Video editing made easy

Kdenlive offers a complete solution from capturing, editing to publishing videos:

Only four steps are required to edit a film:

First step: capture video from any source Plug-in your DV or HDV camera using a firewire cable. Rewind, seach and play your tape. View interactive results using the record monitor :

Alternatively, you can also:

•  Extract media from USB stick / hard drive camcorders.
•  Record your desktop computer.
•  Record directly to computer from a video source.

Second Step: manage your media

kdenlive allows to manage your media in a project tree.

Organize your media using folders and comments:

Watch each media individually in a clip monitor: 

Mix several types of media : DV, mpeg2, mpeg4, h264, images, etc ... without conversion, easily.

Third step: drag and drop on the timeline

To edit the final film, you only need to drag and drop media from the project tree to the timeline:

Guides and markers help you organize your timeline.

It is possible to search the timeline, parsing clips, guides and markers names.

 

Copy & paste support for clips, effects and transitions: Watch your work in real time in a project monitor.

Fourth Step: publish your work to any media

When editing is finished, render and export the film:

 

Export to any formats supported by FFmpeg: mpeg, avi, dv, flash, mov, ... Export to Internet websites like Dailymotion, Vimeo and Youtube using presets. Export to mpeg2 to author DVDs. High quality files: mpeg4, h264, etc ...

Full undo support in case of problem.

Launch an export job and continue working on your project:

Audio and video formats

kdenlive offers a broard support of audio and video formats.
Here is a list of supported formats:

DV is the standard for traditional low-resolution MiniDV camcorders.
Technicaly, DV is a slightly compressed video and raw sound.

Kdenlive offers a broard DV support:

• Preset profiles for PAL and NTSC camcorders.
  
• Support of DV formats: Raw DV, AVI DV, etc ...
  
• Interlaced or full frames.
  
• Any frame rate, including 24p, 25p and 30p.

HDV is a recording format for use in high-definition camcorders.
Technically, HDV offers mpeg2 compressed video with compressed audio.

Kdenlive offers a board support:

• Preset profiles for HDV 1080p, HDV 1080i, HDV 720p and HDV 720i.
  
• Interlaced or full frames.
  
• Custome frame rates, including 24p, 25p and 30p.
  
• Support for low frame rates, for Internet broadcast.
  
• Custom profiles, including custom size, custom Pixal Aspect Ratio (PAR) and custom Display Aspect Ratio (DAR).

AVCHD is a new video format for high-definition tapeless camcorders recording to memory sticks and hard drive.
Technicaly, AVCHD is a complex mpeg4 video stream, referred as MPEG-4 AVC/H.264.

Kdenlive should support AVCHD camcorders, but this is an experimental feature. If you plan buying an AVCHD camcorder, you should try to download non-compressed footage from Internet. Do not invest in an AVCHD camcorder without prior testing using Kdenlive.

Technically, h264 is a highly compressed mpeg4 format. h264 requires a modern single-core or dual-core computer. Kdenlive is able to read and decode h264 interactively using a multithreaded library using two or more cores if needed. Again, multi-core decoding is an experimental feature, which may not work well.

At the present level of Kdenlive, we do not recommend investing in an AVCHD camcorder. If you have the choice, invest in an HDV camcorder.

Tapeless formats support
Kdenlive supports mpeg, avi, mp4 and mov formats and many others.

Audio formats
Kdenlive supports most audio formats for reading, mixing and exporting:

• Uncompressed PCM.
  
• ac3.
  
• mp2.
  
• mp3.
  
• vorbis.
  
• wav.

Flash support
Kdenlive can read, edit and export Flash video.

Open standards
Kdenlive supports most open-standards formats: ogg, vorbis and matrovska (experimental).

Non-destructive formats support
Kdenlive offers experimental support for non-destructive audio and video codec, including:

• huffyuv.
  
• Snow.
  
• Dirac (experimental, too slow to work in high-resolution, no fully working due to ffmpeg implementation).

In the next releases, we hope to offer better support for non-destructive formats, including interactive decoding and encoding on dual-core computers. DIRAC and FFMPEG teams work hard to provide working solutions. Stay tuned.

