out. You can not even add a new keyframe.

Solution. Click in the project monitor and start drawing your rotoscope matte. Then the rotoscope keyframe options become enabled.

##### Examples

Examples of what you can do with the Rotoscoping effect.

YouTube video

YouTube video

see also Rotoscoping on ttill's blog

##### Tutorial with Rotoscoping

This video is about green screen on Kdenlive but he does use rotoscoping in it too.

YouTube video

### Effects - Audio

The following effects are available under the Effects List Audio. The links below are to the MLT frame work documentation for these audio effects. Somewhat better documenation may be found at Steve Harris' LADSPA Plugin Docs here

4 x 4 pole allpass

Aliasing

Allpass delay line cubic spline interpolation

Allpass delay line linear interpolation

Allpass delay line noninterpolating

AM pitchshifter

Artificial latency

Auto phaser

Barry's Satan Maximiser

Bode frequency shifter

Bode frequency shifter (CV)

Chebyshev distortion

Comb delay line cubic spline interpolation

Comb delay line linear interpolation

Comb delay line noninterpolating

Comb Filter

Constant Signal Generator

Crossfade

Crossfade (4 outs)

Crossover distortion

DC Offset Remover

Decimator

Declipper

Delayorama

Diode Processor

DJ EQ

DJ EQ (mono)

DJ flanger

Dyson compressor

Exponential signal decay

Fast overdrive

Flanger

FM Oscillator

Foldover distortion

Fractionally Addressed Delay Line

Frequency tracker

Gate

Giant flange

Glame Bandpass Analog Filter

Glame Bandpass Filter

GLAME Butterworth Highpass

GLAME Butterworth Lowpass

Glame Butterworth X-over Filter

Glame Highpass Filter

Glame Lowpass Filter

Gong beater

Gong model

GSM simulator

GVerb

Harmonic generator

Hermes Filter

Higher Quality Pitch Scaler

Hilbert transformer

Impulse convolver

Inverter

Karaoke

L/C/R Delay

LFO Phaser

LS Filter

Mag's Notch Filter

Matrix Spatialiser

Matrix: MS to Stereo

Matrix: Stereo to MS

Modulatable delay

Multiband EQ

Multivoice Chorus

Pitch Scaler

Plate reverb

Pointer cast distortion

Rate shifter

Retro Flanger

Reverse Delay (5s max)

Ringmod with LFO

Ringmod with two inputs

SC1

SC2

SC3

SC4

SC4 mono

SE4

Signal sifter

Simple amplifier

Simple delay line cubic spline interpolation

Simple delay line linear interpolation

Single band parametric

Sinus wavewrapper

Smooth Decimator

Sox band

Sox bass

Sox echo

Sox flanger

Sox gain

Sox phaser

Sox stretch

State Variable Filter

Step Demuxer

Surround matrix encoder

Tape Delay Simulation

Transient mangler

Triple band parametric with shelves

Valve rectifier

Valve saturation

VyNil (Vinyl Effect)

Wave shaper

Wave Terrain Oscillator

z-1

### Effects - Audio channels

The Audio channels group in the effects has the following effects

1. Balance

2. Copy Channels

3. Mono to stereo

4. Mono to Stereo splitter

5. Pan

6. Swap channels

### Effects - Audio Correction

The Audio Correction group contains the following effects

1. Gain

2. Hard Limiter

3. Mute

4. Normalise

5. Volume (keyframable)

#### Audio Correction - Mute

This effect mutes the sound track on the video. The audio on the track will not be audible.

### Effects - Blur and Hide

The Blur and Hide group of effects contains the following effects

1. Auto Mask

2. Blur

3. Box Blur

4. Glow

5. Obscure

6. Square Blur

#### Auto Mask

This effect can be used to mask peoples faces. It uses motion estimation to track subjects and mask faces. It is the MLT filter autotrack_rectangle

YouTube video

The effect is not 100% reliable. See video below on how to use this effect

YouTube video

##### Motion Tracking

The Auto Mask effect can also be used to track motion of an object and use it later as keyframes for an effect / transition. To use this feature, first add the clip you want to analyse in timeline, and add the Auto Mask effect to it.

Go to the first frame where your object is visible, and adjust the yellow rectangle so that is surrounds the object, like the hand in the screenshot.

Then click on the Analyse button in the effect options. This will start an analysis of the clip (you can follow its progress in the Project Tree view).

When the job is finished, the motion tracking data is stored in the clip properties. To use this data, you can for example add a title clip over the clip you just analysed, like in the screenshot on the left.

Next step is to import the motion data in the transition. To do this, first select the clip you have analysed, then select the transition using the CTRL key so that both items are selected. Finally, go in the transitions's config menu and select Import keyframes from clip. You can now delete the Auto Mask effect from the clip in timeline and play the project to see your title clip following the object.

#### Box Blur

This is the Boxblur MLT filter.

Separate horizontal and vertical blur.

YouTube video

YouTube video

Not 100% sure if this sample is Box Blur or Square Blur. The caption on this sample was translated from Spanish. Original Spanish was Difuminar en cuadro.

#### Glow

This the Frei0r glow MLT filter.

Creates a Glamorous Glow.

YouTube video

YouTube video

#### Obscure

Obscure

Hide a region of the clip

YouTube video

YouTube video

#### Square Blur

Frei0r-squareblur

Variable-size square blur

YouTube video

Not 100% sure if this sample is Square Blur or Box Blur. The caption on this sample was translated from Spanish. Original Spanish was Difuminar de cuadro

YouTube video

### Effects - Color

The Color group of effects contains the follow effects

1. B (ver 0.9.3)

2. Chroma Hold

3. Contrast

4. Greyscale

5. Hue shift

6. Invert

7. Primaries

8. RGB Parade

9. Saturation

10. Sepia

11. Techicolor

12. Tint

#### B effect

This rather minimally named effect is the frei0r.B effect from Richard Spindler.

This is down as Extract Blue from Image. But to me it removes all colour and I get a grey image.

This effect appeared in Kdenlive ver 0.9.3 in the Color group. There are also frei0r.G and frei0r.R filters that extract Green and Red - but they are not in Kdenlive - dunno why.

#### Chroma Hold

This is the FilterChroma_hold MLT frame work filter.

Makes image greyscale except for chosen color.

YouTube video

YouTube video

#### Contrast

This is probably the FilterSox-contrast MLT frame work filter

#### Greyscale

This is the FilterGreyscale MLT frame work filter

Discards color information.

YouTube video

YouTube video

#### Hue Shift

This is the FilterFrei0r-hueshift0r MLT frame work filter.

Shifts the hue of a source image

YouTube video

YouTube video

YouTube video

#### Invert

This is the FilterInvert MLT frame work filter.

Invert colors

YouTube video

#### Primaries

This is probably the FilterFrei0r-primaries MLT frame work filter

YouTube video

#### RGB Parade

This is the FilterFrei0r-rgbparade MLT frame work filter.

Display a histogram of R, G and B components of the video data.

YouTube video

This is different from the from the View Menu because the Effect version writes the histogram into the output video whereas the View Menu version just displays the histogram in widget in the application while you preview your project.

#### Saturation Effect

This is the FilterFrei0r-saturat0r MLT frame work filter

Adjusts the saturation of a source image

YouTube video

YouTube video

#### Sepia

This is the FilterSepia MLT frame work filter.

Turn clip colors to sepia

YouTube video

YouTube video

#### Technicolor

This is probably the FilterTcolor MLT frame work filter.

YouTube video

#### Tint

This is probably the FilterFrei0r-tint0r MLT frame work filter.

YouTube video

### Effects - Colour Correction

The Colour Correction group of effects contains the following effects

1. 3 point balance

2. Bezier Curves

3. Brightness

4. Brightness (keyframable)

5. Curves

6. Gamma

7. Levels

8. RGB adjustment

9. SOP/Sat

10. White Balance

11. White Balance (LMS Space) (ver >=0.9.3)

#### 3 point balance

This is probably the FilterFrei0r-three_point_balance MLT frame work filter

YouTube video

#### Brightness

This is the FilterFrei0r-brightness MLT frame work filter

YouTube video

YouTube video

#### Brightness (keyframable)

This is probably the FilterBrightness MLT frame work filter

#### Curves

This is probably the FilterFrei0r-curves MLT frame work filter

YouTube video

YouTube video

YouTube video

#### Gamma

This is the FilterGamma MLT frame work filter.

Changes gamma color value.

YouTube video

YouTube video

#### Levels

This is probably the FilterFrei0r-levels MLT frame work filter.

YouTube video

#### RGB adjustment

This filter is for simple manual color adjustment by RGB channel, either through adding constants, or changing the channel gammas or gains.

Simple means that it works channel-wise, no crosstalk. The off-diagonal elements of the transform matrix are zero - no color

crosstalk, no color space rotation. But this should be sufficient for many tasks. For example, when shooting under tungsten light, the blue signal will not migrate into red, it will simply be too small. Amplifying the blue (and a bit of green too) should be all that is needed. Similar, an underwater shot will simply be red deficient, needing some red boost, &etc;

parameters:

R,G,B:

these determine the change in each of the three color channels.

Action:

- Add constant adds a fixed value between -150 and +150 (this is sometimes called black level or setup).

- Change gamma changes channel gamma between 0.3333 and 3.0.

- Multiply multiplies channel with a value between 0.3333 and 3.0 (sometimes called gain or contrast)

To apply more than one action above, use cascaded instances of coloradj_RGB.

Add constant simply shifts the RGB cube colorspace. This means, that on one end we are left with empty space, which is filled with zeros, and on the other end, values can fall outside, and in this case they will be truncated to max (255). Change gain changes the size of the cube, keeping the black corner fixed, affecting predominately highlights, but the other end can still

fall out and get 255 truncated. Change gamma keeps the whole cube in the same place, just stretches and squeezes its interior, so no zero filling or truncation is necessary.

To visualize this plugin's actions, apply it to a gray gradient, and watch the result with pr0file.

Keep luma:

Fixes the luma value, so that the sliders only affect color.

#### SOP/Sat Effect

This is the FilterFrei0r-sopsat MLT frame work filter.

It changes Slope, Offset, and Power of the color components, and the overall Saturation, according to the ASC CDL (Color Decision List) reference

Changing the slope means multiplying the pixel value with a constant value. Black pixels will remain black, whileas brighter ones will be changed. All effects can be observed well when applied on a greyscale gradient and looking at the RGB Parade monitor.

You can use this effect to achieve proper white balance.

See Granjow's blog where he uses the effect to adjust white balance of a clip.

#### White Balance

This is the FilterFrei0r-balanc0r MLT frame work filter

Adjust the white balance / color temperature

YouTube video

YouTube video

#### White Balance (LMS)

This is the frei0r.colgate filter from Steiner H. Gunderson.

