I have been looking around for a long time for a useable videoeditor for Linux. Kdenlive is the closest I have come so far and I have so far been playing around with it just a little to try to get a feel for it.

My background is in professional video and film editing - training, TV production, broadcast etc. and I am mostly using the Avid line of editors for this.

Kdenlive looks very promising, but I have some problems finding some of the basic stuff. So I need a little help.

I managed to load a little bit of video in, but after a while the picture froze and it stopped recording. I guess I need to figure out some basic stuff on loading video from a Sony PDX-10 DVCAM camera first.

But I do have some video in there and the first thing I noticed was the numbering of the tracks. As far as I know, most editors number tracks V1...Vn upwards. And then under this, A1...An downwards. Video and audio is split so it is possible to edit them independently. How can I set this up in Kdenlive?

The most basic stuff to do is play video. Forwards and backwards. Usually this is done through the J-K-L buttons. Is there a way to make this happen? J plays backwards K pauses L plays forward. One press on J or L plays at normal speed, press twice and you get double speed. Three presses give you three times normal, four presses gives you five times normal and five presses gives you eight times normal. Depending on the audio capabilities and your processor, the audio might be following at least up to three times normal. Holding the K pressed down and pressing either J or L should play at 25% speed with audio.

What you guys call markers are usually called in-point and out-point or simply in and out. They should be located at i and o so it is easy to just stretch your fingers and hit them during play.

Notice that all these shortcuts do not require any shift-ctrl-alt keys pressed.

I need to ways of putting things in the timeline. Overwrite and splice-in. The reason why it is not called insert is to not confuse it with inserting on video tape. In the TV industry, insert on video tape has a totally different meaning than inserting in a word processor. So the film terminology is used.

Overwrite does just this - overwrite whatever is in the timeline at the marker/line or if there is an in-point set - at the in-point. Splice-in will split the track at the in-point or the marker/line and push whatever is there already to the right as inserting something into a wordprocessor.

Why is it necessary to have this on buttons? Because a TV program can consist of more than 1000 edits. And then a lot of re-edits of the show. So if you are forced to use the mouse to drag things to the timeline, you quickly end up with a serious case of carpal tunnel...

The standard buttons to use for splice-in and overwrite are V and B.

That takes care of getting stuff into the timeline. But I also need to take it out. This should be even more easy.

Set in-point in the timeline. Set out-point. Press X. The marked section should be extracted and the gap should be closed. This is the opposite of pressing V (splice-in). The opposite of pressing B (overwrite) is to press Y and is called lift-out. Pressing Y will lift out the marked section and leave the gap empty with the in- and out-point still intact.

I am sure most of these functions already exist and I will be very happy to get some tips on where to find them.

Finding this application was almost like getting a Christmas present :-) I know of a few other attempts at making a video editor for Linux, but this is the first one I thinnk has a potential of getting it right. This is really needed and can actually be one of the applications that help getting Linux into places where it has never been before.

Looking forward to get into dialogue with everyone here.

hi oceanwatcher,

tip 1 : to capture your videos from your camcorder : http://kdenlive.org/tutorial/kdenlive-howto-capture-video-firewire

tip 2 : you are looking for splitting video and audio into separate tracks : this is a new function implemented in version 0.7.3 , right click on a video in the timeline and then "split". Video and audio are now in separate tracks but grouped (you can ungroup if you want, right click ...)

tip 3 : many actions in kdenlive can be assigned to a shortcut : Settings menu/Configure shortcuts ...

edit : if your camcorder is recognized, please take time to fill a new entry in the the supported camcorders database on this website : Discover/Supported camcorders

Capture - been there, checked things and will try it again. Only problem with this stuff is that it scares away anyone that is used to things working a bit easier. A gui for everything kinda way :-)

I do not know if you are a developer, but here is the deal: It is possible to detect exactly what device that has been connected if it is a camera. So it should be fairly easy to build a database with settings for each device and apply it when it is detected.

Splitting: I think this should be the default, not just an option. Right now, Kdenlive is set up as a light multimedia application that do not appeal to the pro users at all. Too much is different from what they are used to. Maybe there could be a switch that took you straight from "Light mode" to "Pro mode"?

