Hi All,

I started working with kdenlive last night and I'm at my first transition. I'm not used to the way kdenlive requires you to overlap the clips. In cinelerra or avid proXpress you just drop the transition on the border between two clips and all is well. I know that there must be a good reason for transitions being done this way in kdenlive because I believe that final cut pro also uses this method but I'm quite a newbie to video editing so I don't know what the reason is. Anyway, it is what it is and so I'm trying to work with it. My main problem is this, the sound is terrible where the clips overlap. I'm using 1 second transitions and so I just add about 15 frames to the beginning and ending of each clip to give me enough material for the transitions but when it comes to dragging a clip for the 1 second overlap it's imprecise, that is, I'm just making a visual guess. I know that I'm missing some information to make these transitions less of a headache but obviously I don't know what it is. Kdenlive looks like a very good program and I've been impressed by some of it's features so I hope that someone can give me some tips or point me towards a good tutorial.

Thanks

That's true. I used to zoom in to a certain zoom level for all transitions and then align the clips in a way that the borders are obvious:

But some guidance would be helpful. Any ideas about the best way to do this?

Regarding audio you should take a look at the keyframable Volume effect.

Simon

I agree that applying the same transition to many clips in a project can be tedious. In my slideshows, I add a half-second dissolve between all the clips. Trying to drag the clips with the mouse to achieve that precise overlap is impractical. What I do is make sure that Snap is on (I think that's the default). Then I click on the first clip to highlight it and press the End key to move the play head to the end of the clip. Then I move the play head backwards by pressing the left arrow 15 times. Then I can drag the next clip to the play head and I've only got to get close for it to snap right to the play head. There's the half-second overlap. In your case, it's even easier if you want a 1 second overlap. Just press Shift-Left Arrow to move the play head that far. Then you can add your transition. For a Dissolve, all I've got to do is hover over the lower right corner of the top clip until the green Add Transition thingy appears. Click and it adds a Dissolve that fits the overlap precisely.

Don't know if that helps or not.

When making an audiotransition I split the audio stream fom the videostream with the "split audio" function.
Then I apply the keyframeable volume effect to the audiostreams and work with this effect to make a transition.
A transition on an audiostream alone seems to do nothing...

[edit] I meant an automatic transition (like "DISSOLVE"/"xfader") applyed on two audiostreams seems to have no effect at all

Thanks for your comments!

Sorry about my question being a bit misleading. I wondered if you might think of a good way to implement this in kdenlive such that aligning becomes easier. The easiest way would perhaps be to let clips snap in also at e.g. 6 frames before the end as well, but I doubt this is the most elegant way as well.
If we do it, then we should do it right ;)


@OpenHawk But you could do it also without splitting, couldn't you? Just make sure to activate the correct effect on the effect stack when changing parameters.

Simon

I would like to have a predetermined snap for transitions that could be set in the project defaults. That way whenever you change the zoom level, your new transitions will still be the same length as the old ones no matter how different they look on the timeline. Perhaps different snap settings for different types of transitions.

Waynevid

@frabato56 If you want exactly a 1 second transition, it's pretty easy. Shift-left and shift-right move the cursor back and forward by 1 second. Alt-left and alt-right move it to the previous/next edit point.

So you can use alt + arrow keys to get you to the edit point you want, then shift-left to move the cursor 1 second before that, then, as jjfro says, drag your second clip and it should snap to the cursor.

Sound breaking up at transitions is irritating, but it should not affect the audio when you render your final product. One thing I have found that helps is to transcode the audio of your raw footage to PCM using avidemux before importing the clips into kdenlive. It can also help to turn off video and audio thumbnails when you don't need them.

@Granjow and waynevid I agree that it would be good to have an easy way to overlap clips by something other than a second.

@OpenHawk You're right that the transitions are just video transitions. But you don't need to split off the audio to get a cross-fade effect; you can apply the keyframeable volume effect direct to a clip on a video track. An alternative is to use the "fade in" and "fade out" effects, but the time defaults to 3 seconds, so you have to set the fade-in and fade-out times to the length of your transitions.

Mouse over the top left and right corners of the clip reveals a throbbing green circle. Click and drag it to create audio fades. Use the effect stack to fine tune the duration of the fades.