Do simple color correction, in a physically meaningful way

Parameters:

Neutral Color: Choose a color from the source image that should be white.

Color Temperature: Choose an output color temperature, if different from 6500 K.

### Effects - Crop and transform

1. Crop (ver= 0.9.3)

2. LetterB0xed

3. Pan and Zoom

4. Rotate (keyframable)

5. Rotate and Shear

6. Scale and Tilt (ver =0.9.3)

#### Crop (ver 0.9.2) or Edge Crop (ver 0.9.3)

This effect by Dan Dennedy trim the edges of a clip.

It changed its name from Crop to Edge Crop in ver 0.9.3 of Kdenlive

#### LetterB0xed

This is .

Adds Black Borders at top and bottom for Cinema Look.

YouTube video

YouTube video

#### Pan and Zoom

Adjust size and position of clip using smooth affine transformations.

This example we have two key frames in the pan and zoom. One at the beginning and one at the end. Size is 25% at the start key frame and 100% at the end. Centered the images on the screen at both keyframes.

YouTube video

YouTube video

See also this tutorial that describes how to use

- Alpha Manipution>Blue Screen

- rotoscoping

- Composite Transition

- Crop and Transform>Pan and Zoom effect

- Enhancment>Sharpen Effect

- Alpha Manipulation>Alpha Operations

#### Rotate

YouTube video

#### Rotate and Shear

This would appear to be the Affine MLT filter as defined in rotation.xml (/usr/share/kde4/apps/kdenlive/effects)

Rotate clip in any 3 directions

This screen shot shows settings for Rotate and Shear that can correct wide-screen footage shot while holding the camera the wrong orientation.

Do a rotate X of 900 units (the units are in tenths of a degree). You can also adjust the size with this effect

YouTube video

#### Crop, Scale and Position

This effect was named as Scale and Tilt (ver =0.9.3)

This is the Frei0r scale0tilt MLT filter from Richard Spindler.

In version 0.9.3 it was renamed from Scale and Tilt to Crop, Scale and Position

Scales, Tilts and Crops an Image

YouTube video

See also Pan and Zoom which can do very similar things and may do them better.

### Effects - Custom

The Custom Group in the Effects List is where Effects appear when you choose Save Effect from an effect in the effect stack.

#### Defect in ver 0.9.2

There was a defect in ver 0.9.2 of Kdenlive where saving a new Effect made the existing custom effect invisible in the Custom section. With the upshot that you could only have one custom effect visible. This is fixed in version 0.9.3. See See this Bug Tracker Entry

The workaround in ver 0.9.2 was - Start and Stop Kdenlive. The restarting Kdenlive causes the Custom effects to be updated and you can see all the ones you have saved.

(fixed)

### Effects - Distort

1. Corners

2. Defish

3. Distort

4. Lens Correction

5. Mirror

6. Pixelize

7. Wave

#### Distort - Corners

See ttill's blog

#### Defish

This effect can transform footage shot with a fisheye lens, to look like it was shot with a rectilinear lens, and vice versa. It can also be used to straighten the video that was shot with one of these wideangle converters, which are only slightly curvy, or with a semi-fisheye camera, like the GoPro hero.

##### PARAMETERS

Amount

Controls the amount of (de)distortion applied to the video. It controls the ratio of fisheye focal length to image half diagonal, but

in an nonlinear inverse way, to make the control more comfortable. It can be adjusted beyond reasonable values (which differ between the mapping function types), to produce some looney effects. When exploring this range, and the image disappears, check the scaling, could be that the image became too big or too small to see. For some unreasonable values the image might indeed disappear, when there are math overflows or imaginary results... (types 1 and 2 are more prone to image vanishing). Anyway, when working in the special effect range, it is always worth to try manual scaling. If the video contains zooming through a curvy wideangle adaptor, the needed amount will vary. In this case use keyframing.

DeFish

If checked, the transform direction is from fisheye to rectiliear, when not checked, it is rectilinear to fisheye.

Type

Selects the fisheye angular mapping function used, among four possibilities:

- equidistant

- orthographic

- equiarea

- stereographic

Wikipedia has a nice article about these.

Scaling

Select among three auto scaling options and manual scale:

- scale to fill

- keep center scale

- scale to fit

- manual scale

Fill means that no empty borders will be left, but some of the input image will be cropped. Fit means that no part of the input

image will be cropped, but there will be blank areas at the borders.

Manual Scale

When Scaling is set to manual scale, this control directly affects the image scale, from 1/100 to 100X size. Only has effect when

Scaling is set to manual!

Interpolator

Selects among seven different interpolators. This allows one to make a quality/speed tradeoff. The interpolators are ordered from fast, low quality to (very) slow high quality. The spline interpolating polynomials are from Helmut Dersch. For realtime use, option 0 is the fastest, in fact it is equal to no interpolation. In most cases bilinear should be good enough, and on a decent machine should still run in real time. Beyond bicubic, the quality gain is marginal for a single resampling. Lanczos takes an eternity!

- Nearest neighbor

- Bilinear

- Bicubic smooth

- Bicubic sharp

- Spline 4x4

- Spline 6x6

- Lanczos 16x16

Aspect Type

Selects among four pixel aspect ratio presets, and manual: To get the math right, Defish0r needs to know the pixel aspect

ratio.

- Square pixels

- PAL DV 1.067

- NTSC DV 0.889

- HDV 1.333

- manual variable

Manual aspect

When Aspect Type is set to option manual variable, this control directly affects the pixel aspect ratio, from 0.5 to 2. Only has effect when Aspect Type is set to manual!

##### SOME APPLICATION NOTES

1. Tweaking the parameters for best defish

Take a shot of something like a brick wall or bathroom tiles, that has a lot of horizontal and vertical straight lines. Be careful to keep the optical axis as perpendicular as possible to the wall (=keep a maximally symmetrical image in the viewfinder). Use this

image to tweak the parameters, primarily amount, type and aspect.

2. Some examples of Defish0r abuse

These were tried with PAL DV. These examples work best, when there is some interesting action near the center of the image.

For a kind of roundish kaleidoscope, try this:

Amount=775,

Defish = OFF,

Type = equidistant,

Scaling = manual scale,

Manual Scale = 300...400

Another crazy distortion:

Amount = 921,

Defish = OFF,

Type = stereographic,

Scaling = manual scale,

Manual Scale = 191

For an effect, reminiscent of some scenes from the 2001 Spcae Odyssey try this:

Amount = 900,

Defish = ON,

Type = stereographic,

Scaling = fill

#### Distort

YouTube video

#### Lens Correction

This is the Frei0r-lenscorrection MLT filter.

Allows compensation of lens distortion.

YouTube video

YouTube video

#### Mirror

This is the Mirror MLT filter

Provides various mirror and image reversing effects.

YouTube video

YouTube video

#### Pixelize

This is the Frei0r pixeliz0r MLT filter.

Pixelize input image.

YouTube video

YouTube video

#### Wave

This is the Wave MLT filter

Make waves on your clip with keyframes.

YouTube video

YouTube video

### Effects - Enhancement

1. Denoiser

2. Nikon D90 Stairstepping fix

3. Sharpen

#### Denoiser

This is the frei0r hqdn3d - a High quality 3D denoiser from Mplayer.

##### Tutorial 1

Shows usage of the denoiser effect as well as: blue screen, alpha operations - shrinkhard and denoiser

YouTube video

#### Sharpen

The sharpen tool is a port of unsharp mask from Mplayer. from Mplayer. The parameters are the usual ones for unsharp masking, The size means the size of the blur, and the amount is how much of the blurred version gets subtracted.

See this tutorial that describes how to use

- Alpha Manipulation>Blue Screen

- rotoscoping

- Composite Transition

- Crop and Transform>Pan and Zoom effect

- Sharpen Effect

- Alpha Manipulation>Alpha Operations

YouTube video

### Effects - Fade

1. Fade from Black (video effect)

2. Fade in (audio effect)

3. Fade out (audio effect)

4. Fade to Black (video effect)

#### Fade From Black

YouTube video

YouTube video

#### Fade to Black

YouTube video

YouTube video

### Effects - Fun

1. Charcoal

2. Dust

3. Grain

4. Oldfilm

5. Scratchlines

6. Vignette Effect

#### Charcoal

FilterCharcoal

Charcoal drawing effect

YouTube video

YouTube video

YouTube video

#### Dust

Dust

Add dust and specks to the Video, as in old movies

YouTube video

YouTube video

#### Grain

YouTube video

#### Old Film

This is the OldFilm MLT Filter

Moves the Picture up and down and random brightness change - making it look like old film footage.

YouTube video

YouTube video

#### Scratchlines

This the Lines MLT filter.

Scratchlines over the picture

YouTube video

YouTube video

#### Vignette Effect

This is the Vignette MLT filter.

Vignette around a point with adjustable smooth, radius, position and transparency

YouTube video

### Effects - Misc

#### Misc effects in ver 0.9.2

1. Audio Wave

2. Baltan

3. Cartoon

4. Color Distance

5. Delay grab

6. delay0r

7. Dynamic Text

8. Edge glow

9. Equaliz0r

10. Flippo

11. K-Means Clustering

12. keysplillm0pup

13. Light Graffiti

14. Luminance

15. Nervous

16. nosync0r

17. pr0be

18. pr0file

19. Regionalize

20. scanline0r

21. Sobel

22. TehRoxx0r

23. threelay0r

24. Threshold

25. Threshold0r

26. twolay0r

27. Vectorscope

28. Vertigo

29. Vignette

#### New in Misc in ver 0.9.3

1. 3dflippo

2. Color Effect

3. Colorhalftone

4. colorize

5. colortap

6. dither

7. emboss

8. posterize

9. softglow

10. spillsupress

#### New in Misc in ver 0.9.5

1. rgbnoise

2. sigmoidaltransfer

3. Timeout indicator

#### Baltan

YouTube video

#### Cartoon

Frei0r-cartoon

Cartoonify video, do a form of edge detect

YouTube video

#### Color Distance

This is the Frei0r Colordistance MLT filter

Calculates the distance between the selected color and the current pixel and uses that value as new pixel value.

YouTube video

YouTube video

YouTube video

#### Delay grab effect

This effect is available from the misc group.

Delayed frame blitting mapped on a time bitmap

This is the frei0r.delaygrab MLT filter by Bill Spinhover, Andreas Scheffler and Jaromil

YouTube video

YouTube video

#### Dynamic Text

The Dynamic Text effect allows you to overlay a timecode - which counts up relative to the start of the clip or timeline it is applied to.

See also the Render Overlay option in the render dialog to add time code or frame count to the entire rendered project.

YouTube video

#### Edge Glow

Frie0r edgeglow

YouTube video

YouTube video

#### Equaliz0r

frei0r.equaliz0r

Equalizes the intensity histograms

YouTube video

YouTube video

#### K-Means Clustering

This is the Frei0r cluster MLT filter.

