I had been running Kdenlive 0.9.10 successfully on Xubuntu 15.04, and was disappointed to find that when I upgraded to 15.10, it also did an involuntary upgrade to the latest version of Kdenlive (which is now all that is available in the Ubuntu Software Center). Whilst I can load Kdenlive, it would appear that its dependencies on the KDE Plasma 5 environment means that it will not work properly in anything other than Kubuntu - and specifically, the monitor preview will not display video. I have no particular desire to migrate from Xubuntu to Kubuntu (owing to my limited hardware). Is there any workaround? - either some limited elements of KDE Plasma that can be installed to make it work properly, or maybe have Kdenlive 0.9.10 made available in the official repositories as an alternative. I cannot find a reliable source to reinstall 0.9.10. I am sure that I will not be the only one with this issue, as others upgrade to Wily Werewolf, and the Kdenlive user base will surely contract significantly if it only works in a KDE desktop. Any suggestions gratefully received!

Phillip21 wrote:, it would appear that its dependencies on the KDE Plasma 5 environment means that it will not work properly in anything other than Kubuntu

Who told you this?

I can confirm this is the case.

I have 'downgraded' to 15.04.2 from http://ppa.launchpad.net/sunab/kdenlive-release/ubuntu
link available from https://kdenlive.org/download-ubuntu
This works, but you will have to stop it 'upgrading' when you install other updates.
Hopefully the xubuntu version will be fixed.

Alan

alanwinn wrote:I can confirm this is the case.

I have 'downgraded' to 15.04.2 from http://ppa.launchpad.net/sunab/kdenlive-release/ubuntu
link available from https://kdenlive.org/download-ubuntu
This works, but you will have to stop it 'upgrading' when you install other updates.
Hopefully the xubuntu version will be fixed.

Alan

Thank you, Alan - I'll certainly give that a try.

Phillip21 wrote:

alanwinn wrote:I can confirm this is the case.

I have 'downgraded' to 15.04.2 from http://ppa.launchpad.net/sunab/kdenlive-release/ubuntu
link available from https://kdenlive.org/download-ubuntu
This works, but you will have to stop it 'upgrading' when you install other updates.
Hopefully the xubuntu version will be fixed.

Alan

Thank you, Alan - I'll certainly give that a try.

I did indeed try, and your approach did indeed work - I could never have seen that coming! For the benefit of anyone else with the same problems, once you have set up the correct repository, which (for me) was - the text I entered into the dialog box on the software and updates app dialog box: "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/sunab/kdenlive-release/ubuntu vivid main", you need to run the following commands - in the order shown:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install kdenlive-data=15.04.2-0ubuntu0~sunab~vivid4
sudo apt-get install kdenlive=15.04.2-0ubuntu0~sunab~vivid4

After installation, the only minor glitch was that I had to specify the video player for media playback (this was not automatically found).
Thanks again, Alan, for finding the answer to a very difficult problem for a non-Ubuntu expert, which has wasted hours of my time, but hopefully taught me something about how Ubuntu works!

ttguy wrote:

Phillip21 wrote:, it would appear that its dependencies on the KDE Plasma 5 environment means that it will not work properly in anything other than Kubuntu

Who told you this?

I found out by bitter experience that, seemingly, the last version of Kdenlive to work with non-Kubuntu desktops is 15.04.2 - which is 'skipped' in the upgrade process to Xubuntu 15.10. However, by uninstalling the newer version and following Tony's helpful advice below, there is a way round the problem.

Latest Kdenlive can work on any desktop ; maybe there is only a packaging issue, missing a dependency in 15.10 package (kded?).
If you explained the errors you have we could try to identify the packages missing in your install...

vpinon wrote:Latest Kdenlive can work on any desktop ; maybe there is only a packaging issue, missing a dependency in 15.10 package (kded?).
If you explained the errors you have we could try to identify the packages missing in your install...

Thank you for that. The error I had is that the monitor screen showed green, and would not show any previews of either video clips or existing title sequences (so the problem was not format-dependent). Also (like the previous version 15.04.2,which I now have installed) it does not show all the icons (for example the 'pause' button to the left of 'forward' for playback). If there is a package I could install to restore the icons without triggering an update of kdenlive-data i would be interested to know.

OK I see, the green monitor is not a packaging problem but an OpenGL driver problem (on Intel at least).
We switched to this backend in 15.08 to allow smoother video playing, GPU effects and other QML things...
But I had the same problem with my GMA chipset display.
I sent a fix but it has been overridden and missed 15.08.2, it should be in 15.08.3.
But I don't think Ubuntu will upgrade Kdenlive which is not part of the distribution core.
So you will have to either build it or load a PPA when 15.08.3 will be out in 3 weeks.

Regarding the icons, I still don't understand well what's wrong (for translations as well), need to find the info somewhere.
Do you have breeze-icon-theme installed?

vpinon wrote:OK I see, the green monitor is not a packaging problem but an OpenGL driver problem (on Intel at least).
We switched to this backend in 15.08 to allow smoother video playing, GPU effects and other QML things...
But I had the same problem with my GMA chipset display.
I sent a fix but it has been overridden and missed 15.08.2, it should be in 15.08.3.
But I don't think Ubuntu will upgrade Kdenlive which is not part of the distribution core.
So you will have to either build it or load a PPA when 15.08.3 will be out in 3 weeks.

Regarding the icons, I still don't understand well what's wrong (for translations as well), need to find the info somewhere.
Do you have breeze-icon-theme installed?

Thank you for that. I will definitely try to install 15.08.3 from the PPA when it becomes available. My computer is OpenGL compliant, so I hope that the fix will work for me too. If it doesn't I can always revert fo 15.04. I don't have the breeze icon theme installed. I'll see if I can do that.

Phillip21 wrote: I don't have the breeze icon theme installed. I'll see if I can do that.

Correction - I do have it installed (v 4:5.4.2-0ubuntu2).