Image formats
Kdenlive includes a powerfull slideshow features to create animated slideshows. Kdenlive can display images using any common image format, including:

• gif.
  
• png.
  
• jpeg.
  
• xcf (Gimp format).
  
• exr.
  
• tiff.
  
• svg.
  
• ...

A set of predefined export settings
Kdenlive team is aware that choosing the right export settings is sometimes hard. Therefore we provide a set of pre-defined settings to help you:

• DVD
  
• Mpeg2 (standard choice for HDV editing).
  
• High resolution mp4 or h264 (high standard for HDV and AVCHD editing).
  
• Non-destructive formats.
  
• Popular websites including Youtube, Dailymotion and Vimeo, with the best settings.

Creative effects

Kdenlive offers a rich set of creative effects. Unless specified, effects are parts of the MLT modules and distributed with MLT. Other effects are provided by active projects, including frei0r [3].

Normal image



Automask
User can select a rectangle in the image which will be pixelated. The effect will attempt to follow the movement, so that even if it moves, the same zone will still be pixelated


Box Blur
Blur with adjustable horizontal / vertical factor


Brightness
Keyframable image brightness


Cartoon (frei0r [3])
Simplify image colors


Charcoal
Sort of emboss effect


Chroma Hold
Make all colors except one look greyscale


Contrastor (frei0r [3])
adjustable contrast


Distortor (frei0r [3])
Distort image


Dust
Add moving dusts to image


Equalizor (frei0r [3])
Color equalizing


Flippo (frei0r [3])
Fip image horizontally or vertically


Gamma
Adjust image gamma


Glow (frei0r [3])
Glow effect


Grain
Add grain to image


Greyscale
Remove colors


Hueshiftor (frei0r [3])
Change image hue


Invert
Invert colors


Lens Correction (frei0r [3])
Distort image


Mirror
Mirror image in several directions


Pixelizor (frei0r [3])
Pixelate image


RGB Parade (frei0r [3])
Hard to describe...


Saturator (frei0r [3])
Saturate colors


Scanlinor (frei0r [3])
Add scanlines


Scratch Lines
Add moving scratch lines over the image


Sepia
Sepia effect


Sobel (frei0r [3])
(...)


Square Blur (frei0r [3])
Blur image


Technicolor
Saturate colors


Tehroxxor (frei0r [3])
Bizarre effect


Threshold
Adjustable threshold, makes image black and white


Vignette
Add nice gradient around image


Hueshiftor (frei0r [3])
Change image hue


Wave
Distort image with little waves

A free software integrated environment

Kdenlive is the result of a long work of software communities working in different directin: video codecs, audio codecs, image processing, firewire support, video editing engine, etc ... Kdenlive developers are very thankful to these communities.

Kdenlive integrated with the following software libraries :

• MLT video enging.
  
• FFMPEG video and audio codecs.
  
• dvgrab, DV and HDV capture.

Kdenlive also integrates the following major softwares:

• Gimp image editor.
  
• Audacity audio editor.
  
• Screengrab screen capture.
  
• Synfig 2D editor.
  
• etc ...

Recommended hardware

Kdenlive is reported to work on recent computers, with at least:

• 32bits or 64bits computers with a modern Processor (AMD64 or Intel mono/dual core systems).
  
• A fast hard disc with more that 20Gb of free disc space.
  
• A firewire interface for camcorder capture.
  
• At least 1Gb of RAM.
  
• Screen size : 1024x768 or more.

Any computer produced after 2005 should meet these requirements. You may only need a firewire interface.

For advanced use and semi-professional work, we recommend investing in a recent computer with:

• AMD Phenom Quad-core processor.
  
• 4 Gb of RAM.
  
• Three SATA disc for RAID-5 usage (Any Linux distribution offers RAID-5 witout additional controller).
  
• A recent video card with dual display.

In december 2008, some European retailers offered this kind of hardware for 500€, with one large screen. This is at least 4 times less than the equivalent under other operating systems. Don't spend your money in software licences for closed environment: buy camcorders and make films.

Supported operating systems

Kdenlive is available for download [7] on the following free operating systems:

• GNU/Linux distributions;
• FreeBSD;
• Mac OS X;
• NetBSD.