Configure Kdenlive

Following settings applies when you start a project with New.

Misc

Changed in version 22.12.

Kdenlive_Configure_misc

Project file

  • Open the last project on startup

  • Activate Crash recovery (Auto Save)

Clip import

  • Check if the first added clip matches the project profile

  • Automatically import all streams in multi stream clips Here you set if all audio streams are loaded/imported.

  • Automatically import image sequences

  • Get clip metadata with exiftool

  • Get clip metadata created by Magic Lantern

  • Ignore subfolder structure on import (import all files into toplevel folder)

——-

  • Disable parameters when the effect is disabled

  • Tab position Set the tab position when a window is open.

——-

  • Preferred track compositing composition: Select auto, frei0r.cairoblend, qtblend.

Changed in version 22.12.

Qtblend brings back a much better playback performance when there is no compositing. When there is a compositing, performance is slightly worse than frei0r.cairoblend (Kdenlive lose 1-2 fps on playback).

Default Durations

Here you set the default duration of below items.

Deprecated since version 22.08.

  • Bypass codec verification

  • Use KDE job tracking for render jobs

Project Defaults

Changed in version 22.12.

Configures what the project settings will look like by default when you choose File –> New.

Kdenlive_Configure_project_defaults

Proxy Clips

Changed in version 22.12.

Configures what the proxy settings will be when you choose File –> New.

Kdenlive_Configure_project_proxy

External proxy clips When enabled it reads the proxy clips generated by your video camera. More details see: Using Camera Proxy Clips.

Timeline

Changed in version 22.12.

Configure how the timeline appears in Kdenlive

Configure_Timeline

Thumbnails

  • Enable for Video Turns on video thumbnail by default.

  • Enable for Audio Turns on audio thumbnail by default.

  • Separate audio channels If checked you will get a separate waveform in the audio thumbnail for each audio channel in the audio track. If unchecked you will get a single waveform as the audio thumbnail.

Deprecated since version 22.12.

  • Use FFmpeg for audio thumbnails (faster)

Playback and Seeking

  • Pause playback when seeking Enabled: It stops playback while you click on a new position in the timeline. Disabled: Playback is ongoing while you click on a new position in the timeline. It allows looping playback, see Continuously loop playback.

  • Jump to timeline start if playback is started on last frame in timeline

  • Seek to clip when adding effect

Scrolling

  • Autoscroll while playing

  • Scroll vertically with scroll wheel, horizontally with Shift + scroll wheel

———

  • Display clip markers comments

  • Default track height: Defines the default track height in pixels for the tracks on the timeline.

Raise properties pane when selecting in timeline

  • More details here.

Multi stream audio clips

  • On import, enable: Select if all audio streams, first audio stream, first 2 audio streams should be imported.

  • Check if project contains enough audio tracks If enabled Kdenlive asks if it should generate the additional audio tracks needed automatically.

Tools

New in version 23.04.

Configure_Tools

  • Duplicate text If selected, a 2-line subtitle gets split into two subtitles by copying the content

  • Split after first line If selected, a 2-line subtitle gets split into two subtitles by considering the line break

More details see Split subtitle after first line

Environment

Kdenlive_Configure_environment_MLT_Windows

Environment on Windows

Proxy and Transcode Jobs

  • Concurrent threads This will set the number of threads the program will attempt to use when calling ffmpeg to encode Clips. This will be what kdenlive passes to the ffmpeg -threads parameter. Increasing this parameter may not have an effect if you have changed the proxy encoding settings using Project Settings Dialog to a codec that ffmpeg does not do multi-thread on. (Multi-threading is supported for MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, and VP8)

New in version 22.08.

  • Use lower CPU priority for proxy and transcode tasks This adds a Kdenlive setting to lower the priority of the proxy rendering (QProcess). This helps keep the main UI responsive when proxies are rendering.

New in version 22.12.

  • Warn if cached data exceeds Add a maximal cache size so that Kdenlive can check every 2 weeks if the total cached data size exceeds this limit and warn the user.

New in version 24.02.

  • Check for updates When enabled Kdenlive shows a pop-up menu for updating Kdenlive if your version is older then 6 months.

MLT Environment

Kdenlive_Configure_environment_MLT_Windows

Environment variables on Windows

Kdenlive_Configure_environment_MLT_Linux

Environment variables on Kdenlive normal installed on Linux (Appimage, Flatpak, Snap may have integrated paths)

Kdenlive_Configure_environment_MLT_Windows

Environment variables on MacOS

This setting tells Kdenlive where to find the MLT executables and profile files. Only advanced users would really need to change these settings. Kdenlive is basically a front end to the MLT program and this setting tells Kdenlive where to find the engine that runs the whole application.

Path to the MediaInfo file. If filled in Kdenlive shows more details in clip properties.

Deprecated since version 19.04.

