Ahoj!

I just finished my first project¹ with kdenlive (source is DV from my video camera); but i cannot acchieve rendering it to a mpg file (for good compatibility, i suppose). I use "file rendering", MPEG-2 as format -- i tried with a lot of sub-options there, but all with the same outcome. The last tryp resulted in this command:
---
f=mpeg acodec=mp2 ab=384k ar=48000 vcodec=mpeg2video minrate=0 b=800k bf=2 b_strategy=1 trellis=1 aspect=%dar pass=2
---

Then rendering takes about 1,5 hours (the bar reaches 99% after a couple of minutes though) on my Intel QuadCore machine with 3GB of RAM. The file size then is reasonable, but when i want to show it with mplayer i get no video and the following output:
---
Playing seychellen.mpg.

Too many audio packets in the buffer: (4096 in 8294394 bytes).
Maybe you are playing a non-interleaved stream/file or the codec failed?
For AVI files, try to force non-interleaved mode with the -ni option.
MPEG: Missing video stream!? Contact the author, it may be a bug :(

Too many audio packets in the buffer: (4096 in 8294400 bytes).
Maybe you are playing a non-interleaved stream/file or the codec failed?
For AVI files, try to force non-interleaved mode with the -ni option.
MPEG: Missing video stream!? Contact the author, it may be a bug :(
libavformat file format detected.
[lavf] Audio stream found, -aid 0
==========================================================================
Forced audio codec: mad
Opening audio decoder: [libmad] libmad mpeg audio decoder
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 384.0 kbit/25.00% (ratio: 48000->192000)
Selected audio codec: [mad] afm: libmad (libMAD MPEG layer 1-2-3)
==========================================================================
E: context.c: waitpid(): No child processes
AO: [pulse] Failed to connect to server: Internal error
AO: [alsa] 48000Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Video: no video
Starting playback...
A: 14.7 (14.7) of 1662.5 (27:42.5) 1.1%
---

When i render it as AVI-DV or DVD it works, but the quality is better when the size of the video is the same as the raw material i would guess. I also tried to view it with Dragon Player which was delivered with kubuntu.

My system:
Kubuntu 9.04

$ uname -a
Linux spaghetti 2.6.28-13-generic #44-Ubuntu SMP Tue Jun 2 07:57:31 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux

kdenlive is 0.7.3, the version that is packed in the standard ubuntu repos.

thanks for any help,
~klemens

¹) I am not a regular user of video editing software. I used to take MainActor and liked it to the point where it was dropped by MainVision. I thought i have to change to Windows when i got to know kdenlive. Really great and usable piece of software! Tried kino and cinelarra, but didn't make friends with any of those.
Thank you for your extraordinary good work. I expect (and know from MainActor's former forums ;) that creating video editing software is a really tough job -- especially for Gnu/Linux!

See the binaries page and forum posts about getting 0.7.4 on Ubuntu from a Launchpad PPA repo, it's only available in the last couple of days. I know it's only labeled a minor point update, but it's like night and day. Many bugs fixed, much better rendering for me. Pretty much everything works for me at least.

Thanks for the tip ArtInven, unfortunately the symptoms are the same now with 0.7.4.
Any other ideas?

What should be a hint ;) is that line in the mplayer output:
--
MPEG: Missing video stream!? Contact the author, it may be a bug :(
--
What the console does not say, WHICH author should i contact? The one of mplayer? Of the encoder? decoder lib?

Okay, this one is solved.
The codecs in the render dialog did show active, nevertheless the installation of the "unstripped" packages like suggested on this page

http://kdenlive.org/user-manual/troubleshooting-and-common-problems/i-cannot-render-specific-format-xvid-mpeg-4-flash-it

did the trick! :)
Now I've got sound AND video in the resulting mpeg file.

I'm now figuring out, what's the best streaming size for a decent quality. :)