Glossary

Active Track

Can accept clips. Indicated by a highlighted track number.

Asset

An asset is any multimedia file (video, audio, image), title clip, color clip, and animation that can be and is used in a project. All assets are listed in the Project Bin.

Audio Mixer

A widget that displays VU meters and has sliders to control the volume of the respective audio tracks. See Audio Tools.

Audio Track

A track in the timeline that holds either the audio stream of a video clip or an audio file itself

Backup

Kdenlive creates backup files for the current project. They are stored in a special folder. See the chapter Backup.

Bin

See Project Bin

Caret

See Playhead

Chroma

Chrominance

The signal used in video systems to convey the color information of the picture. Chrominance is usually represented as two-color difference components: U (blue projection) = B’ - Y’ (blue - luma) and V (red projection) = R’ - Y’ (red - luma). See also YUV.

Clip

Essentially any file with video and/or audio, a simple image or any asset created through Kdenlive, e.g. title clip, color clip, animation (via Glaxnimate). A clip can be in the Project Bin or Timeline, or be referred to as the result of a Render. See chapter Add Clip or Folder

Clip Monitor

The Clip Monitor plays the clip currently selected in the Project Bin. See Monitors and overlay.

CMYK

A subtractive color model based on the CMY color model used in printing. The abbreviation refers to the four ink plates used: cyan, magenta, yellow and key (black).

Codec

Short for coder/decoder. Is a hardware- or software-based process that compresses or decompresses large amount of data. Examples are MPEG, H.264, VP8/VP9, Apple ProRes. Not to be confused with container.

Color and Image Correction

A category of effects and filters to adjust or change the color components of the clip.

Color Correction

The process of correcting color issues and making footage appear as natural as possible. The idea is to make the images look like the human eyes would see them in the real world.

Color Grading

The process of creating consistent color tones throughout the film in order to give it a specific aesthetic look and style.

Color Matrix

Describes the balancing of different parts of the color spectrum in order to create an accurate representation for capture. By adjusting the properties of color matrix you can do things like shifting the white balance, alter the color palette, adjusting for color anomalies in the source.

Color Range

A term with more significance in broadcasting. Today’s video recording equipment records in full range. Each color component is 8-bit and can have a value from 0 to 255, but only when in full range. Otherwise, for allowing headroom for video processing and exposure ranges, ranges are smaller, like 16-235 for luma, and 16-240 for chroma.

Color Space

A color space is a specific organization of colors. It is a useful conceptual tool for understanding the color capabilities of a particular device or digital file. When trying to reproduce color on another device, color spaces can show whether shadow/highlight detail and color saturation can be retained, and by how much either will be compromised. See this article about color space in Wikipedia.

Composition

Also referred to as a transition, it combines at least two input clips to one output clip. Compositions cannot be stacked. See chapters Compositions and Transitions.

Container

Container Format

A type of file that encapsulates multiple (compressed) data streams in one file (wrapper), usually together with metadata for identifying or further detailing the embedded streams. Examples are Matroska (.mkv), OGG (.ogg), MPEG-4 (.mp4), AVI.

Crash

The instance when you realize you have not saved your project for at least two hours and worked on the most difficult edits. See backup.

Deprecated

Obsolete, not used anymore. Effects in the Deprecated category are still available but are not maintained and can lead to unwanted results.

Dynamic Text

An effect that can be applied to a clip, track or on master to overlay the video with specific information. Available keyword are: timecode, frame, filedate, localfiledate, source frame rate, source codec, source bit rate, source width, source height, source comment

Edit Mode

A special function of the project monitor. Needed in order to be able to use the mouse to manipulate certain aspects (e.g. size, position) of some effects (e.g. Transform, Rotoscope). Can be switched on and off using the icon in the project monitor’s toolbar.

Effect

Also referred to as a filter, an effect is used to change the appearance, size or position of a clip. Most effects have keyframe capabilities. More than one effect can be used on the same clip (stacking). In that case effects are processed top down, so sequence is important. See Effect/Composition Stack.

Exporting

See Rendering

Field Order

Also called Field Dominance. Determines in a video stream which field of an interlaced video stream comes first. See this article about Field Order.

Filter

Kdenlive uses filters from avfilter and frei0r to modify frames. See effect.

FPS

Frames per Second

Frame Rate

The frame rate expressed in frames per second or FPS is typically the frequency (rate) at which consecutive images (frames) are captured or displayed. A good frame-rate primer including a list of typical frame rates for different types of video can be found on techsmith.com.

