I have just installed the latest 0.7beta1 version of Kdenlive, and it really is great. So far, the stability is good, which was the main issue for me not using earlier versions. The interface is still intuitive, and lots of bugs seem to have been fixed.

So thank you to the developers for continuing to make a great video editor!

Now... my question. When rendering a video, it seems there's no status bar or anything to indicate the progress of the video being rendered. I can see from my CPU monitor that CPU usage jumps to 100% or so when I start rendering, and then drops when the rendering is finished. But that's the only indication I have of any kind of progress.

It would be nice to have some kind of progress indicator. Is there one and I'm not seeing it, or is it not implemented in any way?

Kdenlive rendering can be seen with kuiserver (from a terminal, type "kuiserver" before launching a rendering process). Kuiserver is supposed to be a central place to manage jobs in KDE 4.2. It already works in KDE 4.1 but is not started by default because it is not finished yet.

I'm using Gnome as my primary interface, and I can't find any "kuiserver" package in the repositories. Does that mean I won't be able to ever see a status bar?

kuiserver is a binary, and is probably part of another package.

I am running kubuntu 8.04 with kde4 packages, and the kuiserver is:

kdebase-runtime: /usr/lib/kde4/bin/kuiserver

Depending on you distro, there should be a way to search in non-installed packages for the kuiserver binary.

kuiserver is part of kdebase-runtime package under Debian.

I use Gnome and run juidserver automatically on startup using Gnome Sessions tool.

Funny.

I never see anything reported in Kuiserver. Maybe I'm just opening it after starting rendering and it needs to be before or something like that. Renders still seem to work though.

Thank you for the help.

I have found the kuiserver at this location:

/usr/lib/kde4/bin/kuiserver

I guess it just isn't on my PATH.

So now I'm wondering, since I'm a total newbie when it comes to scripting... is there anyway I can get this to launch when I run Kdenlive? I don't really want or need it for anything else, so it seems a bit much to run it when I start a Gnome sessions.

Yes, let me sketch the steps (I would need more info about your system to provide precise instructions). you can create a file somewhere on your path, that contains the following:

#!/bin/bash
/usr/lib/kde4/bin/kuiserver
/path/to/kdenliveinstall/bin/kdenlive

where the last line is the command you usually provide to start kdenlive. If you use the menu system, then please check it for what program/path it uses. If you are using the wizard, you should use kdenlive_start

So, place it on your path, which often contains $HOME/bin/, so lets assume that you have called it

$HOME/bin/my_kdenlive_start

Change it to be executable:

chmod 755 $HOME/bin/my_kdenlive_start

Test if from the the command line, and when it works, add an icon or menu entry for it.

Sweet. Thanks! The script does exactly what I'd hope for.

Of course, when shutting down Kdenlive, I have to separately shut down the kuiserver monitor as well...

So I'm all set, although I'd just like to finish off my offering my humble opinion:

I understand that there is a strong adherence to an philosophy in KDE of sharing system wide resources so as not to have to reinvent the wheel over and over again. I get that, I really do.

But it's an art, not a science, and I think in this case, having a progress bar in Kdenlive for renderings would actually be the best way to go. Whether that's accomplished by maybe incorporating the kuiserver or not, I don't know.

All I know is that having a progress bar for renderings inside a video editor is on the level of completely basic assumptions about the interface that I think it works against Kdenlive to have it handled separately.

Especially since Kdenlive has the potential to be the de facto video editor across all Linux interfaces, not just KDE. It's that good, so I think it's worth designing it with a little more universal appeal in mind.

Try if adding

killall kuiserver

to the script as the new last line, will do that.

I understand your point. I personally is unclear on what kuiserver will end up like, but please check this issue for some more information: http://www.kdenlive.org/mantis/view.php?id=256 - I think the thinking is good, but as you say, it does goes somewhat against the expectations for many users.

Feel free to post a feature request for this feature, if you still feel that we will need it, even when kuiserver is running for everyone :-)