Clusters of a source image by color and spatial distance

YouTube video

YouTube video

#### keyspillm0pup

This effect is used when using chroma keying (otherwise known as greenscreen or Render Overlay effect). Its purpose is to compensate for the fact that sometimes the color from the green or blue screen reflects onto the subject and will make them a shade of blue or green - especially around the edges. This is known as keyspill. This effect can attempt to compensate for this issue.

This effect may not be installed in version 0.9.2 of Kdenlive. It can be installed from sunab ppa or you can compile it yourself following instructions at post 10 in this thread.

The effect may be found in the Misc group or in the Alpha manipulation group (ver >= 0.9.3)

See this thread for the genesis of this effect.

##### Tutorial

This tutorial shows usage of the following effects: keysplillm0pup, blue screen, alpha operations - shrinkhard and denoiser

YouTube video

##### Details

The README for the keyspillm0pup is this:

DESCRIPTION

After some experimentation with chroma keying, it looked to me that there is no single method of key cleaning, that works in all situations, like keyspill on bright, keyspill on dark, &etc; So I included several cleaning options, which can be used alone or in combination. In short, it offers three ways of pixel selection (masking), that can be combined with four types of color changing operations. The three selection / masking modes are based on:

- similarity to key color

- transparency

- closeness to the edge

and the four things that can be done to the selected pixels are:

- move away from the key color (De-Key)

- move towards an target color (Target)

- desaturate

- luma (brightness) adjust.

MASKS

Color difference masks are based on the color of the image, and do not depend on the alpha from the preceding keying, except for ignoring the 100% transparent areas, to increase speed.

Transparency and Edge masks are based on the alpha channel from the preceding keying operation. Transparency masks will affect only the parts that are neither 100% opaque nor 100% transparent, based on the alpha values from the preceding keying operation. The effect will be proportional to the transparency.

If a hard key was used in the preceding keying, there will be no areas that T operations could affect. Edge maskss will affect only pixels close to the edge, with the effect diminishing away from the edge. The outer edge is the edge of the fully opaque part, where the alpha from the preceding keying is 1.0 (255).

The edge masking algorithm is not yet what I would like it to be. I will have to look some more into this, and improve it, so consider it a temporary solution that will change in the future.

All masks can be further pruned with two parameters: an hue gate, which will limit the mask to hues close to the key hue, and an saturation threshold, which will limit the mask to areas with color saturation above a threshold.

CASCADING

This plugin can be cascaded, but it is not possible to get the same color based mask in the second instance, because the colors will be changed by the first instance. To enable two operations with the same mask, each plugin instance can do two operations. With transparency and edge masks, cascading is a bit easier. If the hue gate and saturation threshold are not used, transparency and edge masks can be exactly the same in cascaded plugins.

PARAMETERS:

Key color: This should be the same or similar to the key color used for the preceding keying operation.

Target color: This is only used when Target operation is used with one of the masks. The colors in the affected areas will be moved towards this color, according to the Amount parameter.

Mask type: Selects the type of mask that will determine where the color altering operations will occur.

Tolerance: For the color difference mask, the range of colors around the key, that will be 100% affected. For the transparency mask, the amplification. For the edge mask, the width of the affected area.

Slope: For the color difference mask, the range of colors outside of Tolerance, that will be gradually less affected. No function for the transparency and edge masks.

Hue gate: Reduces the mask according to difference from key hue, to prevent change to pixels that are within the mask, but not polluted by key.

Saturation threshold: Reduces the mask according to color saturation, to avoid affecting the neutral areas.

Operation 1: Selects which of the four possible operations will be done on the mask-selected pixels. Apart from no operation, there are four possibilities: De-key, Target, De-saturate and Luma adjust.

Amount 1: The amount of the selected operation 1, how much the colors will change.

Operation 2, Amount 2: Enable a second operation to be performed with the same mask.

Show mask: This will show the selected mask as a greyscale image, to help with fine tuning of the masks. Should be OFF for the final render.

Mask to Alpha: Copies the active mask to the alpha channel. For all normal spill cleaning operations, this should be OFF. By setting it ON, the keyspillm0pup itself can be used as a keyer, or to generate some special effects.

#### Misc - Light Graffiti

till's blog

#### Luminance

This is then Frei0r luminance MLT filter.

Creates a luminance map of the image

YouTube video

YouTube video

#### Nervous

YouTube video

#### nosync0r

This is the Frei0r-nosync0r MLT filter

Video looks like a broken TV with bottom half of picture on the top of screen

YouTube video

YouTube video

#### Pr0be

This is a measurement tool, not an effect. It can show color values of single pixels or statistics of small rectangular areas. It is also useful as a pixel-peeping loupe.

It can display the following values:

- RGB

- YCC in either rec 601 or rec 709 standards

- HSV

- HSL

The position and size of the measured area is set by the X, Y, Xsize and Ysize parameters. A small crosshair marker is shown in the image, where the measurement is being made.

If 256 scale is checked, values are displayed as 0...255 integers, otherwise they are displayed as 0...1 floating point numbers.

If Show alpha is checked, alpha channel values are displayed too.

If Big window is checked, a bigger area around the center pixel is displayed in the loupe.

Pr0be can also be used to measure image noise. Just place the measurement rectangle on an uniform part of the image, that contains no image detail or gradient, and read the RMS value.

The values are displayed with a rather small font, so they might not be readable, if the image is not displayed at a big enough scale (1:1 pixel is optimum)

#### Pr0file

This is a measurement tool, not an effect. It is like an video oscilloscope, that can show the profile along any direction in the image. It can be used for things like:

- fine tuning of sharpening / unsharp masking

- identify color subsampling

- together with test charts, measure the spatial frequency response

- &etc;

The position, size and direction of the profile can be set with the X, Y, Tilt and Length parameters.

The Channel parameter selects what will be displayed in the numerical readout.

Two markers can be set on the profile, to select individual values for the readout.

The next seven checkboxes select the channels to be drawn on the graph.

Next, there are four checkboxes which determine what statistics will be displayed numerically.

If 256 scale is checked, values are displayed as 0...255 integers, otherwise they are displayed as 0...1 floating point numbers.

The color parameter selects whether rec 601 or rec 709 formulas will be used for the luma and chroma calculation.

The values are displayed with a rather small font, so they might not be readable, if the image is not displayed at a big enough scale (1:1 pixel is optimum)

#### Regionalize

Apply subeffects to a region defined by a clip's alpha channel.

This is the mlt filter region

arguments:

File A file whose alpha channel will shape the region. The string circle is a shortcut but it requires pixbuf with the librsvg loader. The circle is automatically stretched to the region to create an ellipse.

Region Properties may be set on the encapsulated region transition. See region transition for details.

#### rgbnoise

This is an effect in the Misc category.

This is the frei0r.rgbnoise filter from Janne Liljeblad.

It adds RGB noise to image and takes one parameter noise in the range 0 to 1 which controls the amount of noise added.

This effect appears to have arrived with version 0.9.5 of Kdenlive.

YouTube video

#### scanline0r

This is the Frei0r scanline0r MLT filter.

interlaced black lines

YouTube video

YouTube video

#### Sobel

This is the Frei0r sobel MLT Filter.

Sobel filter is an edge detection filter.

YouTube video

#### tehroxx0r

This is the Frei0r tehroxx0r filter.

Something videowall-ish.

The effect might not show up during preview but it does appear in the rendered file.

This effect has one parameter - interval taking a range from zero to 1. This parameter effects the number and frequency that the small video frames flash in the border. Higher number = less border frames flashing.

YouTube video

YouTube video

#### threelay0r

YouTube video

#### Threshold

This is the Threshold MLT filter

Make monochrome clip

Different to Threshold0r

#### threshold0

This is the Frei0r-threshold0r filter

Thresholds a source image.

YouTube video

YouTube video

Different to Threshold0r

#### twolay0r

This is the Frei0r-twolay0r filter.

Dynamic thresholding

YouTube video

YouTube video

#### Misc - Vectorscope

This is the frei0r.vectorscope plugin.

Not to be confused with Threshold0r described on Granjow's blog

It is recommended to use the vectorscope from Threshold0r, because the effect Misc - Vectorscope is not correct - it uses a graticule from an analog NTSC vectorscope, but equations from digital video (Source: this forum post.)

YouTube video

YouTube video

#### Vignette

This is the Frei0r-vignette filter.

Lens vignetting effect, applies natural vignetting

#### Color Effect

This is frei0r.colortap

Applies a pre-made color effect to image.

Possible effects are:

xpro, sepia, heat, red_green, old_photo, xraym, esses and yellow_blue.

#### Colorhalftone

Filters image to resemble a halftone print in which tones are represented as variable sized dots.

#### Colorize

Frei0r.colorize

Colorizes image to selected hue, saturation and lightness

#### sigmoidaltransfer

This is the Frei0r.sigmoidaltransfer filter from Janne Liljeblad.

Desaturates image and creates a particular look that could be called Stamp, Newspaper or Photocopy.

Two parameters:

Brightness: Controls Brightness of image. Range 0 to 1

Sharpness: Controls sharpness of transfer Range 0 to 1

Both parameters default to 0 in Kdenlive - which is unfortunate because this results in a totally black frame. You need to have numbers above zero to see the effect.

This effect appears to have arrived with version 0.9.5 of Kdenlive

#### Timeout Indicator

This is Frei0r.timeout by Simon A. Eugster.

This adds a little countdown bar to the bottom right of the video and is available in ver. 0.9.5 of Kdenlive.

The settings in this screen shot produced the sample video below.

YouTube video

### Effects - Motion

1. Freeze

2. Speed

#### Motion - Freeze

This effect causes the video to freeze. If you add the effect and leave both check boxes unchecked the clip will be frozen for its entire length. To change this check either of the Freeze Before or Freeze After and adjust the Freeze At time slider to the time where you what the freeze to start or end. If Freeze Before is selected the video will be frozen at the start and then start moving when it hits the Freeze At time. If Freeze After is selected the video will be moving at the start and then freeze when it hits the Freeze At time. The audio in the video plays for the entire length, &ie; the freeze effect does not alter the audio.

#### Motion Effects - Speed

Make clip play faster or slower.

The Stroboscope setting defines the number frames the effect skips when playing back. For example, if Stroboscope is set to 5 then the effect will only show every 5th frame but will show these frame for 5 times as long producing a jumpy stroboscope effect.

## Titles

Titles are text elements that can be added to the timeline and appear over the top of other clips. Titles are created in the project tree and then dragged to the time line like other video clips.

To create a title choose Add Title Clip from the Project Menu or from the Right Click menu in the Project Tree

### How to Save a Title

Open the title in the Project Tree by double clicking it or right click then choose Clip Properties.