Gamma

Gamma Correction

A description of the relationship between a color value and its brightness on a particular device. Hence Gamma Correction is the nonlinear operation for encoding and decoding luminance in video or digital images to adjust color tones to how humans see them.

Guide

Static markings in the timeline that do not necessarily move with clips. Not to be confused with markers. Can be used to define regions for rendering and exported to provide chapters for YouTube videos. See Guides.

Hamburger Menu

Sandwich Menu

A way to reduce clutter and save screen real estate. Looks like this . Replaces the Kdenlive menu bar. Can be expanded with Ctrl+M.

Histogram

Displays a frequency histogram of the luminance of the color components of the video. See View Menu, and in particular How the Histogram Works for a more detailed under-the-hood view.

Hue

Means a degree of lightness, darkness or strength of a color. Compare saturation, tint and shade.

Icon

A graphical representation of an action, function, option or status.

In-point

An In-point defines the beginning of a zone. A zone can be defined in the timeline and the project monitor (it has the same result), or in the clip monitor (useful to move only a certain section of a clip to the timeline). See zone for possible usages.

Inactive Track

Cannot accept clips. Indicated by a greyed out track number.

Interlaced

Interleave

A technique for doubling the perceived frame rate of a video without using extra bandwidth. Compare progressive. See this Wikipedia article about Interlaced Video.

Jog Shuttle

An external device that improves video editing by using a rotary knob to scrub through the timeline, and providing a special keyboard for actions like cutting, inserting, deleting, slip and ripple editing, etc. It can be used with Kdenlive and configured in Menu ‣ Settings ‣ Configure Kdenlive ‣ JogShuttle. See Settings.

KDE Store

An online app store where users can upload files like lumas for wipes, presets for rendering, title templates, library clips and even project files. See Effects Tab icon #7.

Kelvin

Kelvin is the base unit of temperature in the International System of Units (SI). It is also used as a measure of the color temperature of light sources. True story: A physicist cooled himself to -273.15C. He was 0K.

Keyframe

Defines the frame in a clip where something starts or changes. Most effects have keyframes to allow changes over time. For example, the X and Y coordinates of the Transform effect can be keyframed to move a clip across the screen. See Working with Keyframes in the Effect Stack.

Layout

A particular way widgets are arranged on the screen to support different workflows or tasks. Kdenlive can save different layouts for logging, editing, audio and color. See Workspace Layouts.

Library

Holds assets for generic use in projects. For example, watermarks, logos, lower-thirds, intros, and so on. See the chapter Library.

Lightness

Also called brightness, lightness is the amount of white or black mixed in with the color. Lightness is more a subjective measure of perceived light, while brightness is an absolute measure of emitted or reflected light from an object. Compare tint and shade.

Lock

Locks a track for editing. Indicated by a closed padlock icon.

Luma

Luminance

Represents the brightness of an image or video. Luma is typically paired with chrominance. Luma represents the achromatic (aka black-and-white) image, while the chroma components represent the color information.

Markers

Belong to the clip they have been created in/for and move with it. Changes to a marker apply to all copies of the clip in the timeline. See Markers.

Mask

An area to block out parts of an image. Can be used to apply an effect only to the masked area (see Mask Apply) or to have an underlying clip show through (see Rotoscoping, Alpha Shapes, Shape Alpha and Rectangular Alpha Mask).

Master

Master Effect

A special effect stack that applies to all clips in all of the tracks.

Master Audio

The volume of all of the audio tracks when merged into one during rendering. See Audio Tools.

Media Browser

Allows easy browsing of the file system and previewing media clips and other assets for importing to the Project Bin. A widget that can be switched on and off via Menu ‣ View ‣ Media Browser. See the chapter media_browser.

MELT

melt

Melt was developed as a test tool for the MLT framework. If you will, Kdenlive is a front-end for melt writing .mlt XML files that code the edit points and transitions. It then calls melt to render the video. See Frequently Asked Questions.

Mixes

See Same-track Transition

Monitor

A device to display a video signal. Kdenlive uses a Clip Monitor to play clips selected in the project bin and Project Monitor to play clips in the timeline. Monitor is widget that can be switched on and off via Menu ‣ View. See Monitors.

