Just been doing a little test.
Place an .MTS clip on timeline, Video 2
Select a zone for rendering, missing off say ten to fifteen frames at both ends.
Render, in this case to .avi
Place new render on Video 1, lining up with start of zone.
The new rendered .avi is four frames longer than the selected zone.
Now this is weird:-
The first two frames are a copy of the first frame.
The last four extra frames are a copy of the last frame of the selected section.
Now, with the timeline cursor, cut off the first frame and delete it, any guesses as to what happens next?
No?, well, The next two leading frames are a copy of each other.
Even weirder:-
Drag the start of the clip to shorten it, then drag it back out fully.
Now the start frames move correctly, BUT (and that's a big 'but') Frames three and four are a copy of each other.
OK, I'm managing a workaround for this, but it all is a little strange.
No more hair pulling for me, it's all gone :-)
Latest sunab svn
Ubuntu 12.04 64bit

Ah, sorry didn't say, my raw .MTS files straight off my camera's SD card when put into Kdenlive have the two leading frames the same. This never used to happen, but I realise now this has been going on for some time. That's using straight .MTS and proxies.
What's annoying now, is that I can't use a section of a clip that has been put through "SlowmoVideo". I used to replace, lets say, the centre section of a clip with the Slowmo, line up the exact frames and it looked great. Now if I do it, looks great in the Project Monitor but after render, the joins don't match exactly and I get a nasty jump.
Now, in the graph of SlomoVideo, I have to do the whole clip, running the first section as near to normal speed as possible, then slow it down and then speed it up. Takes a long time, but luckily I do that on another computer so it can churn away in it's own time.
Sorry, there's me moaning again. Mustn't grumble. I still always get there in the end.