Processing and transcode jobs: This is experimental and was removed in ver 0.9.10. This number was passed to melts real_time consumer property. This parameter increases the number of threads the program uses for video decoding and processing (but not encoding which is controlled via Rendering). See mlt doco. Using this has potential side effects - see this forum post from the author of the Melt program.

If you want to experiment with multi threading in versions higher than 0.9.10 you could add something like “real_time=-4” to a custom render profile. And yes that is a minus 4 in the example - as per the mlt doco - numbers <0 implement threading without dropping frames.

Default Folders

Changed in version 22.08.

Kdenlive_Configure_environment_default_folders

Default folders on Windows.

Kdenlive_Configure_environment_default_folders_Linux

Default folders on Linux.

Kdenlive_Configure_environment_default_folders_MacOS

Default folders on MacOS.

This setting controls where Kdenlive expects project files to be by default. It also controls what folder Kdenlive will use as a temporary file storage location and it controls where files captured from an external source will be saved.

Python

Kdenlive_Configure_environment_python

Python tab on Windows

Use python virtual environment (recommended) When enabled Kdenlive creates a venv folder and copies/symlinks Python into this folder.

Using the virtual environment (venv) stores Python, as you have installed it on your system in the venv folder. If you install speech to text the VOSK and Whisper libraries will be installed in the venv folder as well.

This has many benefits including easier dependency management and reduced risk of package conflicts and errors caused by software deprecation.

Path for venv:

  • Linux: ~/.local/share/kdenlive/venv

  • Windows: %LocalAppData%\kdenlive\venv

To remove the installed venv packages click on Delete. This will completely remove the venv folder with all installed packages. Note that this does not remove the downloaded models (vosk/whisper) that can still take quite some HD space.

Default Apps

Kdenlive_Configure_environment_default_apps

This setting controls what external application opens when you choose Edit Clip for a clip in the project bin.

  • Image editing: A free software would be Krita.

  • Audio editing: A free software would be Audacity.

  • Animation editing: Kdenlive updates automatically files which are saved in Glaxnimate. Glaxnimate can be downloaded from here (Linux, Windows, Mac).

Mac user: Instruction how to install and run dmg files.

Windows user: Make sure all the paths points to an .exe file. Glaxnimate.exe is in folder C:/YourPath/glaxnimate-x86_64/glaxnimate/bin/glaxnimate.exe.

Hint

There is no application for video editing - because Kdenlive is a video editor.

Mime types

Kdenlive_Configure_environment_mime_types

Specifies the Media Types (formerly known as MIME types) which Kdenlive can working with.

New in version 22.08.

Added file type: AVIF, HEIF and JPEG XL

Added animation file type: Json (Lottie animations) and rawr (Glaxnimate animation)

Colors and Guides

Kdenlive_Configure_colors

  • Audio thumbnail colors Click on the color bar and change the color of the audio wave thumbnail.

New in version 22.08.

  • Monitor overlay color Click on the color bar and change the color of the monitor overlay lines. See Monitor Display Toolbar

Changed in version 22.12: Moved from tab Playback

  • Monitor background color Click on the color bar and change the color of the monitor background.

New in version 22.12.

  • Guides and Markers Categories This allows you to add categories. Selected categories can be edited and deleted.

Speech To Text

Kdenlive_Configure_speech-to-text

More details about speech to text see here.

Playback

Changed in version 22.12.

Configure the Video and Audio drivers and devices. For advanced users only.

Kdenlive_Configure_playback

Playback view on Windows.

Kdenlive_Audio_Driver_Linux

Audio driver on Linux.

Kdenlive_Audio_Driver_MacOS

Audio driver on MAcOS.

Audio driver on Windows

  • WinMM (Win7), Wasapi (Win10), DirectSound. If you have any audio issue or playback stuttering you may change to another audio driver.

In version 0.9.4 of Kdenlive, checking the “use Open GL for video playback” checkbox turns on the ability to have audio scrubbing available for use in the clips. Audio scrubbing lets you hear the audio at the playhead position as you drag the playhead so you can quickly find a particular sound or event in the audio. This feature can be useful for placing the play head at the correct spot in the clip relative to an important bit of audio.

In ver 15.04 or higher, there is no “use Open GL for video playback” checkbox - Open GL is used by default. On Windows you can set the OpenGL backend under Settings ‣ OpenGL Backend

Changed in version 22.12.

  • Monitor background color moved to Colors and Guides

  • Enable Audio Scrubbing and Preview Volume are removed as the UI element is a duplicate of the volume slider in the monitors hamburger menu. See Clip Monitor and Project Monitor

Capture

Configure Screen Grab Capture

Kdenlive_Configure_screen_grab

These settings configure screen grab within Kdenlive. More details see here.

Blackmagic

Kdenlive_Configure_screen_grab_Blackmagic

If you have a Blackmagic DecLink video capture card you can set here the import parameter.

Audio

Kdenlive_Configure_screen_grab_audio

Microphone settings, either for screen Capturing Video or for Capturing Audio (Dubbing) direct into the timeline.