Same with shortcuts. It should not be necessary to have to go through all this for a new user. BUT - here is a suggestion: Make templates for keyboard shortcuts. There are only a handful of applications that you need to cover. Avid MediaComposer, Apple FinalCut, Adobe Premiere and Sony Vegas. That should cover the most important. So if I could choose a preset of shortcuts, that would really make things easier.

Could we have the same with the icons? Switch the sets of icons for the ones used in the same apps as the shortcuts? Of course, styled to match the rest of the interface :-)

The clue here is to make it as easy as possible to switch - the same as others in this business are doing. They are borrowing from each other all the time and that makes it better for the customers. So a lot of shortcuts are the same already.

A nicer view of shortcuts would be a visual map of the keyboard and a list of icons that you can drag and drop on that keyboard.

On a different note - where can I check what field order is used for the different interlaced formats?

Fisrt of all I am not a dev of Kdenlive, I am just a simple user of Kdenlive since version 0.5. But I followed with great interest the devs work for the last year, and I have to say that Kdenlive have tremendously evolved. Many new features were implemented and all the interface has been redesigned, and personally I am pleased to play with it. But I understand that pro users will need more advanced functions, and I have no experience with pro apps provided by Avid, Apple ...

 If you have any ideas you can introduce them first in the "Kdenlive brainstorming" section of the forum and later on the Mantis bugtracker as a wishlist. The devs will give you their opinion, that is the beauty of free software, everybody can contribute even with simple ideas.

 PS : recently I decided to participate to the forum as a little contribution to that project. I haven't  any coding skills, so I answer to some posts, and If I have some more time I will invest myself in documentation.

to all the kdenlive's devs : thank you very much for all the job, in particular since KDE4 port.

 j, k, and l hotkeys already do work as you describe. Maybe you were in some GUI context that prevented playback of a clip or the timeline at the time you tried it. We use markers as markers like other video editors AFAIK--not as in and out as you allege. We do have i and o hotkeys that are immediate forms of in and out trimming--not the selection and command (X) as you describe. I guess that is what the author of that feature prefers. But we do appreciate your feedback about the desire for overwrite and lift modes. I would not be surprised to see those sometime fairly soon.

Please bear in mind that this is developed mainly as a hobby. I don't think its fair to expect someone doing this for free to cater to people wanting to use it professionally (= making money). Some of us have had the fortunate opportunity to work on it professionally at times, but not enough of us nor consistently. Therefore, we can only improve as time permits.

First of all - I am happy to hear and find out that some of the things on my list is already there and that some other things could soon arrive. Glad to see development happening.

Second - I think we define "use it professionally" a bit different. You think about the income, I think about the quality of the output (both technically and creatively).

A big concern for me is free press. We often talk about free software, but for many people around the world, beeing free has a very specific meaning. Democracy. I have friends that has been involved in helping the press in areas of the world where they needed to learn about how to run a free press after a war and becoming a democracy.

This is a place where Kdenlive can really shine, because very often, there is not a lot of money going around in a situation like this. Also, in a lot of third world countries, money is a problem and the only way to get good enough tools is piracy.

They need to do professional video, but they do not have the tools to do it. This is what I have in mind.

For a professional, effects are not important. Dissolve, a couple of wipes and "pixelating" to make faces and licenseplates anonymous is good enough. Add to this a few basic audio effects, and it is pretty complete.

The more important stuff is workflow. And I would be very happy to see Kdenlive get closer to the big ones in this area. Ultimately, I do not think the way a preofessional use his tool is a bad way for a hobby filmmaker.

I have the utmost respect for the work of the developers here. Kdenlive is the only video project in the Linux world that is something more than an unstable toy for hackers. Everything else that I have looked at is close to dead and is currently not working without a lot of hacking. I am hoping to be able to get into a dialogue with people here and suggest ways of improving workflow.

The way I see it, the feature set of Kdenlive is more than good enough. I actually do not wish for more. What I need is better ways to work with it.

One more thing to add -

I teach editing and would love to teach people this where I live in Brazil. But they can not affor the tools I am teaching, so I have been looking for something where I can teach them the principles without forcing them into piracy... I think Kdenlive is the answer and I am thinking about starting to work on some basic training material for it. Does anything like this exist alreaady? (training manuals etc.)

There is almost nothing that is current with regards to documentation and manuals.