Hi,

I'm new to kdenlive and I'm just trying to do some basic stuff.

I'm on a MacBook Pro, OSX 10.6.8 and I'm using kdenlive v0.8. I shot a short test video on my Kodak Playfull camcorder at 1080p 30fps. I found that it's actually 1920x1088, so I made a custom Project Profile based off the "HD 1080p 29.97 fps" Profile, just changing the size. When I import my movie file, I don't get any warning or error. But when I play back the video - either in the clip monitor or the project monitor - the playback is not smooth at all. The video is essential still frames at every 2 seconds or so; the audio is smooth except for every time the video updates.

Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks!

-David

I found one solution to the problem, in transcoding the file. I right-click on the video file (this particular one is cam1.MP4) and select "DNxHD 1080p 30fps 220 Mb/s". It's not always smooth, but it's much much better. The issue now is the huge file size. The original video file from the camera is 26.6Mb and the new file is 561.7Mb. I plan to edit 30 - 90 minute videos, so even with the "...120 Mb/s" transcode option, the file size will be enormous. Is there another solution?

You could use proxies, they are there to help with HD.

Transcoding was the route prior to kdenlive devs implementing proxies.

With regard to the 1088 stream, it's best not to make a new 1088 project template but instead switch off the 'annoying' helpful message about non matching profiles, it's a tick box in the Settings menu.

The reason is I believe MLT silently crops those 8 rows of pixels off the bottom of every frame. So with your 1088 project you'll either get a fine black bar at the bottom of your movie or it will scale from cropped 1088 (ie 1080 by MLT) to your project profile of 1088. Strething the frame vertically slightly. Not sure if MLT / kdenlive scale to project resolution by default.

I've had the same problem with Canon DSLR video which is also 1088 in the stream. :-)