I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 (AMD64) on my Mac Mini (Intel processor, nVidia graphics--same h/w as a Macbook, essentially) with 6GB RAM.

I was running Kdenlive 0.7.7 that I got from the repos. I liked it a lot, it did everything I needed, but crashed about 50 times a day, so I decided to update it to 0.8 from the sunab repository. It stopped crashing, but it's full of problems: every time I cut a clip, the audio goes out of sync, some clips have barely audible sound after rendering, cutting and moving clips leaves vestiges of themselves behind, and more. And I never got h.264 support with either version.

I tried rebuilding everything from source using procedures I found at this site (and others, I think). ffMpeg seemed to install okay, but MLT and Kdenlive both died during compile because of (I think) unresolved references. Anyway, Kdenlive doesn't work at all now and I'm sick unto death of Googling and experimenting. I've been using Linux about a year, but I'm certainly no guru with it.

So: can someone [b]please[/b] assist me in stripping ffMpeg, MLT, and Kdenlive *completely* off my system and walk me through getting the appropriate source files and compiling/installing them? I can't tell you how much I'd appreciate it. I'm to the point of considering dropping a couple of grand on a Windows (gag) box and Adobe Premiere. I used to go that route but am systematically de-Microsofting my household. I'd hate to backslide after all this time and effort. (I didn't like OSX much, either; hence Linux on my Mini.)

Thanks much.

Can you try the build script? If it works, you can start removing old packages and do a clean install.

And, check whether you e.g. have ffmpeg/mlt/... installed in both /usr and /usr/local. This is a common source of problems.

Nope, got about a million errors. Is there a way I can clean my system and re-install Kdenlive 0.7.8? If I take it off and try to reinstall from the repos, it fails--I think it's because the upgrade to 0.8 installed newer libraries (MLT, etc.) that aren't compatible.

It really shouldn't take a PhD in computer science just to edit my videos...

Post the errors you get when building mlt.
Post output of these commands:
ls /usr/lib/libmlt* /usr/local/lib/libmlt*

SixString said "And I never got h.264 support with either version"

-> you just need to install libavcodec52-extra to have h.264 encoding support.

Be careful with hand compiling on your own ... where did you have installed latest ffmpeg in /usr ? /usr/local? in compile instruction it is called prefix= ...

To clean the packages remove the following packages if installed :
sudo apt-get remove --purge libmlt++2 libmlt++3 libmlt++-dev libmlt2 libmlt3 libmlt4 libmlt-dev libmlt-dbg libmlt-data melt python-mlt3 python-mlt4 kdenlive kdenlive-data kdenlive-dbg