Click the Save As button on the tool bar

Title Editor Toolbar when title editor is wide enough for the whole toolbar to display.The toolbar items are: Selection Tool, Add Text, Add Rectangle, Add Image, Open Document, Save As

or select Save as from the toolbar overflow menu which can be found under the >> button on the toolbar - see picture.

Title Editor Toolbar when title editor is wide not enough for the whole toolbar to display. The toolbar items that do not fit can be accessed from the >> button that appears at the end of the toolbar.

Choose a save location within your project.

The titles are saved as `.kdenlivetitle` type documents.

### How to Load a Title

Choose Add Title Clip from the Add Clip drop down (see picture)

Click the Open Document button on the Title Clip editor toolbar or choose Open document from the >> menu and load up a title saved earlier.

### How to edit an existing title

Right click the title clip in the project tree and select Clip properties.

### Template Titles - User Defined

Template Titles allow you create a template for other titles in your project. You can create the template title with the settings that all the titles in the project should have and then base subsequent titles on the template. If you decide to change the look of you titles you only need change the template title and the titles based on this template will automatically update to reflect any formating changes you made to the template title.

To create a template title

Choose Add Title Clip from the Add Clip drop down and create a title with the text %s in it and formated how you desire it. Save this title as described above.

To use the template title

Choose Add Template Title from the Add Clip drop down and choose the title with the %s in it that you just saved.

Right click this clip in the project tree and select Clip Properties

Enter the text that this title should display into the text field in the dialog that appears

Drag the title to the timeline.

The %s in the template will be replaced with the text that you enter in the Clip Properties Text.

A known issue with template titles is that text centering of the %s replaced text does not work - see this forum post.

### Template Titles - Built In

Kdenlive has some built-in title templates that can be accessed from the Template drop-down list found on the bottom of the Title Clip window - see below.

To install more built in title templates choose from the Settings menu.

### Import an Image into the title

On the Toolbar overflow menu (>>) shown in the picture below the second menu item - labeled only with &Alt;I - is the Add Image Button. Selecting this brings up a file chooser where you can choose an image to be inserted into your title.

### Draw Rectangle Toolbar Item

The 1st menu item shown in the picture above - labeled only with &Alt;R is the Add Rectangle button. After selecting this - drag the mouse to draw a rectangle. Use the rectangle toolbar (shown below) to change the fill color, border color and border width of the rectangle.

The rectangles can be placed behind text by selecting them and the changing the Z-index (top right corner) to a lower value.

### To make the title scroll vertically

Put a long title onto the title window. Zoom out so you can see it all. The text should run off the top (or bottom) of the viewable area.

Select the Animation tab and click Edit start. Now drag the start rectangle to above the viewable area.

Select Edit end and drag the end rectangle to below the viewable area.

Click OK and preview the scrolling title.

The above title scrolls so that text scrolls up the screen. It is as if the camera starts on the start rectangle and then pans down to the end rectangle

### To make the title scroll Horizontally

Use the instructions for vertical scrolling - just put the start and stop rectangles off to the sides of the screen rather than the top and bottom

### How to fade titles in and/or out

To make titles fade in and out you modify the transition that automatically gets added between the title and the track below. The modifications are to add keyframes into the transition and adjust the opacity of the transition at these keyframes. In version 0.9.3 it is an affine transition that is automatically added between the title and the track below. In ver 0.9.2 it is a composite transition.

In the image below we have 4 key frames (labeled 1 to 4). The first key frame is the currently displayed one and we can see the opacity on this key frame is zero. The opacity at keyframe 2 and 3 is 100%. The opacity at the 4th keyframe is zero percent. The overall effect is that the title fades in between keyframe 1 and keyframe2. And then it fades out between keyframe 3 and keyframe 4 .

### How to fade in more than one title sequentially

To create a title sequence like this ...

YouTube video

Then you put three titles on three different tracks but you make each of them affine transition with an empty video track - see timeline screen shot below.

### FAQ

Q: How to duplicate a title clip to modify it slightly

A: You can save a copy of the title (see How to Save a Title) and then create a new title based on that saved version as described above, Or you could use the template titles functionality to base the two slightly different titles on the one template.

## Monitors

Kdenlive uses 2 monitor widgets to display your videos: Clip Monitor and Project Monitor. A third monitor - the Record Monitor - previews video capture.

### Clip Monitor

The Clip monitor displays the unedited clip that is currently selected in the Project Tree.

#### Widgets on the Clip Monitor

1) is Set In Point button - click this to set an 'in' point.

2) is Set Out Point button - click this to set an 'out' point.

3) Green selected zone - selected by setting in and out points. Draging the clip from the clip monitor to the time line when there is a green selected zone causes the selected zone to be copied to the timeline.

Playback]] audio will play as you drag this.)

5) Timecode widget - type a timecode here and hit &Enter; to go an exact location in the clip.

6) Timecode arrows - can use these to change the current position of the clip in the clip monitor.

#### Creating Zones in Clip Monitor

Zones are defined regions of clips that are indictated by green in the clip monitors time line - see item 3 above. The beginning of a zone is set by clicking [ (item 1 in the pic above). The end of a zone is set by clicking ] (item 2 in the pic above)

#### Clip Monitor Right click menu

The clip monitor has a right click (context menu) as described here

### Project Monitor

The Project monitor displays your project's timeline - &ie; the edited version of your video.

#### Project Monitor Widgets

1) is the position Carat and shows the current location in the project relative to the whole project. You can click and drag this to move the position in the project.

2) is the timecode widget. You can type a time code in this and press &Enter; to bring the project monitor to an exact location

3) is the timecode widget control arrows. You can move the project monitor one frame at a time with these.

#### Creating Zones in Project Monitor

You can use the [ and ] buttons to create a zone in the project monitor in the same way as you do to make zones in the clip monitor.

The zone will be indicated by a green bar in both the time line and underneath the project monitor.

You can get Kdenlive to only render the selected zone - see Rendering Using the Selected Zone Option

#### Project Monitor Right click menu

The project monitor has a right click (context menu) as described here

### Record Monitor

There is also a Record monitor that can be used to preview capture from Firewire, Blackmagic cards or through FFmpeg / video4linux

### Clip Monitor - Right Click Menu

These are the menu items that are available when you right click a clip in the Clip Monitor. These actions effect the clip that is currently selected in the Project Tree. Similar menu items are available from a Right click menu in the Project monitor. However project monitor menu items effect the currently selected clip on the timeline.

#### Play...

##### Play

Plays the clip currently selected in the project tree

##### Play Zone

Plays the current zone and stops. (See Creating Zones in Clip Monitor for info about what a Zone is)

##### Loop Zone

Plays the current zone in a continuous loop. (See Creating Zones in Clip Monitor for info about what a Zone is)

#### Go To

##### Go to Project Start

When this item is selected from Clip Monitor it goes the beginning of the clip. (When selected in project monitor it goes to the beginning of the project)

##### Go to Previous Snap Point

Moves the clip position to the previous Snap Point. Snap points are sections in clips that other clips snap to when Snap is turned on.

Snap points include markers, zone in-points, zone out-points, guides, transition start points etc

##### Go to Zone Start

Goes to the start of the Zone. (See Creating Zones in Clip Monitor for info about what a Zone is)

##### Go to Clip Start

Not working. Use Go To Project Start to make the clip monitor move to start of the clip.

##### Go to Clip End

Not working. Use Go To Project End to make the clip monitor move to end of the clip.

##### Go to Zone End

Goes to the end of the Zone. (See Creating Zones in Clip Monitor for info about what a Zone is)

##### Go to Next Snap Point

Moves the clip position to the next Snap Point. Snap points are sections in clips that other clips snap to when Snap is turned on.

Snap points include markers, zone in-points, zone out-points, guides, transition start points etc

##### Go to Project End

When this item is selected from Clip Monitor it goes the end of the clip. (When selected in project monitor it goes to the end of the project)

#### Markers

##### Add Marker

Adds a new marker into the clip at the current time point.

##### Edit Marker

Brings up a dialog where you can edit the marker that is at the current time point. Use Go to marker to put the monitor at the marker you want to edit.

##### Delete Marker

Deletes the marker that is a the current timepoint. Use Go to marker to put the monitor at the marker you want to delete.

##### Delete All Markers

Deletes all the markers from the current clip.

##### Go to marker...

Same a Go to Marker below.

#### Go to marker...

The menu item pops out a list of existing markers to select from. When one is selected the Clip monitor moves to that marker.

#### Save zone

This brings up the Save Zone dialog

This causes the current zone (see ) to be saved as a `.mlt` file. This is a MLT video playlist file which is an xml format file describing the zone that we saved.

You can then load the `.mlt` files as clips into the project monitor and edit them like any other clip.

#### Extract Zone

This brings up the Cut Clip dialog which appears to be setup to extract the zone into a new file and add it to the project tree.

On the authors 0.9.2 and 0.9.5 version of Kdenlive this feature is broken for .dv format clips at least. It does work for .mp4 type clips. However, the accuracy of the cuts on the clip is way out.

     ffmpeg version 0.8.3-4:0.8.3-0ubuntu0.12.04.1, Copyright (c) 2000-2012 the Libav developers
      built on Jun 12 2012 16:37:58 with gcc 4.6.3
     [dv @ 0x9d71480] Can't initialize DV format!
     Make sure that you supply exactly two streams:
         video: 25fps or 29.97fps, audio: 2ch/48kHz/PCM
         (50Mbps allows an optional second audio stream)
     Output #0, dv, to '/home/ttguy/Videos/Tape3_006_0.dv':
      Metadata:
        encoder         : Lavf53.21.0
        Stream #0.0: Video: dvvideo, yuv420p, 720x576 [PAR 64:45 DAR 16:9], q=2-31, 28800 kb/s, 90k tbn, 25 tbc
        Stream #0.1: Audio: pcm_s16le, 32000 Hz, 2 channels, 1024 kb/s
     Stream mapping:
      Stream #0.0 -> #0.0
      Stream #0.1 -> #0.1
     Could not write header for output file #0 (incorrect codec parameters ?)

#### Extract frame

Extracts the frame currently in the clip monitor as a `.PNG` image which you can save to the file system.

#### Set current image as thumbnail

This will change the thumbnail that represents this clip in the project tree to the frame that is currently selected in the clip monitor.

#### Monitor overlay infos

???

#### Real time (drop frames)

Setting this to the Checked state means the clip monitor will drop frames during playback to ensure the clip plays in real time. This does not effect the final rendered file - it just effect how the clip appears when being previewed in the clip monitor

### Project Monitor - Right Click menu

These are the menu items that are available when you right click a clip in the Project Monitor. These actions effect the clip that is currently selected in the timeline. Similar menu items are available from a Right click menu in the clip monitor. However clip monitor menu items effect the currently selected clip on the project tree.

#### Play...

##### Play

Plays the clip currently selected in the project tree

##### Play Zone

Plays the current zone and stops.

