Disclaimer: Please take heed when I say this. KDEnlive is still in early development. It is NOT ready for professional/commercial use. Chances are, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you won’t even get it installed, but if you do, be forewarned.
Phew! OK, having cleared that up, I can now proceed to tell you how awesome this software is! I have been waiting for a good video editing program on GNU/Linux since I started using it about four years ago. It had to be easy to use (because, if it wasn’t, I might as well do linear editing), feature-rich, and, of course, free software.
Kino is definitely feature-rich and free as in freedom, but it has some serious usability issues that made it cumbersome for me. It is definitely usable, and probably the most stable video editing software for this platform, but it just doesn’t cut it. To add effects, text, or transitions, you have to take elaborate steps, selecting frame lengths. Often times, I’d end up with erroneous cuts in my movies that I couldn’t explain.
Cinelerra has issues. It doesn’t use a standard interface (KDE or Gnome), is nearly impossible to install, and is a resource hog. It also uses a strange video format (not raw dv) for editing. In other words, it’s a pain.
There are other applications, such as Diva, that have yet to reach even the usability stage of maturity.
I’ve tried KDEnlive a few times in the past couple of years. It looked like a dream come true: KDE/Qt interface, drag-and-drop effects and transitions, easy editing timeline, etc. But I couldn’t even get it to install. It required Piave, which, to the best of my knowledge, does not come with any Linux distribution. I was forced to do ugly compile after ugly compile.
When I finally did get the software running, it wouldn’t edit any files. Every time I tried to open something, it would say that the file format was not supported (although it should have supported anything ffmpeg would support).
As it turned out, I was missing dependencies, but KDEnlive wasn’t giving any dependency errors. And that is the one complaint I have about this software: it doesn’t tell you what you’re missing. I finally found out that I need mlt++, and they now provide pre-compiled binaries of all the files needed.
Once I had it started, I tried editing a few files. Everything worked perfectly. So, I decided to trying capturing from our video camera via firewire (ieee1394). From the moment I plugged in the camera, without any configuration, I had on-screen control of the play, rewind, fast-forward, and stop from the capture monitor window. When capturing, however, it produced no file and no error.
After doing some digging, I happened to discover that KDEnlive 0.4 requires dvgrab 2.0+ (from the Kino project). I had an early of dvgrab from the Edgy repositories. It took only about 5 minutes to compile the small piece of software and have capturing working. The last video of Tahira that I posted was my first attempt at editing with it. Everything worked fine, except for a few audio issues. I haven’t quite figured out the process of adding music (or making it work, I should say).
KDEnlive is not without its problems, as I mentioned in my disclaimer. If you try weird things, it will crash with impunity. Now, I was trying weird things (like clicking on tool bars numerous times in a row) just because I like to explore interfaces and find the best usage, but KDEnlive saw me as hostile and booted me out. So, if you use it, save often, or turn on the handy auto-save feature.
It has a beautiful effect interface, and effects can be dragged right down on the timeline. It also has unlimited track support, so you can have multiple video and audio tracks. The titling system is super-easy, and can use any font that you have on your system.
One other thing that I’ve only seen done well with Apple’s iMovie, is support for video slideshows. KDEnlive allows you to select an entire directory of pictures and automatically create a slide show from them. You can also drop single photos right into your timeline and specify the length of the image clip.
Probably the best part of KDEnlive is the finished product. You can output to anything ffmpeg supports, making it one of the most versatile video applications on the market. No matter if you need mpeg1, 2, 3, or 4, ogg theora, quicktime, you name it, they support it. Also, it has a DVD creator wizard that allows you to easily create a DVD with simple menus.
It pleases me to say that a free software project has yet again produced a competitive product that can compete with some of the best commercial software. KDEnlive, when it is finished, may very well be the best.
Ad:LanternTorch.Net: Freelance writing, web design, editing, and technology training training
Ad:Reliable, affordable web hosting