MOVIT

A library for high-quality, high-performance video filters. Is needed to enable GPU-supported preview and playback. See Playback in Menu ‣ Settings ‣ Configure Kdenlive.

Mute

Temporarily disable a video or audio track.

Nested Timeline

See Sequence

Opacity

A measure of impenetrability to electromagnetic or other kinds of radiation, especially visible light. An object that does not allow any visible light to go through is fully opaque or has 100% opacity.

Out-point

An Out-point defines the end of a zone. A zone can be defined in the timeline and the project monitor (it has the same result), or in the clip monitor (useful to move only a certain section of a clip to the timeline). See zone for possible usages.

Overlay

Clip and Project Monitor can have an overlay that helps with editing. Hover the mouse over the hot zone of the respective monitor (default is the top right-hand corner) and click on the grid icon to cycle through the available patterns. Different from Dynamic Text and video overlay.

Plane

Used on color correction and blur application to separate color components for the purpose of applying an effect only to that component. Color components are RGB (Red, Green, Blue) and YUV (luminance (Y), blue projection (U), red projection (V)) , as well as alpha (channel).

Playhead

The upside-down triangle in the timeline ruler. Indicates the (play) position in the timeline. During 3-point Editing determines where a clip or clip zone will be added to the timeline. Drag it across to scrub the timeline.

Posterize

Posterization

Is the conversion of a continuous gradation of tone or color to several regions of fewer tones or color, causing abrupt changes from one tone or color to the other. The term comes from the process of creating posters. The effect is most visible when a JPEG image with millions of colors is converted to the GIF format with only 256 colors.

Preset

Used for rendering to determine output format (container), codec, dimensions, aspect ratio, bit rate and various other parameters. See Render Profile Parameters Explained.

Profile

For rendering see preset, for project see project settings

Progressive

A format of displaying, storing or transmitting video in which all the lines of each frame are drawn in sequence. The ‘p’ in 1080p indicates that the format is using progressive scan, i.e. the frame’s lines are not interlaced.

Project

The sum of all assets, clips, tracks, effects, transitions, compositions and settings, their arrangements in the timeline, and references to all the source materials including their proxy work copies. The project file is associated with a working directory where Kdenlive generates proxies and thumbs.

Project Bin

Lists all the clips and assets that are associated with the project. Referred to as the ‘Project Tree’ in earlier versions. See the chapter Project Bin.

Project Monitor

The Project Monitor plays clips selected in the timeline or simply the project.

Project Settings

Defines the format (dimensions, aspect ratio, frames-per-second setting) of the project through the choice of profile or preset, which working directory to use, how many video and audio tracks there are initially, and which profile to use for previews. Stores meta data for your project (e.g. title, author, copyright information). See chapter Project Settings.

Proxy

A light-weight version of the original clip. Used to make editing and in particular playback easier and smoother. See Proxy Clip.

Quality, custom

A setting in the rendering dialog More Options section to control the quality of the rendered video.

Radio Button

Used to select one option and one option only from a list of option. Like in the old days on a radio to select a pre-programmed station: press the stations’ button and the previously pressed button pops out.

Rendering

Also referred to as ‘Exporting’. The process of saving the edited clips into a single complete video clip. See Rendering.

Rendering Profile

See Preset

Ripple Tool

Used in editing. Changes the original duration of the clip. Compare with working with old film material: The film strip is lengthened or shortened and in so doing the adjacent clips are moved back and forth. See Timeline Edit Tools.

Same-track transition

Also known as mixes. A transition between clips on the same track. See Mixes / Same-track Transitions.

Saturation

Color saturation is a degree of intensity of a color in an image or video. As saturation increases, the color appears to be more pure. Compare hue and tint.

Sequence

Introduced with version 23.04.0, a sequence is basically a timeline. Sequences are part of a project but can be rendered independently. A project can have multiple sequences (hence the alias ‘nested timelines’). See Sequence.

Shade

In color theory, a shade is a mixture of a color with black, increasing its darkness. Compare tint, hue and saturation.

Slip Tool

Used in editing. Keeps the original duration of the clip. Compare with working with old film material: the film strip is slipped back and forth beneath the given “window” of the clip length. See Timeline Edit Tools

Snap Point

Sections in clips that other clips snap to when “snapping” is turned on. Snap points include markers, guides, zone in-points, zone out-points, transition start points, clip edges, and cuts.

