Hi all!

First of all, I should say that I really appreciate the work of all the developers. Thanks to their (recent) work Kdenlive has improved a lot and has been made much more usable.


I have an idea that, I think, would make Kdenlive a much more productive piece of software. I’ve Googled a bit but didn’t find any threads that mention anything similar, so I thought to give a go.

Currently, Kdenlive has a lot of audio effects, transitions, and also video effects.

However, the latter aren’t very decent. A lot of effects are simply missing or have only a very small feature set. Take for example the sharpening. It’s only an unsharp mask with two settings! There’s no deconvolution filter, dampening, ...

These video image effects do a nice job for those who aren’t too concerned about image quality, or for those who just leave their footage as is. They are perfect for those who just want to make their footage look better with a few quick settings. Or for those who don't have much processing power.

But in my opinion kdenlive is on its way to become a very good video editor. It has a lot of potential. The lack of ‘decent’ image effects is a real pain in this case.

It’s very understandable that not much video effects have added, for various reasons. But I think I’ve an idea for an efficient, work-around solution: integration with RawTherapee.

While I have some programming experience, I’m not an experienced software developer so my excuses for my amateurish language use .

The build-up could be as follows:

- One new effect

- It has one file selector, a shortcut, a trigger button and one on/off button. With the file selector one can select a Rawtherapee processing profile to be used for the footage; the shortcut opens a Rawtherapee window with the current video frame loaded, ready to be graded; the trigger button reloads the processing profile; and button 2 sets reloading profile to automatic/manual.
- It takes an image frame, puts it in the Rawtherapee processing engine and then puts in out again.

- That’s it.

Regarding the installation, one will have to install RawTherapee separately.

The advantages are as follows:

- Lots of effects!
- A real grading suite – a bit like Davinci Resolve, with decent sharpening and all the other options RawTherapee has.
- Stable, as all the processing happens by the very stable RawTherapee
- Easy to keep the effects updated, as this is done by the RawTherapee developers.
- High quality image processing.

The disadvantages:

- Real-time playback will be almost impossible. For me this doesn’t matter, I just want to have great-looking footage. I always do all the cutting and audio with the effects disabled, and grade using still frames.
- Rendering times will be longer.

Would this be possible? Is it feasible? Or is this just a nonsense idea?

If it worked, it would make Kdenlive so much better...

Hi

Thanks for sharing your input.

Blue Fox wrote:Hi all!

These video image effects do a nice job for those who aren’t too concerned about image quality, or for those who just leave their footage as is. They are perfect for those who just want to make their footage look better with a few quick settings. Or for those who don't have much processing power.

But in my opinion kdenlive is on its way to become a very good video editor. It has a lot of potential. The lack of ‘decent’ image effects is a real pain in this case.

It’s very understandable that not much video effects have added, for various reasons. But I think I’ve an idea for an efficient, work-around solution: integration with RawTherapee.

While I have some programming experience, I’m not an experienced software developer so my excuses for my amateurish language use .

TL;DR
I like the idea of more effects but don't think rawtherapee would be a solution.

Me as an editor, I would prefer Kdenlive to improve its editing power rather that post-processing capabilities. As in I want advanced trimming or an audio mixer and not more effetcs. The frei0r effects till now satisfy my needs... Either way that isn't a Kdenlive issue really but rather an MLT one. There would have to be a module for RawTherapee. I recently thought that it would be cool to integrate G'MIC (and I still do) but development power is focused on an already defined roadmap. Also the lack of manpower doens't help...

Blue Fox wrote:Hi all!

The build-up could be as follows:

- One new effect

- It has one file selector, a shortcut, a trigger button and one on/off button. With the file selector one can select a Rawtherapee processing profile to be used for the footage; the shortcut opens a Rawtherapee window with the current video frame loaded, ready to be graded; the trigger button reloads the processing profile; and button 2 sets reloading profile to automatic/manual.
- It takes an image frame, puts it in the Rawtherapee processing engine and then puts in out again.

- That’s it.

Regarding the installation, one will have to install RawTherapee separately.

The advantages are as follows:

- Lots of effects!
- A real grading suite – a bit like Davinci Resolve, with decent sharpening and all the other options RawTherapee has.
- Stable, as all the processing happens by the very stable RawTherapee
- Easy to keep the effects updated, as this is done by the RawTherapee developers.
- High quality image processing.

The disadvantages:

- Real-time playback will be almost impossible. For me this doesn’t matter, I just want to have great-looking footage. I always do all the cutting and audio with the effects disabled, and grade using still frames.
- Rendering times will be longer.

Would this be possible? Is it feasible? Or is this just a nonsense idea?

If it worked, it would make Kdenlive so much better...

To me the mentioned disadvantages makes this unacceptable... As I said earlier, as an editor I need Kdenlive to be a tool good for editing, I see Blender or Natron more suitable for effects. (But that is only my opinion. )

Nevertheless I appreciate your participation and interest in the well being of the project. If you'd like to diving into some code to get familiar with it, here is a list of low hanging bugs:
https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?quicks ... id=1399563

Cheers

farid wrote:Hi

Thanks for sharing your input.

TL;DR
I like the idea of more effects but don't think rawtherapee would be a solution.

Me as an editor, I would prefer Kdenlive to improve its editing power rather that post-processing capabilities. As in I want advanced trimming or an audio mixer and not more effetcs. The frei0r effects till now satisfy my needs... Either way that isn't a Kdenlive issue really but rather an MLT one. There would have to be a module for RawTherapee. I recently thought that it would be cool to integrate G'MIC (and I still do) but development power is focused on an already defined roadmap. Also the lack of manpower doens't help...

I see. I understand that image effects aren't the most important now.

As the effect I've in mind isn't very complex (it 'only' has to get the image processed by the external Rawtherapee software), I was thinking I could write it by myself.

I understand that I'll have to make a new frei0r effect, get it in the MLT framework and then do the GUI integration for Kdenlive? Is there a simpler/faster way?

To me the mentioned disadvantages makes this unacceptable... As I said earlier, as an editor I need Kdenlive to be a tool good for editing, I see Blender or Natron more suitable for effects. (But that is only my opinion. )

Didn't know about Natron, I'll try it! I'm also trying to get some openFX plugins working in Davinci Resolve.
If you have any suggestions/advise for an open-source (or free) software/workflow that might best suit my needs - one offering both editing, grading and (still) image effects (sharpening, noise reduction, ...), I'm interested.

Nevertheless I appreciate your participation and interest in the well being of the project. If you'd like to diving into some code to get familiar with it, here is a list of low hanging bugs:
https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?quicks ... id=1399563

Cheers

When I've some time I'll dive in the kdenlive source code and see if I can find my way in it. Or maybe I'll write some Dutch translations.
Is there somewhere a guide explaining the structure of the source code? (Or are new developers supposed to sort this out by themselves?)

I appreciate the thread is a bit dated, but it caught my eye:

Blue Fox wrote:- A real grading suite – a bit like Davinci Resolve, with decent sharpening and all the other options RawTherapee has.

It's not just about options - to become a 'real grading suite', like Resolve, you first need native 10-bit depth, 32-bit float processing and the option to work at full (data) levels, and I can't see that happening any time soon:

viewtopic.php?f=265&t=138514&hilit=kdenlive+resolve+10+bit

But I agree about the Sharpening effect.