Hey, I am trying to edit video I shot on vacation using my new camcorder.

The shots are all in 1080i 1920x1080@60fps.

Kdenlive will not actally play any of the video without serious frame drops although it renders fine. I've noticed that kdenlive does a pretty good job of re-encoding it into something that kdenlive can actually play.

So my question is can anyone with more ffmpeg or mlt knowledge than me pass me a command line argument that will allow me to re-encode the 40+ clips that I have so that kdenlive can edit them?

Here is a sample clip. The camera in question is a samsung.

http://proviction.com/deathguppie/tests/HDV_0030.MP4

There's a Transcode option, a common choice is DNxHD however I think there may be issue with interlaced material to DNxHD unless you are using a latest svn build.

I don't think i get what you mean about the transcode thing.

I need to transcode about 40 clips. I m using an svn version.

The camera is in the DB btw it's a Samsung hmx h200.

In Kdenlive: File (Menu) -> Transcode clips.
Select all your clips, and then choose a transcoding profile, DNxHD is often used. Make sure to check "Add clips to project", so the new transcoded clips will appear in the project tree.

to convert before importing in kdenlive, select 1 clip, try to convert in kdenlive (copy the ffmpeg parameter , f.e. -s 1920x1080 -r pal -top -1 -flags +ilme+ildct -b 120000k -threads 2 -vcodec dnxhd -acodec copy %1.mov

then use in console

for i in *.MTS ;do ffmpeg $i -s 1920x1080 -r pal -top -1 -flags +ilme+ildct -b 120000k -threads 2 -vcodec dnxhd -acodec copy $i.mov; done

this would convert all MTS files in the dir you will execute this to .mov.