I'm a button-pusing n00b who is stuck with a screen that has five timelines, and nothing else. It says "untitled/dv/dvd NTSC at the top, but it won't let me get back to the default screen, which lets me capture files from my camera. I've "print screened" the screen, but I can't get it to print HERE. Can someone help the helpless?

Also, there was a tutorial from 4 or 5 years ago that looked good, but is out of date. Any new ones, with the current screen options?

Finally, when I hover over buttons, there's a little black rectangle that come up, but it's empty. Do a I have a broken copy of Kdenlive?

Thanx!

Maybe some dark force made you push the buttons at the wrong places. ;-)

As far as I know there are options to configure capturing somewhere in the menu. And the capturing pane should be found in a tab close to clip monitor (it is called RecordMonitor).

For the tool tip problem, please use the search function in this forum, it is a distro related issue which has been solved many times.

Be keen and try - Kdenlive is currently a bit short on up to date documentation.

Some places to visit:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Kdenlive
http://userbase.kde.org/Kdenlive
And there are some video tutorials at youtube - made some time ago, but you will get an idea of how Kdenlive works.

Maybe you must switch on view->record monitor?

Perhaps I should be more clear: I am stuck with a screen that is not the default or opening screen, even when I close and reopen the program. The view>record button is not there anymore, nor any of the others. Should I uninstall, then reinstall the program?

If your screen layout is not similar to the initial one (http://www.kdenlive.org/users/j-b-m/getting-ready-kdenlive-082) you might have accidently switched one of the subscreens to full screen mode and you only see the timeline panel. Then you could try to drag the screen and drop it somewhere else. Do you see the menu bar below "untitled/dv/dvd"?

If this does not work you could post a screenshot, if you can not insert it here, store it anywhere and post a link.

A reinstall should fix your problem, too.

I uninstalled and reinstalled, and the same screen came back (!!!). It is five timelines, three audio and two video, high up on the screen against the toolbar, with a big empty space below. I tried dragging everywhere and nothing happens. Tried most of the options in the tool bars, too, and nothing happens.

I do see the toolbar below "untitled/dv/dvd". I've also tried to print the screen, but that doesn't work either: I can't seem to drag and drop it here.

I have the little toolbar at the bottom, but other than the scissors and the Zoom, I have no idea what they mean.

Uninstall, then delete the kdenlive configuration directory in your home directory. I do not have Kdenlive available now, but I guess it is ".kdenlive". If you can not see this or a similar named directory, you might have to enable "Show hidden files" in your file browser. After deleting, install Kdenlive again. Good luck.

There are a few things you can try to delete and see if it helps:

~/.kde4/share/apps/kdenlive (directory, contains subdirectiroes)

~/.kde4/share/config/kdenliverc

and similar stuff in ~/.kde

there may be some stuff stuck in ./kde4/tmp and ./kde4/cache, but that
normally should not be a problem.

.kde4 is a hidden directory in your home directory.



BTW, you can check if it is something in your home directory that causes problems by logging in as a different (new) user, and checking how Kdenlive
works there.