Is there an easy way to change the timeline logic? I think it would help the switch from other tools. Here is what I am looking for:

Vn..
V4
V3
V2
V1
-
A1
A2
A3
A4
An..

Video and audio should always be displayed separately. This way, you have a clear stack of video where V2 always stay on top of V1 so if you want to make a picture-in-picture, you drop the background on V1 and the foreground picture on V2 and then apply the effect to the clip on V2. The tracks stack the same way you stack a pile of books on a table and you view the stack from above.

This could be a setting so that you can set and forget and those that want to keep it as it is now do not have to think about that setting. There should also be a setting where you can set that you should never display audio as part of the video track. Again - this is for those that comes from other tools where this is the normal way of doing things.

The layering does work as you describe even if the numbering is not as you describe. Um, I'm okay with changing the order of numbering, but someone with spreadsheet experience might not. ;-)

You mention an option to keep the audio from a clip on a separate track from the video, would the audio for track V3 go to A3 by default? If so, the higher the video track, the more distant it becomes from its audio. Hmm... ignoring this option for the moment...

How do you feel about dropping the audio tracks? They are basically the same as a Video track with the Hide button on.

I am not too good with sarcasm, so I am going to answer as truthfully as I can on this (my first language is not English).

As video is not accounting, I guess spreadsheets are not too important :-) The logic in most other applications in this field is video building up the same way as a stack of books and you look at it from above. So if the top book covers the whole view, none of the other layers under shows. This should also be very understandable for people from the graphics and photo area. Both Photoshop and Gimp uses this way of layering.

As for audio, any clip and track in audio has it's own volume normally and are placed in a stereo perspective by panning it to the right or left. There a re a couple of models to choose from there, but I have a feeling you know a bit about that.

Regarding what goes where when you edit, there is actually a need for a way to choose what goes where. The first tracks are easy. Video goes on track 1 (track 0 does not exist in any program I know of and I would have a VERY hard time explaining that to my non geek drinking buddy) and audio goes on track one and two. Usually if video goes on track two, you can do two things - move the audio down to the first free tracks, or have a mechanism to choose what should happen - a "patch" system. Or even both.

It is not too often that you end up with a lof of both video and audio tracks. Very often, building more video layers do not add any audio tracks at all as it is just another picture into the mix, or a text or some other kind of graphic. From experience, most videos will be done with less than eight tracks of audio. 2 tracks of sound from the camera, two tracks of sound for music, two tracks of sound for sound effects and one track of sound for voice over/narrator. This assumes all tracks are mono tracks (so stereo is split in two panned mono tracks) and audio crossfade can be done on one track.

Again - implementing what is the norm in this field of work is actually not so bad. Some systems have tried other ways of doing things. They do not exist any more.

" The logic in most other applications in this field is video building up the same way as a stack of books and you look at it from above. So if the top book covers the whole view, none of the other layers under shows. This should also be very understandable for people"

I think that is a good argument, really, for a good model.

Re "video building up the same way as a stack of books and you look at it from above" and "I think that is a good argument"

But that IS the way it exists now in kdenlive if you interpret "up" as the visual ordering instead of the numerically-labelled ordering. I do agree that the numeric track labels should be reversed to avoid confusion when communicating "up" or "higher" because then it works from both the visual and numeric perspective. And, of course, I am fine with starting with 1 instead of 0.

I agree with this suggestion. Professional video editors are used to audio and video being on separate layers as well as having the layers numbers increase as they move away from center. However, I understand your point here...

“You mention an option to keep the audio from a clip on a separate track from the video, would the audio for track V3 go to A3 by default? If so, the higher the video track, the more distant it becomes from its audio. Hmm... ignoring this option for the moment...”

The concept behind this is that as tracks get farther away from center they become less important tracks. In editing you lay down what is called a "master track" on layer one and place cut away tracks on all the higher numbered tracks. The same goes for audio.

Here are screen shots of other NLEs. Showing how this works.

Avid Media Composer

http://img3.immage.de/091192fc32avidmediacomposer.jpg

Final Cut Pro

http://images.amazon.com/images/G/01/software/detail-page/final-cut-pro.jpg

Premiere Pro

http://static.tz.nl/f/tap/31617_de062eb8.jpg

And here is a screen shot of Protools an audio editing program.

http://imgsrv.nightswithalicecooper.com/image/nwac/UserFiles/Image/Protools.jpg

In audio the highest track is number one while video the lowest track is number one.

I think that all features should be considered carefully before being implemented. If a feature does not have a reason for being but is considered “the norm” than it isn't an important feature. However, I think this feature has thought behind it.

Also, I know this thread is very old, but I am using the newest KDENLIVE and this feature is still not in it so I thought it should be opened back up for consideration.

I agree with Alan and Oceanwatcher.

Also, being able to drag up and down the division between Video1 and Audio1 is very useful, because you can temporarily dedicate more screen space to what has more tracks (audio or video) or simply what you want to concentrate on for a while.
Now that I'm thinking of, there's no such division in kdenlive between audio and video tracks at all, this one is useful too, as it allows to scroll audio tracks without scrolling out of screen the video tracks at the same time, and viceversa.

The existance of audio tracks is useful when you want to de-synchronize the audio track from its corresponding video track. In Premiere Pro, it even appears a little text in the clips header, telling you how much the corresponding clips are out of phase.

Also, to my knowledge, when you drag a new clip into the timeline, the audio should be put on the first available audio track.

Thanks!!

Could somebody please open a feature request in our bugtracker for this one.

The logic is not important: i rename the track for my work.