Linux video editing and Kdenlive tips and tricks for a returning user?

OR3X@lemm.ee to Linux@lemmy.ml – 78 points –

Just recently switched back to Linux after more than a decade away. (I'm currently running Mint Cinnamon if anyone is curious) On Windows I was using the free version of Davinci Resolve for all of my video editing. I quickly discovered that the free version of Resolve for Linux doesn't support H.264/H.265 so after trying every Linux video editor I could find (even Blender) I've settled on using Kdenlive. I've been having a good time getting everything dialed in and learning Kdenlive. I was able to get hardware acceleration working with my Nvidia GPU, and I really appreciated that it could natively utilize the proxy clips that my DJI Action 3 generates when recording. I've been reading all kinds of tips and tricks articles but most of it is just basic stuff. Anyone using Kdenlive have more advanced tips to share? Particularly anything around title generation and animation as I've found Kdenlive's system to be a little clunky. Let's talk!

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I've been using Glaxnimate which integrates with Kdenlive. It's a tool for animating SVG elements. It's a bit clunky I find but it's nice in that you can have shapes and text follow animation path with different time curves. It can be used directly from Kdenlive which is pretty cool.

As for other tips, one I use a lot is Timeline Preview Rendering. If you have a whole pile of effects, playing in the project monitor can become very choppy. With the prerendering, you can just render that section and it will play smooth while still allowing you do edit the audio.

Finally, for getting the footage from clips, I use I and O to set the start and end of a part of the clip I want and then with Ctrl+I I can create a zone that shows up in the Project bin. I use that a lot to get the fragments I want first and then build the fill timeline later.

I saw the option for adding a new animation in the project bin, and installed Glaxnimate with the intention of giving it a shot, but the software manager in Mint only has the Flatpak version available which obviously won't work. As for timeline preview rendering, it's awesome! I use it to pre-render all of my titles and transitions before I record my voice over so the project monitor doesn't stutter and throw off the timing on the audio recording. Works a treat! Speaking of voice over, I REALLY wish there was an option for a sidechain compressor input. As it stands now I record my VO, then render out each of the audio channels and then import into Audacity to apply the audio ducking and other effects before importing it all back into Kdenlive. It's a bit of a headache but it does work.

Oh, I see what you mean about the Glaxnimate Flatpak. I just tried it out.

You can get it to work, but it's a bit of a hack. You first need to create a script containing:

#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/flatpak run org.mattbas.Glaxnimate $@

Let's call it glax or something like that. Then make it executable:

chmod +x glax

Then in Kdenlive, go to Settings -> Configure Kdenlive -> Environment -> Standard Applications, change the one for editing animation to point to that script. Should work now. At least, it did for me!

And yeah, shame about the audio processing.

ahh, that makes sense. I'll give it a go.

EDIT: Hmm, didn't seem to work for me. I created the script and made it executable then put the path to the script in Kdenlive's settings. I can right-click in the project bin and click "create animation" which gives me a .JSON file but I see no way to edit it. Double-clicking it just shows me its properties and right-clicking and selecting "edit clip" does nothing. Interestingly if I execute the script from terminal it starts Glaxnimate as expected. I also went ahead and created a similar script for Pinta as my image editor since I'm also running the Flatpak version of that and had the same result as Glaxnimate when trying to edit images. I also entered the path for Audacity as my audio editor, but it's installed as a system package so I pointed Kdenlive directly to the binary and got the same result when trying to edit audio files. Maybe I'm just not understanding this, or I have something setup wrong in Kdenlive... Any ideas?

Hmm, no sorry. All I can think of is that maybe Kdenlive itself is a flatpak version in which case it wouldn't be allowed to run external programs like Glaxnimate (or Pinta). I guess in that case it requires some magic with Flatpak overrides.

Very interested to hear about Glaxnimate - I'd not heard of that one and will definitely have a look - thanks for bringing it to our attention :)