oldcpu
New Member
Joined: 17 May 2025
Posts: 17
Location: Europe
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 Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2025 12:23 pm Post subject: KDENLIVE v.0.5 is a BIG improvement |
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KDENLIVE v.0.5 REVIEW
The latest release of the Linux program kdenlive (v.0.5) is a SIGNIFICANT improvement over the older v.0.4. SIGNIFICANT.
My wife and I like to take the still images, and movie clips we take from our Canon Ixus digital camera, and make a "home movie", with various/selected clips mixed, and good sound in the back ground, as a way to remember a vacation.
Until now, I have been grudgingly forced to admit that the MS-Windows tools are significantly superior in this task. In fact, the Linux tools were so bad, so utterly horrible, that after a number of frustrating attempts, I simply refused to use them anymore. And I say that as a BIG Linux fan.
Well, v.0.5 of kdenlive (released 11-Aug-2007) has changed that. While I will NOT go as far to say it is superior to the even basic (free) Microsoft WinXP Windows Movie Maker, I will say that it is better in some areas, and not quite as good in others. But I am beginning to think it might be good enough to meet my requirements.
Its web site is here: http://kdenlive.org/
My rather basic non-linear video editing (NLE) requirements are:
a. user friendly gui (which challenges some Linux NLE apps, such as cinelerra),
b. reasonably stable application (this challenges Linux & Windoze NLE apps alike),
c. time line display,
d. accept both short video clips and still images,
e. capability to edit short video clips, and modify duration in which still images are shown,
f. reasonable selection of transition video effects between clips and between images/clips,
g. capability to add and mix in separate audio track (such as from a song), and be able to play only song, or play only video audio, or play both (mixed),
h. capability to fade start/end of audio,
i. capability to edit the above, as one changes one's mind (and not have to start all over again),
j. capability to save one's work session,
k. capability to selective output either PAL or NTSC video
v.0.4 of kdenlive could not do all the above. IMHO it was neither stable enough, nor did it handle still images well. Its audio fade did not function well. Its transition selections were very limited.
However kdenlive v.0.5 can do the above reasonably well ! 
Some disadvantages of kdenlive (although it could be these are just my unfamiliarity, and not disadvantages):
a. it does not appear to accept mp3 audio (accepts wav, so one must convert mp3 to wav before trying to import),
b. it has not yet implemented a compressed video out. So the final product is a raw video that the rendering produced. A one minute video clip was 400 MBytes in size !! BUT that is not a problem for me, as I typically keep my video clips down to 10 minutes in size, and the 400 MBytes (or 4GBytes for 10 minutes) can easily be reduced to 1/15th that size, with a Linux program such as "xvidenc".
Anyway, I am going to play with this some more, but it now looks like I might be able to help my wife now (where my wife uses WinXP), with her creation of our home made videos, except I'll be using Linux.
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SuSE-10.2 / 10.3 RC1
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d_riordan
Member
Joined: 08 Jan 2025
Posts: 245
Location: Leominster, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
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will have to check that one out.
