Hi - I am new to kdenlive.

I am having major issues trying to edit anything because playback is really choppy - to the point of being unwatchable.

I am running latest version 0.8 in Ubuntu 10.04.
My computer is not fancy - a P4 Celeron with 1gb RAM. It works well, so is not a hardware issue.

Computer will play any video (outside of kdenlive) without any issue.

I downloaded OpenShot - it can play and edit video.

So, the problem must be in kdenlive.

I searched the forums here and tried the suggested fixes. Kdenlive will play the test file. It will play a very short DV segment. Anything longer - it jumps, splutters, stalls - it's unwatchable.

So, if OpenShot can play a video, why can't Kdenlive? What does Kdenlive do differently to other video players?

Would appreciate some thoughts

Kdenlive uses the same backend (MLT) as Openshot to play and process the video, so you should be able to get the same quality. Try deleting the Kdenlive config file in case something is broken there. The file is:

$HOME/.kde/share/config/kdenliverc

Also make sure that you don't have several MLT versions installed, and only have the last one (currently 0.7 if using Kdenlive 0.8)

regards

Thanks for that.
I deleted the config file and there was actually an improvement. It now plays like a really low bandwith internet connection. So picture will freeze every now and again whilst audio plays ok.
Other video programs on the computer still work well
MLT is version 0.7

"It will play a very short DV segment. Anything longer"
Does anything longer mean it is also DV? You say a P4 Celeron is not a hardware issue, but I guarantee that if you try to edit HD esp. AVCHD, it is.
It is fair and useful to compare Kdenlive to OpenShot but not a simple player. Video editors have more overhead because they must do more. Also, with such a low end system you should choose a project profile that matches your clip resolution and aspect ratio and progressive/interlace. Otherwise, it must scale and pad the input to match the output (project setting).