##### Loop Zone

Plays the current zone in a continuous loop.

#### Go To

##### Go to Project Start

When this item is selected from Project Monitor it goes the beginning of the project.

##### Go to Previous Snap Point

Moves the clip position to the previous Snap Point. Snap points are sections in clips that other clips snap to when Snap is turned on.

Snap points include markers, zone in-points, zone out-points, guides, transition start points etc

##### Go to Zone Start

Goes to the start of the Zone.

##### Go to Next Snap Point

Moves the clip position to the next Snap Point. Snap points are sections in clips that other clips snap to when Snap is turned on.

Snap points include markers, zone in-points, zone out-points, guides, transition start points etc

##### Go to Project End

When this item is selected from Project Monitor it goes the end of the project.

#### Extract frame

Extracts the frame currently in the project monitor as a .PNG image which you can save to the file system.

#### Split View

Selecting this allows you to view all the video tracks at once in split screen in the project monitor. See picture.

#### Monitor overlay infos

???

#### Real time (drop frames)

Setting this to the Checked state means the clip monitor will drop frames during playback to ensure the clip plays in real time. This does not effect the final rendered file - it just effect how the clip appears when being previewed in the clip monitor

## Menu Reference

1. File Menu

2. Edit Menu

3. Project Menu

4. Tool Menu

5. Clip Menu

6. Timeline Menu

7. Monitor Menu

8. View Menu

9. Settings Menu

### File Menu

1. New

2. Open

3. Open Recent

4. Save

5. Save As

6. Revert

7. DVD Wizard

8. Transcode Clips

9. Close

10. Quit

#### File Menu - New

Creates a new Kdenlive project.

See Creating a new project

The default settings that appear on this feature are defined under Settings Menu>Configure Kdenlive>Project Defaults

#### File > Open

Opens a project that has been saved in a .kdenlive format file.

#### File > Save

Saves the current state of the project in a .kdenlive format file. Prompts for a file name if this is the first time the file is being saved.

#### File > Save As

Saves the current state of the project in a .kdenlive format file of your choice.

#### File Menu - Revert

This abandons any changes to the project you have made since last saving and reverts back to the last saved version of the project.

#### DVD Wizard

This feature allows you to author a DVD with a simple menu. Nothing flash.

##### Screen 1 of the DVD Wizard

Select a file here that you have rendered using one of the DVD render profiles.

##### Screen 2 of the DVD Wizard

First click on the 00:00:00 in the center to select a file to play. Then play the file in the preview window and add chapters at the cursors time point by clicking the Add Chapter button.

##### Screen 3 of the DVD Wizard

The first two buttons on the side allow you to add and delete menu buttons. You define what the button does using the Target drop down list. (But see also DVD Wizard Bug

##### Screen 4 of the DVD Wizard

Click the Create ISO Image button on this screen to author your DVD. Click Finish only after you have clicked Create ISO Image button. Clicking Finish closes the DVD wizard with out prompting for you to complete the job.

Result of successful DVD creation

##### DVD Wizard Bug

There would appear to be a bug in the DVD wizard (0.9.2 version of Kdenlive) where the menu buttons paint in solid color instead of with visible text. Below is a screen shot of the DVD rendered from the button settings shown above.

This is Issue 1545 on the Kdenlive Bug tracker.

#### Transcode Clips

Use this to convert a video or audio clip from one codec/format to another.

Choose the source file and a profile that represents the desired destination codec/format. Optionally change the destination path and file name and hit Start.

Transcoding a clip should be faster than loading the clip into the timeline and re-encoding it into a different format.

#### File Menu - Close

Not sure what this is supposed to do. It is always greyed out on my Kdenlive.

Maybe it is there ready for a version of Kdenlive that can have more than one project open at a time.

#### File Menu - Quit

Exits Kdenlive. Prompts you to save any unsaved changes.

### Edit Menu

1. Undo

2. Redo

3. Copy

4. Paste

5. Paste Effects

6. Find

7. Find Next

#### Edit Menu - Copy

Copies a clip selected in the time line into the clip board. It also copies the effects attached to the clip into the clipboard. Use Paste to paste the clip into a different spot on the timeline. Use Paste Effects to paste the effects from the copied clip onto a different clip.

#### Edit Menu - Find

The Find menu item in the Edit menu turns on Find text as you type for 5 seconds or so. While this is on you can type text into the keyboard and it will appear in the bottom left (highlighted below). Kdenlive will look for a clip with a name matching the typed text and move the timeline cursor to the first instance of this clip (as shown in picture below)

There is also a find window at the top of the Project Tree. Typing text in here causes the list of clips in the clip list in the project tree to be filtered.

This clip filtering is independent of the Edit Find menu item.

#### Edit Menu - Paste

Use Paste to paste a copied clip into a different spot on the timeline.

#### Edit Menu - Paste Effects

Use Paste Effects to paste the effects from a copied clip onto a different clip.

#### Project Menu

1. Add Clip

2. Add Color Clip

3. Add Slideshow Clip

4. Add Title Clip

5. Add Template Title

6. Create Folder

7. Online Resources

8. Extract Audio

9. Stabilize (ver 0.9.2)

10. Clip Jobs> Stabilize (ver 0.9.3)

11. Clip Jobs > Automatic Scene Split (ver 0.9.3)

12. Transcode

13. Generators

14. Tracks

15. Stop Motion Capture

16. Reload Clip

17. Proxy Clip

18. Clip in Timeline

19. Clip Properties

20. Edit Clip

21. Delete Clip

22. Clean Project

23. Render

24. Adjust Profile to Current Clip

25. Project Settings

26. Open Backup File

27. Archive Project

#### Extract Audio

This feature extracts the audio out of a video clip into a `.WAV` file and optionally adds it to the project tree.

This menu item is available from right click on a clip in the project tree or under the project menu when a clip is selected in the project tree.

The process runs as a job in the project tree.

#### Stabilize

This menu item is available from right click on a clip in the project tree or under the project menu when a clip is selected in the project tree.

This feature applies image stabilization algorithms to the clip which can reduce the shakiness of a shaky bit of footage.

There are two different methods of stabilization available in Kdenlive - vstab and transcode.

This video shows a side by side comparison between vstab and transcode stabilize methods.

YouTube video

##### stabilize (vstab)

This is based on this work.

This tutorial shows how to use the stabilize feature - vstab version:

YouTube video

The shutter angle setting that the narrator says he does not know what it does (1:35) ... Shutter angle is an angle that images could be maximum rotated for stabilization. see here.

##### stabilize (transcode)

Transcode Dialog in ver 0.9.2

In version 0.9.3 the transcode GUI was simplified see image which is Transcode Dialog in ver 0.9.3

Based on the tooltips from this screen and the docs here this what all the options mean:

optzoom = use optimal zoom (calculated from transforms). Causes video to zoom until 90% of transformations are hidden. default - checked. Hint: You can further zoom in with the zoom option

accuracy = accuracy of shakiness detection. Should be >=shakiness factor. 1: low (fast processing) 15: high (slow processing) - default 4. Recommended 8

algo (= algorithm used) checked= small measurement fields - default = checked. Unchecked means use brute force algorithm. The brute force algorithm is deprecated and this option is not available in ver 0.9.3.

maxangle = maximum angle to rotate - in radians. default = -1 which means no limit

relative unchecked = absolute transform (don't use this), checked = relative transform. Default is checked. This option is not available in ver 0.9.3 - it uses relative transform.

zoom - Additional zoom during transform. Percentage to zoom > 0 = zoom in, <0 = zoom out. The zoom specified here is additional to the optimum zoom calculated by the program when optzoom is checked. default = 0

shakiness - how shaky is the video. and how quick is the camera? 1: little (fast processing) 10: very strong/quick (slow processing) Default = 4. Note: large values may also reduce the accuracy. This is due to the internals of the movement-detection. Typically you don't need a value greater than 7.

invert - invert the transform. default = unchecked. Inverting the transform is pointless - leave unchecked. This option is not available in ver 0.9.3.

sharpen - sharpen transformed image. amount of sharpening: 0: no sharpening. uses filter unsharp with 5x5 matrix Default = 0.8

stepsize - step size of search process, region around minimum is scanned with 1 pixel resolution- default = 6

show 0= draw nothing, 1 or 2 = show fields and transforms. Use 1 or 2 to preview what the process is going to do. example default = 0. Non-zero values of this parameter are not relevant in the Kdenlive implementation - use zero. This option is not available in ver 0.9.3 -

mincontrast below this contrast - the field is discarded. Range 0-1 default =0.3. You may want to used a smaller value for a really low contrast clip.

smoothing Controls the amount of smoothing/stabilization. The larger the value for smoothing the more camera movements are compensated. The resulting clip has a lower change in camera speed.

Technically it is the number of frames for lowpass filtering = smoothing * 2 + 1.

Eg with a with 25 fps clip, a value of 12 for the smoothing factor means we would smooth over one second - 12 frames behind the current frame + the current frame (1) + 12 frames after the current frame. default =10

Demo of the difference here (top:3, bottom: 30)

maxshift maximal number of pixels to translate image. (default = -1 no limit)

crop unchecked = The border of the transformed frames contains the pixels from previous frames. Checked = black background. default = unchecked

Example of the effect of running stabilize - transcode from the original author - Georg Martius

Side by side

YouTube video

Deshaked

YouTube video

Original

YouTube video

#### Transcode Menu Item

From Right click on a clip in the project tree one of the items that appears in the menu it the transcode sub menu.

Choose a transcode profile from the available list to transcode the selected clip into a different video format. The options are controlled by Configure Kdenlive - Transcode. The transcoding is done by the ffmpeg program.

The above screen shot is the dialog presented after choosing a transcode profile for transcoding the clip. The wrench icon toggles the display of the details of the command that will be used for transcoding. The description comes from the description supplied in the settings for this functionality.

Use the check box to cause the transcoded clip to be added to the project tree once the transcode job has finished.

While the transcode job is running the project tree will display a progress bar on the thumbnail of the clip and a job list menu item will appear at the top of the project tree.

#### Stop Motion Capture

Capture images via camera plugged into HDMI port of a &Linux; compatible capture card and capture them a frame at a time to create stop motion animation. You can also transparently overlay the last captured frame on the monitor to easily see the difference with current live feed.

See j-b-m's blog on this feature.

#### Clip In Timeline

This menu item is available from right click on a clip in the project tree or under the project menu when a clip is selected in the project tree.

Selecting the Clip In Timeline menu item causes instances where the clip in question is being used to be selected in the timeline. This is useful for navigating the clips in the project tree and their relationship to clips on the timeline. This option will be greyed out if the clip is not being used in the timeline.

See also Clip in Project Tree found by right clicking on a clip in the timeline.

#### Edit Clip

This option is available from Project Menu for audio and image files. It is greyed out for video clips. It opens the clip in an external editor.

