Ever since the port to QT5/KF5 in 2015, Kdenlive has seen an increasing momentum to developing its full potential in being a stable and reliable video editing tool which the FLOSS community can use to create content and democratize communication. In 2016 the project saw a redesign of its visual identity (logo, website), the reintroduction of some much requested tools like rotoscoping and a Windows port. During these couple of years we’ve seen a boom in the size of the community.
We’ve had some highs and lows during this process and are now ready to go a step further and bring professional-grade features to the FLOSS video editing world. To make this happen faster we would love to see new contributors jumping in. These are some parts that you can contribute to:
Refactoring
Since the beginning of the year, we have been working on a big refactoring/rewrite of some of the core parts of Kdenlive. Being more than 10 years old, some parts of our code had become messy and impossible to maintain. Not to mention the difficulty in adding new features.
Part of the process involves improving the architecture of the code, adding some tests, and switching the timeline code from QGraphicsView to the more recent QML framework. This should hopefuly improve stability, allow further developments and also more flexibility in the display and user interaction of the timeline.
You can see a preview of some of the new QML timeline features in the above video.
We plan to release the refactoring branch for the Kdenlive 17.08 release cycle.
Packaging
- AppImage – Thanks to the help of Scarlett Clark (KDE) a lot of progress has been made on an automated daily build system which will allow easy testing of the latest feature.
- Flatpak – We are looking for help to achieve similar results as AppImage.
- Snaps – A first version was made available a few months ago. Currently on hold, help welcome.
- Windows – We are looking for help to achieve similar results as AppImage.
- OSX – There is an initiative by the Macports team to port Kdenlive and package it but progress has been slow.
Windows
Our initial Alpha release of Windows has been a success. Some people have switched to editing fulltime in Kdenlive and reviewers have praised it. We need developers to help find and fix some Windows specific bugs and bring Kdenlive on par with its GNU/Linux counterpart. One example is currently a bug that prevents rendering Jpeg images.
Next release
Due to the refactoring efforts, the 17.04 release cycle, which is right down the corner, will include code cleanup and some welcome bugfixes but no major changes. More details about this release will follow soon.
Our next monthly café will be held on Tuesday, the 11th of april 2017, at 21pm (CET) on irc.freenode.net, channel #kdenlive, everyone is welcome to join and this is a great opportunity to get in touch with the dev team, which can otherwise be contacted through a good old mailing list.
On a side note, the Frei0r project, which powers many Kdenlive effects just released version 1.6.0 which brings some new filters as well as crash fixes, so all packagers are encouraged to upgrade.
All in all 2017 promises to be an exciting year for Kdenlive, join us!
I’ve been editing videos since before there were computer-based NLEs that the common person could afford. I want to thank you guys so much for making kdenlive so great. As an amateur who’s been doing this long-term there is nothing I see lacking in kdenlive and I look forward to learning how to use some of the more professional features you’re thinking of adding.
Keep up the great work in making Linux an option for creative amateurs and professionals.
Keep up to good work guys! Kdenlive is awesome! I’ve been using it to edit my videos for a while now and I really love it.
My only problem with kdenlive is that when editing 1080p H.264-encoded videos the preview is really sluggish.
Did you consider trying the proxy feature?
Awesome read, and even more awesome news for Kdenlive in 2017
Keep up the good hard work for a stellar application much needed and appreciated in the open source world!
Thanks for your awesome work. I am a habitual user of Kdenlive on Ubuntu. But officially i have to work on windows, which is not as good as linux version. It lacks many filters plus image rendering problems. though png format works perfectly. It would be a great gift if you can port all features to windows edition of kdenlive asap.
I’m already with You on a daily basis (2 videos per day, actually) and as soon as I’ll be able to give money I will!!
You really deserve it!
I hope that the new vers will also speed kdenlive up a little bit! ㋛
Would be perfect!!
Thx Fellas, thx again!!
I use ffmpeg recompiled with the “enable nvenc”, h264 nvidia encoding feature. With my NV GTX 1060 ffmpeg my old PC can transcode at 220 fps (preset slow) instead of 20 fps using libx264 (preset medium)! Why I can’t take advantage of that power in Kdenlive in any way? I want to use that in rendering, but also in preview mode, proxy clips etc. But Kdenlive doesn’t permit that! Can someone of the programmers fix this inefficiency. Kdenlive could be absolutely the best video editor but for now is too slow in all the transcoding part! I don’t know if it is a MLT problem that do not use the ffmpeg version with nvenc enabled. But surely a programmer of Kdenlive can do more pressure in that way to MLT project. Sorry for my vent.
Great! Keep up the good work. I use Kdenlive for 4 years now and am able to do most of the professional editing offered by Windows paid apps. It’s still a bit buggy, otherwise it works great.
I love Kdenlive. It’s interface is by far the most usable for me when compared to apps such as OpenShot, Pitivi, Lightworks (ugh) etc. Can’t wait for it to be stable enough to use consistently for creating daily video content. In fact, this may be the only application ever, where I’m more excited by bug fixes than new features. lol.
Kdenlive is awesome! I’ve been using it to edit my videos, really execellent.