Hey,
when I have a project that uses various clips from my camera, I'ld like to cut and arrange them a bit, then render the output video with the exact same settings as what my input is, so that there's no quality loss, and also no need to do heavy computations.

I saw this has come up before -- http://www.kdenlive.org/forum/automatic-mlt-profiles but I tried the "adjust profile to current clip" option, and it doesn't change the render settings. I'm not sure if I should do anything beyond that, the topic isn't very clear on that.

thanks!

Dieter

There's no 'smart' render feature to kdenlive. So you'll have to reencode and to be pedantic you'll never get the same 'quality' without loss using the exact same settings as the source even if those could be established.

But you can encode to a 'quality' that is perceptually without loss to the eye.

What is your camera and codec. What will be your playback?

Okay this is gonna be a bit complicated :)
I'm currently using clips from various devices and sources.
I'm creating some videos of me drumming in a practice room, as well as a live video from a recent gig. So there's essentially 2 use cases:
* drum videos: (just G1X, maybe mixed with Olympus because that also seems to sound good, has a higher framerate and I currently don't have access to the G1X)
* live video: olympus, iphone 4S (video only, the audio sounds bad), zoom H1, additional audio/video in currently unknown format I have yet to receive from an other videographer, and I'll also get an audio recording from the PA guy who recorded from the mix board, which will probably be my main source for audio, though I might use the audio from the olympus and zoom H1 too.

Here's what vlc tells me:
* Canon G1X:
- video: h264 mpeg-4 avc (part 10) (avc1) 1920x1080, frame rate 23.976024, decoded format: planar 4:2:0 YUV full scale
- audio: pcm s16 LE (sowt), stereo 48kHz, bits/sample 16
- the G1X sounds pretty good (https://vimeo.com/40860416)

* Olympus sz30MR:
- video: h264 mpeg-4 avc (part 10) (avc1) 1920x1080, frame rate 29.970029, decoded format: planar 4:2:0 YUV full scale
- audio: mpeg aac (mp4a), stereo 48kHz
- also sounds good, but only tested live, will test in practice room like I did with g1x.

* Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS35:
- video: motion jpeg, 1280x720 frame rate 24. planar 4:2:0 yuv full scale
- audio: pcm s16 BE (twos). mono 16kHz. bits/sample 16
- The lumix sounds quite bad (https://vimeo.com/38518937) so I'll stop using it, you can basically ignore this one.

* iPhone 4S:
- video: h264 mpeg-4 avc (part 10) (avc1) 1920x1080, frame rate 24.010691, decoded format: planar 4:2:0 YUV
- audio: mpeg aac (mp4a), stereo 44.1kHz
- https://vimeo.com/41699560 I don't think I'll be using the audiostream from this device.

* Zoom H1:
- audio only: PCM S24 LE (araw), stereo 96kHz 24bit

Output format is whatever you tell me is best :) Target output is uploading to vimeo and watching on full HD television sets, as well as occasionally playing it back on my computer as well. Preferably without quality loss, of course. neither video/audio.
Is this enough information? I'm a bit surprised the vlc info doesn't include bitrate, as I noticed that's something that can also differ a lot between cameras.

Based on the cameras listed I'd personally suggest a 720P 24fps kdenlive project profile with h264 + pcm audio at about the bitrate of the GX1, but test various rates when encoding out.

Your frame rate on the Olympus is 30/1001 so odd one out. I believe that MLT will re adjust the framerate automatically to the 24p project rate in a rudimentary way, by deleting frames every so many rather than any kind of interpolated frame rate. My apologies to any dev reading if that's not the case.

So you may want to check out the 30fps in 24p project stuff to see if it feels / looks ok when played back.