Selecting Edit Clip on audio clips causes the Audio Editing software specified in Settings Menu>Configure Kdenlive>Environment Default Apps - Audio Editing to open the Audio clip ready for editing.

Selecting Edit Clip on Image clips causes the Image editing software specified in Settings Menu>Configure Kdenlive>Environment Default Apps - Image Editing to open the image file ready for editing.

The option is not available for Video clips because Kdenlive is the video editor - only Audio and Image clips are edited by external software.

#### Delete Clip

This menu item is available from right click on a clip in the project tree or under the project menu when a clip is selected in the project tree.

This function removes the clip from the project tree and from the timeline if it is being used on the time line.

You are warned if the clip is in use on the timeline.

#### Clean Project

Available from the Project Menu this function removes any clips from the project tree that are not currently being used on the time-line. The files remain on the hard drive and are only removed from the project tree.

You can undo this action with &Ctrl;Z.

This different from the Delete Unused Files button on the Project Files Tab in Project settings which deletes files not used by the project from the hard drive.

#### Rendering

Rendering is the process where the edited clips are saved into a single complete video clip. During the rendering process the video can be compressed and converted to a number of different video formats (AKA codecs).

The rendering dialog is brought up from the render button , from selecting Render in the Project Menu or by the &Ctrl;&Enter; shortcut.

##### Rendering Profile Categories

Kdenlive offers many different preset rendering profiles to choose from. The rendering profiles are grouped into categories. See picture below.

###### File Rendering

###### DVD Rendering

DVD Rendering produces files that are compatible with DVD authoring software. MPEG2 files created from file rendering profiles are less likely to be compatible with DVD software.

Note that this option does not create a DVD file system. It merely creates DVD compatible MPEG2 files that can be used by DVD authoring software. If you check the Open DVD Wizard after Rendering check box then the DVD Wizard will open and you can use this to create a DVD file system (in .ISO format). The DVD Wizard is also available from the File Menu.

###### Websites

###### Mobile Devices

##### Create Custom Render Profiles

You can create your own custom render profiles by clicking the button highlighted in the screen shot below

This will open the Save Profile dialog and the Parameter section will be filled in with the render parameters of the profile that you had selected when you clicked the button. You can edit values in the parameters and save your own custom render profile.

The parameters in the rendering profile are ffmpeg parameters. For an explanation of there meaning check the ffmpeg man(ual) page or type ffmpeg -h in a command prompt.

See also Render Profile Parameters - How to read them

##### Rendering In Batch mode

If you have a lot of rendering jobs to do you can use Kdenlive to create rendering scripts which you can accumulate and then execute in a batch mode overnight. See Rendering Using Rendering Scripts.

Alternatively, once you have submitted a rendering job on a project and it is up and running in the Job Queue you can drag the render window out of the way and edit the project some more or load a new project and render that one too. The second submitted render job will go into the Job Queue. Editing the project after a render job is submitted will not change the settings on that job.

##### Rendering Using the Guide Zone Option

This makes use of Guides to define a region of the project that is to be rendered. See Rendering Using Rendering Scripts.

##### Rendering Using the Selected Zone Option

If you select the Selected Zone radio button from the bottom of the render dialog then Kdenlive will only render that bit of the project that has a selected zone created for it. See Creating Zones in Project Monitor

##### Render Overlay

This option overlays a time code or frame count over the rendered video. This will put the overlay over the entire rendered project. Alternatively you can use the Dynamic Text effect to place overlay over selected regions of the video.

##### Export Metadata

Check this to have the metadata setup under project settings > Metadata be placed into the metadata of the rendered file.

This image shows meta data settings for a project

and this is the metadata on the resulting clip (rendered with Export Metadata checked)

`$ ffprobe dog_rotated_meta_data.mp4`

        Metadata:
        major_brand     : isom
        minor_version   : 512
        compatible_brands: isomiso2avc1mp41
        title           : Bailey
        encoder         : Lavf53.21.1
        copyright       : VSF

This reveals a bug in ver 0.9.4 of Kdenlive - the full title is not placed in the meta data - it is truncated at the first space. This has been fixed in 0.9.5 of Kdenlive as Mantis number 2996

##### Export Audio Checkbox

This toggles between three modes. Unchecked, Checked and Checked Automatic.

Uncheck this to make the video render without an audio track.

Checked - Automatic means - detect if an audio track is present and write the audio track if found

Checked means write an audio track in the rendered file even if there is no audio track to write.

The difference in behaviour between Checked and Checked Automatic is to do with the situation where you have a Video on the time line but there is no audio track on the time line and the video in the video track also does not have an audio track. An example of such a situation is shown in the screen shot below.

Under this situation if you render with Checked Automatic then the rendered file will not have an audio track (Result 1 on screen shot below). But if you render with Export Audio just Checked then the rendered file will contain an audio track - the track will however be empty (Result 2 on screen shot below).

FFprobe on file generated from an audio-less track using Export Audio - Checked Automatic. Note only one stream - Stream #0.0 - a video stream. Kdenlive automatically detected there was not an audio track and so it did not write one.

`$ ffprobe dog_rotated_exp_audio_auto.mp4`

      Metadata:
        major_brand     : isom
        minor_version   : 512
        compatible_brands: isomiso2avc1mp41
        encoder         : Lavf53.21.1
    Duration: 00:00:03.62, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 12592 kb/s
    Stream #0.0(und): Video: h264 (High), yuv420p, 1280x720 [PAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 12587 kb/s, 27.83 fps, 27.83 tbr, 30k tbn, 55.66 tbc

FFprobe on file generated from an audio-less track using Export Audio - Checked. Note two streams - Stream #0.0 and Stream #0.1 the latter being an aac audio track. We forced Kdenlive to write an audio track even though there was not any source audio to write.

`$ ffprobe dog_rotated_exp_audio.mp4`

      Metadata:
        major_brand     : isom
        minor_version   : 512
        compatible_brands: isomiso2avc1mp41
        encoder         : Lavf53.21.1
      Duration: 00:00:03.62, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 12598 kb/s
    Stream #0.0(und): Video: h264 (High), yuv420p, 1280x720 [PAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 12587 kb/s, 27.83 fps, 27.83 tbr, 30k tbn, 55.66 tbc
    Stream #0.1(und): Audio: aac, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 2 kb/s

In cases where there is an audio track ...

Rendering with Export Audio - Unchecked will produce a file with no audio track - result 4 in the screen shot above.

Rendering with Export Audio - Checked - Automatic (result 3 in the screen shot above) or with Export Audio - Checked will produce files with Audio tracks.

##### Encoder Threads

##### Scanning Dropdown

This option controls the frame scanning setting the rendered file will have.

Options are Force Progressive, Force Interlaced and Auto.

Auto causes the rendered file to to take the scanning settings that are defined in the project settings. Use the other options to override the setting defined in the project settings.

#### Adjust Profile to Current Clip

This function is available from the project menu.

This function offers up a suggested Project Profile that would be most suitable for the properties of the currently selected clip (selected in the project tree?)

You get to see the profile it suggests and accept the suggestion or cancel.

### Clip Menu

The functions controlled from this menu effect the clip that is selected in the timeline.

#### Markers Menu Item

The context menu allows you to Add, Edit and Delete

#### Automatic Transition

When a transition is selected this menu item allows you toggle the transition to and from Automatic Transition mode.

#### Split Audio

Selecting this causes the audio portion of a clip to be placed on an audio track in the timeline. The video track and the audio track will be grouped together. This group can be removed using the Timeline ->Ungroup Clips menu option.

#### Audio Only

Causes Kdenlive to only use the audio portion of the selected clip.

#### Video Only

Causes Kdenlive to only use the video portion of the selected clip.

#### Audio and Video

Causes Kdenlive to use both the audio and video of the selected clip.

### Timeline Menu

Insertion > Insert Clip Zone in Timeline (overwrite)

Guides

Guides

Guides

Guides

Guides

Guides

Guides

Guides

Guides

Guides

Guides

Guides

### Monitor Menu

### View Menu

From the View menu you can control what windows appear on the screen. You can also save the layout or load a saved layout.

1. Save Layout As

2. Load Layout

3. Show Title Bars

4. Show Timeline

5. Project Tree

6. Clip Monitor

7. Project Monitor

8. Project Notes

9. Effect Stack

10. Transition

11. Effect List

12. Vectorscope

13. Waveform

14. RGB Parade

15. Histogram

16. Audio Signal

17. Audio Spectrum

18. Spectogram

19. Undo History

20. Main Toolbar

21. Extra Toolbar

#### View>Show Title Bars

This toggles the display of the titles bars on the widgets in Kdenlive.

#### View>Timeline

Toggles the display of the Timeline

#### View>Project Tree

Toggles the display of the The Project Tree

#### View>Clip Monitor

Toggles the display of the Clip Monitor.

#### View>Project Monitor

Toggles the display of the Project Monitor.

#### View>Effect Stack

Toggles the display of the Effect Stack

#### View>Transition

Toggles the display of the Transition Tab

#### View>Effect List

Toggles the display of the Effect List

#### Vectorscope Window

This window allows you to monitor the colour properties of your clip in detail.

The Vectorscope shows the hue and saturation distribution in a way we can understand without problems. This is useful for quickly recognizing color casts, but also helps judging the color distribution of a clip and match it to others. ref 1

See Granjow's blog here and here on the Vectorscope.

#### Waveform

This data is a 3D histogram. It represents the Luma component (whitness) of the video. It is the same type of graph as for the RGB Parade. The horizontal axis represents the horizontal axis in the video frame. The vertical axis is the pixel luma from 0 to 255. The brightness of the point on the graph represents the count of the number of pixels with this luma in this column of pixels in the video frame.

For more information see Granjow's blog on the waveform and RGB parade scopes. This blog gives some information on how to use the data provided by the RGB parade to do color correction on video footage.

#### RGB Parade

Display a histogram of R, G and B components of the video data. This data is a 3D histogram.

The horizontal axis represents the horizontal axis in the video frame. The vertical axis is the pixel luminance from 0 to 255. The brightness of the point on the graph represents the count of the number of pixels with this luminance in this column of pixels in the video frame.

In the sample screen shot of this green screen with a shadow on it and with a right edge that reveals a white wall you can see how the scope works. The circled regions labeled 1 are on the left side representing the fact that there is are several columns of pixels that are quite bright whitish/gray. So these regions are higher up on the Y axis.

The regions labeled 2 are in the middle of the scope and the dip in the graph there shows the shadow on the screen at this point. The average luminance of the pixels in these columns is lower.

For more information see Granjow's blog on the waveform and RGB parade scopes. This blog gives some information on how to use the data provided by the RGB parade to do color correction on video footage.

This somewhat different to the video effect in that with View>RGB parade the histogram is displayed in the application whereas in the RGB Parade effect the histogram is written into the video output file.

