Hello there. I am brand new to this editing program. Past editing has been done using adobe elements. I am having more than a few issues trying to learn this program, but the biggest is with rendering.

I am wanting to use this program for two purposes
1. 10 minute or less shorts for youtube
2. Full length tutorial videos (45min-1hr30min)

I have been playing around with some shorter clips. I run into a couple problems.
1.The progress bar stays at 0 and says waiting. So I don't get an estimated time. It does create the file, but takes a long time ( 20+ mins for 45 seconds in a low quality mpeg). How can I get it to give me an estimated time?
2.Even when I bump up the quality to the highest, it looks very digitalized! How can I improve the quality?

I am using a combination of graphics, title screens, and tod files.

My last question is in regards to previewing my edits. When you render in elements, it just renders the timeline so you can preview your work before creating a file. Is there anyway to do that with this program? I don't want to have to "render" a file everytime I need to adjust transitions. It is going to take forever that way.

Anymore tips would be appreciated.

Thanks!

it would be helpful to inform us what version of kdenlive you're using, version of melt, and version of ffmpeg. what is the quality of your source video also.

1. i have brought this issue to the attention of sanub, he keeps a custom repo called a PPA for latest released version of kdenlive and melt. I get the non-moving status of a render job a lot lately and i am not sure why. interesting that it says 0% waiting but you can see the file got created in a file browser like nautilus or whatever. also looking at terminal from which is where i started kdenlive, you can see that it says rendering started and whole long line of melt information. sanub will hopefully reply as i have this same issue. sometimes it finishes rendering but i never know, cause it still says 0% waiting, i have to look at terminal feedback which i shouldn't have to IMO. sometimes the file is even no good, no valid streams in it.

2. quality is based on your source video plus what codec you encoding to. again this will depend on what version of ffmpeg you're using but others im sure will chime in who can help more. i always render to h264/aac audio. my source clips are dv avi type 2 (uncompressed) files which i have read are better for advanced editing. also, what size are you outputting? if it's larger then your source video it will be pixelated.

As far as viewing your edits and transitions, use the preview monitor and just hit the play button arrow. you can do this right in kdenlive without rendering it. the preview may not look all that great depending on how you have your playback setup. it's in the settings i believe.

Your render problems sound like bad packages or poorly maintained environment if building from source. I say that because you are describing some extreme problems.

Re "can preview your work before creating a file?"
Yes, you can use the green zone bar above the timeline to select a region and just render that. Also, you can set a media player in Settings, and choose to play with the media player when rendering is complete.