I've been struggling with kdenlive for at least a half hour and can't seem to get it to place simple text over the image when you're editing a video.
It lets you "Add Title Clip" and you can move that clip to the timeline to have text on a black screen, and you can create a Title and "overlay" it on the timeline, so its showing in a rectangle on the lower border of say a video, but then it doesn't show at all. All it shows is a little red box in the center of the preview screen, and nothing after the video is compiled.
What's the secret, does anybody know?

Probably transitions. You don't tell us what Kdenlive version you use, could be 0.9.x as the new 15.x series has automatic composite tracks. Alas, put an affine transition to your title clip. By the way, this is such a common (common-common) question, it can be found many times here in the forum as well as in the Kdenlive documentation. In addition, there a several YouTube clips on that topic too.

>>
By the way, this is such a common (common-common) question, it can be found many times here in the forum as well as in the Kdenlive documentation. In addition, there a several YouTube clips on that topic too.
>>

That's nice to know. OK, so where? I've been searching the web and videos ever since long before I posted.
Yes there are lots of how-to videos and writeups on this topic but none of them have worked.
Obviously I wouldn't be registering with a forum and posting this if I hadn't looked for quite awhile.
I have the most up to date version available for my version of Linux in the Linux Mint package manager, 4-14-2.

Okay I figured this out by looking at OpenShot, you need to right click on the video icon on the top track and insert a blank track above it. Then add the title to the new top track and it will show. Apparently, Title text is only visible if its in a track above a video track.
As far as any transitions, they aren't working with this version.

Don't know what "4-14-2" could be. A safe combination? There's a "Help" "About..." when you start Kdenlive. In the menu bar at the top of the Kdenlive window. Select it, a dialog comes up. Click on the "Version" tab. Voila! You see Kdenlive's version number. Great, eh?

As for your quest for search: I simply entered "kdenlive title overlay" and got this first hit here: https://userbase.kde.org/Kdenlive/Manual/Titles ... mission completed. This first link points to Kdenlive's documentation. It's a good read (nudge, nudge).

In case you prefer video instead: "kdenlive title video" gives this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQMZEfqVUrc ... a comprehensive introduction to using titles; both editor and composite transitions.

So, yes, it's really hard to find this information.

jeffpass wrote:Okay I figured this out by looking at OpenShot, you need to right click on the video icon on the top track and insert a blank track above it. Then add the title to the new top track and it will show. Apparently, Title text is only visible if its in a track above a video track.
As far as any transitions, they aren't working with this version.

Report this to your distribution packagers. As you seem to use Kdenlive 15.x (I can tell from the fact that you don't use the composite or affine transition, yet see a proper overlay -- as you never mentioned the transition that should appear automatically whenever you drag a title clip into the timeline), make sure that the frei0r package is installed. It contains most transitions as well as effects. Again, this is a distribution packaging failure, as the required frei0r package should automatically be installed.

As for the way, Kdenlive works, please read first the Kdenlive documentation. It explains how the timeline works.

jeffpass wrote:Okay I figured this out by looking at OpenShot, you need to right click on the video icon on the top track and insert a blank track above it. Then add the title to the new top track and it will show. Apparently, Title text is only visible if its in a track above a video track.
As far as any transitions, they aren't working with this version.

There's an easier way. See my posts here viewtopic.php?f=265&t=130849