#### Histogram

This scope displays a frequency histogram of the luminance of the color components of the video. This information is useful when used in combination with color correction effects to perform color correction on the video. Color correction includes increasing the brightness or adjusting the white balance to ensure that white remains white and not blue.

The histograms have the luminance on the horizontal axis going from 0 on the left to 255 on the right. The vertical (Y) axis represents the count of the total number of pixels in the current video frame with a given luminance.

For more information read Granjow's blog on the histogram scope.

#### Audio Signal

You can monitor the levels of the audio as the clip plays with this widget.

#### Audio Spectrum

This allows you to monitor the audio properties of your clip in detail.

Granjow's blog on Audio Spectrum

#### Spectrogram

This allows you to monitor the audio properties of your clip in detail.

Granjow's blog on Spectogram

### Settings Menu

1. Manage Project Profiles

2. Download New Wipes

3. Download New Render Profiles

4. Download New Project Profiles

5. Download New Title Templates

6. Run Config Wizard

7. Themes

8. Toolbars Shown

9. Full Screen Mode

10. Configure Shortcuts

11. Configure Toolbars

12. Configure Notifications

13. Configure Kdenlive

#### Manage Project Profiles

This is available from the Settings menu.

Once the dialog appears select a profile to modify from the drop down.

Or select a profile as a base for a new profile from from the drop down and click the button with a green plus on it.

Fill in the settings for your project profile and give it a name and hit the Save button.

#### Download New Wipes

This feature allows you to download and install files that can be used as Wipe files in the Wipe transition.

#### Download New Render Profiles

This feature allows you to download new render profiles which will then appear as options in the Rendering window.

The new render profile installed above shows up in the Web Sites category under Custom.

It has the big red cross because the render profile is in need of an audio codec not installed on this machine

#### Download New Title Templates

This feature does not appear to be being extensively used because it only has two options to download.

Once these title templates are installed they can be accessed via drop down on the Title Clip dialog.

#### Run Config Wizard

This feature re-runs the config wizard that runs when you first install or upgrade Kdenlive. It gives you the opportunity to choose the default settings again for things like the default project settings. It also resets many settings back to factory defaults so it can be useful to run this if the Kdenlive application is misbehaving.

#### Toolbars Shown

Toggles the display of the Main and Extra Toolbars

#### Full Screen Mode

Selecting this causes Kdenlive to fill the entire screen. Select this menu item again to undo full screen mode.

#### Configure Shortcuts

Allows modification of the keyboard shortcuts for various Kdenlive tasks.

#### Configure Notifications

This feature allows you to customize the feed back the application provides when certain events happen. You can change the sound effect that fires when rendering finishes for example.

#### Configure Kdenlive

##### Misc

Open last project on startup

Check if first added clip matches project profile

Crash recovery (automatic backup)

Use KDE job tracking for render jobs

Use on-monitor effects

Disable parameters when the effect is disabled

Default Durations

Automatically import image sequences

Transparent background for imported images

##### Project Defaults

Configures what the project settings will look like by default when you choose File>New.

##### Timeline

Configure how the timeline appears in Kdenlive

Thumbnails - video

Thumbnails - Audio

Normalize audio for thumbnails

Display clip markers comments

Autoscroll while playing

Zoom using vertical drag in ruler

Automatically split audio and video

Track Height

##### Environment

###### MLT Environment

This setting tells Kdenlive where to find the MLT executables and profile files. Only advanced users would really need to changing these settings. Kdenlive is basically a front end to the MLT program and this setting tells Kdenlive where to find the engine that runs the whole application.

###### Default Folders

This setting controls where Kdenlive expects project files to be by default. It also controls what folder Kdenlive will use as a temporary file storage location and it controls where files captured from an external source will be saved.

###### Default Apps

This setting controls what application opens when you choose edit clip for a clip in the project tree. Note there is no application for video editing - because Kdenlive is a video editor. Images and audio files are edited by the external applications defined here. The video player is used by the DVD wizard previewer.

##### Capture

Configure the capture devices (Firewire, FFmpeg, Screen Grab, Blackmagic) from this section.

###### Configure Firewire Capture

The image shows the Configure Firewire capture tab which can be accessed from the Settings Configure Kdenlive menu or from the spanner icon in the Record Monitor -> Firewire

The firewire capture functionality uses the dvgrab program.

The settings applied here define how dvgrab will be used to capture the video.

Capture Format options are

- DV RAW

- DV AVI Type 1

- DV AVI Type 2

- HDV

The first three are quality wise the same (exactly the same DV 25Mb/s standard definition codec), just packed differently into the file. Type 2 seems to be the most widely supported by other applications.

The raw format contains just the plain video frames (with audio interleaved) without any additional information . Raw is useful for some &Linux; software. Files in this format can also be played with Windows QuickTime when renamed to file.dv .

AVI files may contain multiple streams. Typically, they include one video and one audio stream. The native DV stream format already includes the audio interleaved into its video stream. A type 1 DV AVI file only includes one DV video stream where the audio must be extracted from the DV video stream. A type 2 DV AVI file includes a separate audio stream in addition to the audio data already interleaved in the DV video stream. Therefore, the type 2 DV AVI file is redundant and consumes more space.

HDV is a high-definition format used on tape-based HD camcorders.

Add recording time to captured file name option: If this is unchecked then each captured file will get a sequential number post-pended to the file names listed in the Capture file name setting. With this checked, a date and timestamp (derived from when the footage was captured) is post-pended to the capture file name, &eg; capture2012.07.15_11-38-37.dv

Automatically start a new file on scene cut option: With this checked it tries to detect whenever a new recording starts, and store it into a separate file. This is the -autosplit parameter in dvgrab and it works by detecting timecode discontinuities from the source footage. Where a timecode discontinuity is anything backwards or greater than one second it will start a new capture file.

The dvgrab additional parameters edit box allows you to add extra dvgrab switches to the capture process that will run. See dvgrab manual for more info.

###### Configure Screen Grab Capture

This shows the configure tab for screen grab in ver 0.9.3 of Kdenlive. It will be different in ver. 0.9.2 because that version used Record My Desktop to do the screen capture.

##### Jog Shuttle

Configure a connected Jog-Shuttle device. Contour ShuttlePro and Contour ShuttleXpress are known to work.

Ensure that your Jog-Shuttle device is connected and working. An udev rule may needs to be defined to set the appropriate rights to the Jog Shuttle device file. If Kdenlive does not recognize the device file at startup, enter the device-path to the text field: /dev/input/event4 (to be determined by cat /proc/bus/input/devices).

Enable Jog-Shuttle. For the Contour ShuttleXpress the buttons 5 - 9 are relevant, whereas Contour ShuttlePro uses all buttons. The actions for the jog- and the shuttle wheel are working as expected.

##### Playback

Configure the Video and Audio drivers and devices. For advanced users only.

In version 0.9.4 of Kdenlive, checking the use Open GL for video playback checkbox turns on the ability to have audio scrubbing available for use in the clips. Audio scrubbing lets you hear the audio at the playhead position as you drag the playhead so you can quickly find a particular sound or event in the audio. This feature can be useful for placing the play head at the correct spot in clip relative to an important bit of audio.

##### Transcode

This controls the transcode functionality. The parameters section are ffmpeg parameters. Find help on them by issuing ffmpeg -h at a command line.

###### Transcode Options

Option | Description | Parameters | Meanings of Parameters
--- | --- | --- | ---
Wav 48000Hz | Extract audio as WAV file | -vn -ar 48000 | -vn=disable video, -ar 48000 = set audio sampling rate to 48kHz
Remux with MKV | - | -vcodec copy -acodec copy -sn | copy the video and the audio. -sn = disable subtitles
Remux MPEG-2 PS/VOB | Fix audio sync in MPEG-2 vob files | -vcodec copy -acodec copy | copy the video and the audio

## Rendering Using Guides and Rendering Scripts

### Purpose

When editing video, time means everything. Especially how long it takes you to edit the clips, project, or footage you are working on. If you ever need to export sequences of your timeline separately, Kdenlive offers a great way to do this. You can set guides in your project that establish zones. You then can generate rendering scripts that will export these zones at a later date, during your sleep, or while you hunt and find food. Let's check out how to do this.

### Picking Sections with Guides

Start by adding a clip into the timeline. I've added some retro footage about airplanes. Cool.

Next we want to add a guide for a specific section of the clip on the timeline. You can add a guide by selecting Timeline in the menu and then slide down to Guides and select Add Guide from the menu. Right clicking the top of the timeline also gives you the option Add Guide. If you want to, you can also edit the guides you have set by right clicking on the timeline.

After selecting this option, a window appears giving you the Position of the guide and a field to add a comment. Labeling the guide won't hurt anyone, so I'll name my first guide the extraordinary Section 1. A dark blue line appears vertically down through the tracks on your timeline.

I'll add a few more guides and then we'll start rendering.

The screenshot shows the 6 guides I have put in my project. They chop up the existing clip as I want for my project (that hopefully will become the first hit retro-experimental film...). Now we can export scripts that, when executed, will render these guide zones.

### Generating Rendering Scripts

Start by clicking on the Render button in your toolbar, the one with the red circle surrounded by a white and black ring. You can also select this by going to the Project Render menu (&Ctrl;Return).

The new window gives us many choices about how to render our video. Look at the bottom of the window. We need to select the Guide Zone option. Selecting this will allow us to render our project using the guides we made earlier. Be sure and name the output file to a unique name for each script we will create. Otherwise the scripts will overwrite the different guide zones and not do what you wanted.

We now can choose which guides will establish the regions of video we want to export using the pull down menus next to From and to. I'll cut out the Beginning and instead use section 1 to Section 1 End, the guide names I defined earlier.

Now I can render this to a file or generate a script that will render this guide zone to a file. Click Generate Script and a dialog appears asking you to name the script. Kdenlive stores the clips in `/yourhomedirectory/kdenlive/scripts`

After saving the script, the top tab in the window switches to Scripts. This lists all the scripts you have generated for the current project.

I went ahead and generated 3 scripts based on the guide zones I set up in my timeline. Be sure and keep the `.sh` extension otherwise the rendering script will not be generated.

### Starting Your Rendering Scripts

Once each script is generated, you need to start each one. You should be in the script tab and see your scripts listed. Start the process by selecting the script and clicking the Start Script button. Do this for each script.

After clicking each script, you are switched to the Job Queue tab. Here you will see what script is being run and how many more are waiting to be run. If you have a large queue, you can take advantage of the nifty checkbox in the bottom left: Shutdown computer after renderings.

### Summary

Creating guides can help organize your project while you work on it and when you share it with the world. You can use guides to keep track of areas or to generate rendering scripts that will do the mundane task for you. This feature makes exporting sections of your project quite easy. There are also other ways to take advantage of rendering sections and guide zones using guides. Have fun. Explore!