New in version 22.12.

Disable countdown before recording

Note

At least Firewire capture was removed in porting to KDE 5 due to lack of manpower.

Following paragraph is for history reason only.

Configure the Capturing Video devices (Firewire, FFmpeg, Screen Grab, Blackmagic, Audio) from this section.

Configure Firewire Capture

The image shows the Configure Firewire capture tab which can be accessed from the Settings ‣ Configure Kdenlive menu or from the spanner icon in the Capturing Video

Kdenlive_Configure_Capture

The firewire capture functionality uses the dvgrab program. The settings applied here to define how dvgrab will be used to capture the video.

Capture Format options are

  • DV RAW

  • DV AVI Type 1

  • DV AVI Type 2

  • HDV

The first three are quality-wise the same (exactly the same DV 25Mb/s standard definition codec), just packed differently into the file. Type 2 seems to be the most widely supported by other applications.

The raw format contains just the plain video frames (with audio interleaved) without any additional information. Raw is useful for some Linux software. Files in this format can also be played with Windows QuickTime when renamed to file.dv.

AVI files may contain multiple streams. Typically, they include one video and one audio stream. The native DV stream format already includes the audio interleaved into its video stream. A type 1 DV AVI file only includes one DV video stream where the audio must be extracted from the DV video stream. A type 2 DV AVI file includes a separate audio stream in addition to the audio data already interleaved in the DV video stream. Therefore, the type 2 DV AVI file is redundant and consumes more space.

HDV is a high-definition format used on tape-based HD camcorders.

Add recording time to captured file name option: If this is unchecked then each captured file will get a sequential number post-pended to the file names listed in the Capture file name setting. With this checked, date and timestamp (derived from when the footage was captured) is post-pended to the capture file name, e.g. capture2012.07.15_11-38-37.dv

Automatically start a new file on scene cut option: With this checked it tries to detect whenever a new recording starts, and store it into a separate file. This is the -autosplit parameter in dvgrab and it works by detecting timecode discontinuities from the source footage. Where a timecode discontinuity is anything backward or greater than one second it will start a new capture file.

The dvgrab additional parameters edit box allows you to add extra dvgrab switches to the capture process that will run. See dvgrab manual for more info.

Jog Shuttle

Configure a connected Jog-Shuttle device. Contour ShuttlePro and Contour ShuttleXpress are known to work.

Kdenlive_Configure_screen_jog-shuttle

Linux

Ensure that your Jog-Shuttle device is connected via USB and working. An udev rule is necessary to correct the access rights to the device file: Create a file /etc/udev/rules.d/90-contour-shuttleXpress.rules with the line:

SUBSYSTEMS"usb", ATTRS{idVendor}

"0b33", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0020", MODE="0444"

for Contour ShuttleXpress or

SUBSYSTEMS"usb", ATTRS{idVendor}

"0b33", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0030", MODE="0444"

for Contour ShuttlePRO V2. Obtain the device file by a command

fgrep Contour -A4 /proc/bus/input/devices

The last line of the output says

H: Handlers=mouse0 event3

which should tell the device file to be entered into kdenlive’s setting dialog: In the text field enter /dev/input/event3 (use the last word on the line above to specify the device file in /dev/input), set the buttons and apply the changes.

KDENLIVE_Configure_jog_shuttle

Enable Jog-Shuttle. For the Contour ShuttleXpress the buttons 5 - 9 are relevant, whereas Contour ShuttlePro uses all buttons. The actions for the jog- and the shuttle wheel are working as expected.

Windows

On the desktop, bottom-right opens the system tray. Right-click on the Contour icon and choose “Open control Panel”.

Contour_open-cotrol-panel

In the configuration window choose under “Application setting” the program “Adobe Premiere Pro CS&amp;CC (Edit)”. Then click on Options ‣ Create new settings ‣ Copy contents from Current Settings.

Contour_new_settings

Then choose Kdenlive.exe in C:Program Fileskdenlivebin.

Contour_Design_Choose_Aplication

Now the basic functionality should work. Adjust the buttons of the shuttle with shortcuts as you like.

Hint

You can make Kdenlive settings from scratch using Options ‣ Create new settings ‣ Create Empty Settings when creating new settings.

Transcode

This controls the Transcode functionality. The parameters section are ffmpeg parameters. Find help on them by issuing ffmpeg -h at a command line.

Kdenlive_Configure_transcode

Transcode Options

Option

Description

Parameters

Meanings of Parameters

Wav 48000Hz

Extract audio as WAV file

-vn -ar 48000

-vn=disable video, -ar 48000 = set audio sampling rate to 48kHz

Remux with MKV

-vcodec copy -acodec copy -sn

copy the video and the audio. -sn = disable subtitles

Remux MPEG-2 PS/VOB

Fix audio sync in MPEG-2 vob files

-vcodec copy -acodec copy

copy the video and the audio