Speed Ramping

See Time Remapping

Stack

The list of effects applied to a clip, track or master. An effect stack is processed top down, so sequence is important. See Effect/Composition Stack.

Stream

A part of an (encoded) media file containing either video or audio data. Use a tool like ffprobe to examine media files.

Temperature

Color Temperature

A parameter describing the color of the visible light source. It is measured in Kelvins (K). The range is from 1,000K to 10,000K where lower temperatures are considered “warm”, and higher temperatures “cool”. See this article about color temperature.

Theme

A set of colors, icons, fonts and other settings to change the appearance of an application or desktop. Can be set from Menu ‣ Settings ‣ Color Scheme.

Thumbnail

A small image representation of a much larger image. Used in the timeline at the start and end of a clip. See Show Video Thumbnails.

Time Remapping

A special widget allowing to keyframe the speed of a clip to achieve effects like speed ramping. See Time Remapping.

Timeline

The central part of Kdenlive. This is where all the editing takes place. Keeps a chronological sequence of the clips and the relations to each other through tracks and compositions. Can be zoomed. See also Sequence for nested timelines.

Timeline Ruler

Sits right above the tracks and displays the time code information (default notation is hh:mm:ss:ff, can be switched to frames) as well as any currently defined timeline zone and/or preview render zone. See Timeline Ruler.

Timeline Zone

See Zone

Tint

In color theory a tint is a mixture of a color with white, increasing the lightness. Compare shade, hue and saturation.

Title Bar

Part of a widget’s window displaying additional information (e.g. name, title, action icons). You can grab a widget by the title bar and move it around. See Moving Widgets.

Tooltip

A small window with more information about a function that pops up when hovering the mouse over an icon or button. Press Shift to get even more details (not available for all functions).

Track

Holds various assets in the timeline. Can be muted and locked individually. Can have effects in its own stack that apply to all clips in that track. Track height can be adjusted. Tracks can be inserted and deleted. Video tracks only accept clips with video, image, title, or color; audio tracks only accept pure audio clips or the audio track of a video clip. There is a relationship between video and audio tracks: A video clip with an audio stream can only be put into a track where there is a corresponding audio track - V1/A1, V2/A2, V3/A3 and so on. See Tracks.

Transcode

Converts a video or audio clip from one format to another. Is needed (and automatically proposed when loaded in to the project bin) for files that are not in an editing-friendly format. See Transcode.

Transition

A Wipe or Dissolve composition between two overlapping clips. See chapters Compositions and Transitions.

Tutorial

A step-by-step instruction to use a function, tool, effect or combination of these to achieve a certain result. Often created as a video with commentary or just explanatory text. There are many tutorials for Kdenlive available via a simple Google or YouTube search.

Video

An asset or file with a video stream.

Video Overlay

Additional information (e.g. timecode) that is overlayed during the render process. Can be selected in the More Options section of the Render Dialog.

Video Track

A type of track that only accepts clips with video, image, title, or color. Needs a corresponding audio track to accept a clip with video and audio stream. See Tracks.

Widget

A blend (portmanteau) of ‘window’ and ‘gadget’ coined by American playwright George S. Kaufman in 1924. A small applet as part of the layout for a specific tool or panel that can be moved around the screen and docked in specific places in order to accommodate different workflows. See User Interface.

Wipe

A special type of composition mostly used as a transition from one clip to another. See Wipe.

YCbCr

A color space used for any digital encoding of YCbCr suited for video and image compression and transmission formats such as MPEG and JPEG. For more details refer to the Wikipedia page about YCbCr.

YIQ

Color space used by the analog NTSC color TV system. For more details see the Wikipedia page about YIQ.

YPbPr

A color space used in video electronics. Also written as Y’PbPr or YP_BP_R. Used in particular when referring to component video cables. For more details see the Wikipedia page about YPbPr.

YUV

A color model used to encode a color image or video taking human perception into account. Y stands for the luminance, U for blue projection and V for red projection.

Zone

A defined region of a clip or the timeline. Use a clip zone to bring only a portion of the clip into the timeline. Use a timeline zone to render only that portion (see Selected Zone). Define a zone for preview rendering (see Timeline Preview Rendering). A zone is defined by setting an in-point and an out-point.

Zoom

Increase or decrease the level of detail. You can zoom the timeline by using the icons or by Ctrl+wheel. Clip and Project Monitor can be zoomed by clicking on the icons in the monitor overlay or with Ctrl+wheel.