### Render Profile Parameters - How to read them

The parameters that go into a render profile derive from the ffmpeg program.

This is a worked example to show how you can understand what these parameters mean using the ffmpeg documentation.

In the example above the parameters are:

    f=dvd
    vcodec=mpeg2video
    acodec=mp2
    b=5000k
    maxrate=8000k
    minrate=0
    bufsize=1835008
    mux_packet_s=2048
    mux_rate=10080000
    ab=192k
    ar=48000
    s=720x576
    g=15
    me_range=63
    trellis=1
    profile=dv_pal_wide
    pass=2

Looking up the ffmpeg help translates these parameters as:

a main option is

    -f fmt            force format

video options are

    -vcodec codec     force video codec ('copy' to copy stream)
    -pass n           select the pass number (1 or 2)
    -b bitrate        set bitrate (in bits/s)
    -vb bitrate       set bitrate (in bits/s)
    -s size           set frame size (WxH or abbreviation)
    -me_range         <int>   E.V.. limit motion vectors range (1023 for DivX player)
    -trellis          <int>   E.VA. rate-distortion optimal quantization

audio options are

    -acodec codec     force audio codec ('copy' to copy stream)
    -ab bitrate       set bitrate (in bits/s)
    -ar rate          set audio sampling rate (in Hz)

The AVCodecContext AVOptions include:

    -b                <int>   E.V.. set bitrate (in bits/s)
    -maxrate          <int>   E.V.. set max video bitrate tolerance (in bits/s)
    -minrate          <int>   E.V.. set min video bitrate tolerance (in bits/s)
    -g                <int>   E.V.. set the group of picture size

So all the render profile options are documented here in the ffmpeg documentation.

See also MLT doco on ConsumerAvFormat.

## Capturing

Kdenlive provides functionality for capturing video from external devices - Firewire, FFmpeg, Screen Grab and Blackmagic.

You configure video capturing from Settings Configure Kdenlive Capture (more on this here).

You define the location your captures will end up using Settings Configure Kdenlive Environment Default Folders (more on this here).

To execute a video capture select the Record Monitor and choose the capture device from the drop down in the bottom right.

### Firewire

This captures video from sources connected via a firewire (also known as - IEEE 1394 High Speed Serial Bus) card and cable. This functionality uses the dvgrab program and the settings for this can be customized by clicking the spanner icon or choosing Settings>Configure Kdenlive See

To perform a capture:

- Plug in your device to the firewire card and turn it on to play mode

- Click the Connect Button

- Click the Record Button - note it toggles to grey while you are recording

- Click the Record button again to stop capture. Or click the stop button.

- Once capturing is finished click the disconnect button

- In the Captured Files dialog - click the import button to have the captured files automatically imported into the project tree.

Note: If your device does not start playing the source device when you click the record button then you may have to start playback on your device manually and then click record.

### FFmpeg

I believe this captures video from an installed Web Cam using Video4&Linux;2.

### Screen Grab

This captures video of the PC screen. In version 0.9.2 it uses recordMyDesktop to do the capture. There is an open defect with this functionality in ver 0.9.2 - See bug tracker ID 2643.

In version 0.9.3 the Screen grab is done by the ffmpeg functionality instead. For screen capture to work in ver 0.9.3 the version of ffmpeg installed needs to have been compiled with the --enable-x11grab option. Ubuntu comes with an ffmpeg compiled with this option.

To check on your linux distro type ffmpeg -version in a terminal and look for --enable-x11grab in the reported configuration info. There are two branches of ffmpeg now a Libav branch and a ffmpeg.org branch. The ffmpeg version from the later reports the configuration when you run with ffmpeg -version. The Libav version does not. So this method to check for the --enable-x11grab does not work if you have libav version of ffmpeg.

If you are capturing screen and using the X246 with audio settings and you get a crash as shown in the screen shot ...

... then consider creating a profile for audio capture where -acodec pcm_s16le is replaced by -acodec libvorbis -b 320k. See Configure Kdnelive

### Blackmagic

This is for capturing from Blackmagics decklink video capture cards (AFAIK). Not sure how stable this code is at the moment. See defect 2130.

## Toolbars

### Main and Extra Toolbars

Kdenlive has a Main Toolbar

and an Extra Toolbar. By default the extra tool bar contains the Render button.

and a bottom toolbar

For more info on the Bottom Tool Bar see Editing

### Configuring the Toolbars

The tools that are available on these are defined in Settings Configure Toolbars.

### Hiding and Showing the Toolbars

You can toggle the hiding and showing of the toolbars from the View menu using the Main Toolbar and Extra Toolbar menu items. You can also control this from the Toolbars Shown menu item in the Settings menu.

## Shooting Hints

### Using P2 footage from the Panasonic HVX200 on GNU/&Linux;, tested on Ubuntu

Using footage from P2 cards is easy when you know how! The MXF files on P2 cards cannot be read until you convert them with mxfsplit, a part of FreeMXF. The conversion is lossless and the resulting files contain both video and audio and can be edited in real time with Kdenlive (or Blender 2.5+) on most computers made within the last five years or so. Also, FFMPEG can read these files. This process is very fast because there is no transcoding and so can be done in the field while shooting just as fast as simply transferring the original p2 files.

#### Step One: FreeMXF

Get the source code for MFXlib from here.

Then configure, compile, and install it by running the following code in the directory where you saved the source files:

    ./configure
    make
    sudo make install

This will get mxfsplit (part of mxflib) working.

#### Step Two: Using mxfsplit

Here is a simple script that can be run in the terminal. It will convert all MXF files in a chosen directory into usable files. Do a search and replace for /source/directory and /destination/directory

    # /source/directory
    # /destination/directory
    #
    # change to destination directory
    cd /destination/directory
    #find all *.MXF files in a specific directory and loop through them using the variable 'i'
    for i in /source/directory/*.MXF
    do
    # use mxfsplit to convert files
    STREAM=`mxfsplit -m $i | grep “File=” | cut -c 31-52`
    # rename the files so they make sense, appending the word 'converted' to the end of the basename
    mv *.Stream "`basename $i .MXF`converted.MXF"
    #end loop
    done

#### Conclusion

Now you have a script that can easily prepare footage for editing (&ie; with Kdenlive or Blender) and for transcoding (&ie; ffmpeg). FFMPEG can be used to transcode the resulting .MXF files to whatever format is preferred. For example, this would get the files ready for Youtube, Vimeo, &etc;:

    cd ""
    for i in *.*
    do
    ffmpeg -threads 2 -i $i -acodec libmp3lame -aq 192 -vcodec libx264 -vpre slow converted$i.mp4
    done

## Troubleshooting and Common Problems

Kdenlive warns me about missing codecs, I cannot render in some formats.

  There are several possible reasons for this:

  1. You have installed the codecs after Kdenlive's installation. To force Kdenlive to check available codecs on your system, run the configuration wizard: Settings Run Config Wizard. Complete the wizard and restart Kdenlive to be sure that codecs have been detected.

  2. The codecs are not available on your system. Kdenlive uses the codecs from your FFmpeg or Libav library. Due to some licensing issues, some distributions do not provide all codecs by default and you might need to install an extra package. On Ubuntu / Mint for example, you must install a package called libavcodec-extra-xx. After that, check again the codecs as explained in the first step.

  3. Last possibility is that your FFmpeg or Libav version is buggy and does not report all supported codecs. Kdenlive releases after 0.9.2 have an option to try using codecs even if they seem unsupported: Settings Configure Kdenlive and check the Bypass codec verification option.

Kdenlive is too large on my screen. I cannot make it smaller.

  This usually happens when too many widgets are open. Each widget label takes a minimum amount of space in width. Close some (&eg; via the View button) and consider using layouts (View Save Layout As).

I want to trim videos without re-encoding them. How can I do this?

  You cannot do this with Kdenlive. (Please try Avidemux instead.) The reason is that, for splitting, files need to be treated in a very different manner (the file itself needs to be edited, whileas Kdenlive renders frames into a new file).See also: ,

I want to apply an effect, for example a watermark, to the whole project. What is the best way to do this?

  Create a new project with the same project profile and import the project on which you want to apply the effect to as a clip (Project Add Clip). See also: How to: Add a Watermark in kdenlive on Vimeo.

My monitor plays distorted images, or generally something it really should not.

  Please check your Settings Configure Kdenlive Playback settings. Try to disable OpenGL if it is enabled, or use a different driver. Kdenlive may need to be restarted.

## Kdenlive On Other Platforms

1. Non-KDE Desktops

2. Kdenlive on OS X

### Non-KDE Desktops

ToDo

### Kdenlive on OS X

ToDo

## Useful Information

1. FAQ

2. Shortcuts

3. Tips & Tricks

4. Useful Resources

### What components does Kdenlive use?

In effect Kdenlive is frontend to melt - which uses the MLT video framework. The MLT video framework relies on the FFMPEG project. Kdenlive writes `sh.mlt` XML files that code the edit points and transitions and it then calls `/usr/bin/kdenlive_render` and `/usr/bin/melt` to render the video.

### Keyboard Shortcuts

#### Editing

Action | Shortcut
--- | ---
Make a cut (make sure track is selected first) | &Shift;R
Play | Space
Play zone | &Ctrl;Space
Render | &Ctrl;Return
Switch Monitor | T
Forward | L
Rewind | J
Forward 1 frame | Right
Rewind 1 frame | Left
Forward 1 second | &Shift;Right
Rewind 1 second | &Shift;Left
Full Screen Mode | &Ctrl;&Shift;F
Go to Clip End | End
Go to Clip Start | Home
Go to Next Snap Point | &Alt;Right
Go to Previous Snap Point | &Alt;Left
Go to Project End | &Ctrl;End
Go to Project Start | &Ctrl;Home
Go to Zone End | &Shift;O
Go to Zone Start | &Shift;I
Group Clips | &Ctrl;G
Set Zone In | I
Ungroup Clips | &Ctrl;&Shift;G
Set Zone Out | O

### Tips & Tricks

- You can advance and retard the clip in the project monitor by rotating the mouse wheel when the pointer is over the timeline ruler or over the project monitor

- You can advance and retard the clip in the clip monitor by rotating the mouse wheel when the pointer is over the clip monitor

- You can zoom the timeline by vertical drag on the ruler (if enabled in Settings -> Configure Kdenlive -> Timeline)

- What's this Full Luma Range

ToDo

- From writing your first draft to scheduling your last shot, we provide the tools to get it done. https://www.celtx.com

## Credits and License

### Program copyright

Copyright 2007-2013 Kdenlive authors.

### Documentation copyright

Please add your name here if you contribute to the handbook. Please respect alphabetical order

- Bushuev A.

- Simon A. Eugster (Granjow)

- Jean-Baptiste Mardelle

- Roger Morton (ttguy)

- Vincent Pinon

### Licenses

&underFDL;
&documentation.index;