Hello,

My first post, so please help me if I'm in the wrong section of the forum.

I am a new user of Kdenlive. I completed the Quick start Tutorial,
https://userbase.kde.org/Kdenlive/Manual/QuickStart

this worked very well, and I must say I'm impressed with the quality of both the application and the documentation.

Next - I used some of my holiday footage. A few clips from a HD water-sport camera. But the end result is very disappointing. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, or even how to describe it. So I'm not sure what key words to use to search for tips and solutions in forums. Can you please help give some pointers about what I should investigate, to try again. Or things I should examine that might cause a drop in the quality of the final rendered video. I'll show some still images using a screenshot.

The original video is 1280 x 720 59.49 fps, and the kdenlive project is HD 720p 59.94 fps .

Selection_020_original by Testing1-2-3, on Flickr

But after the edited video is rendered, the end result looks poor quality, showing pixelation and a poor range of colours in an area of blend eg the blues in the sky.


Selection_021poorquality by Testing1-2-3, on Flickr


Thanks in advance, Bill

What version of Kdenlive are you on?
What settings did you use when rendering?
Do you have proxies turned on?
Have you perhaps turned on the setting that uses the proxy file in the final render?

Hi ttguy,

Thanks for the comments.

Version of kdevenlive >
Version 0.9.10
Using KDE Development Platform 4.14.2, installed on Linux Mint 17.3

Downloaded from
https://launchpad.net/~sunab/+archive/u ... elease-old
as described here https://userbase.kde.org/Kdenlive/Manua ... ion#Debian
"Sunab offers a stable release of Kdenlive, He maintains a ppa with the previous release here. As at June 2015 it has the ver 0.9.10 of Kdenlive."

I found the version that installs from the default repository on Linux Mint 17.3 is totally unusable. It crashes as soon as you open a clip and many other places.

What settings did you use when rendering? >
You mean the settings within the Rendering dialogue? Mostly default, I selected MP4 output. Here's a screenshot,

Rendering_Settings by Testing1-2-3, on Flickr

Do you have proxies turned on? >
I don't think so, but I'll check that. I remember proxy being mentioned in the tutorial. All files are local to this laptop, I'm not using any network connections, so I didn't explore proxy settings at all.

Further to the question of using Proxies
> Have you perhaps turned on the setting that uses the proxy file in the final render?
Thanks for the suggestion, but I am confused by this comment. In the Render dialogue box, I do not see an option to enable anything to do with proxies. Am I missing something here? See a screenshot of Rendering dialogue in my post above.

> Do you have proxies turned on?

I just read the Kdenlive manual section about Proxies, here:
https://userbase.kde.org/Kdenlive/Manua ... t_Settings

Now I understand the proxy feature relates to smaller clip sizes for "perfomance-challenged" PC's, and not a reference to network proxy when accessing internet.

In my current project, the Project settings do not enable Proxy Clips, and I am currently looking for the setting for each individual clip.
However, the value for Video Profile = 1024x576 16:9 PAL [see red box highlight in screenshot below] looks like it might be around the appropriate value to be related to the level of quality in the output, that I am experiencing. This gives another line of investigation to resolve the unwanted loss of quality.

Here is a copy of the Project > Project Settings >
Project-Project_Settings by Testing1-2-3, on Flickr

Here is a screenshot of the context menu when selecting a clip, then Right-Click menu for that clip. The manual states "You also have the choice to manually enable / disable proxy clips for each clip in your project tree by right-clicking on the clip and choosing Proxy Clip. ", however I do not see this feature in the version 0.9.10, I have installed.
Clip_R-Click_Menu by Testing1-2-3, on Flickr

Nor if you follow into the Clip Properties option.
Clip_Properties by Testing1-2-3, on Flickr

Two things caught my eye:
1. You want to render HD (720p), but you set your project to 576 which is PAL. Please set your project profile to 1280x720p with a suitable fps. I suspect that this is at least the main cause for the terrible render quality you see.
2. You set the video bitrate to 2000kbs; I think that this may be not sufficient, but I may be wrong here. I render at FullHD at 8000kbs (which is probably already oversufficient), so you may play around with different settings here; 5000kbs should be a good starting point.