Just recently switched back to Linux after more than a decade away. (I’m currently running Mint Cinnamon if anyone is curious) On Windows I was using the free version of Davinci Resolve for all of my video editing. I quickly discovered that the free version of Resolve for Linux doesn’t support H.264/H.265 so after trying every Linux video editor I could find (even Blender) I’ve settled on using Kdenlive. I’ve been having a good time getting everything dialed in and learning Kdenlive. I was able to get hardware acceleration working with my Nvidia GPU, and I really appreciated that it could natively utilize the proxy clips that my DJI Action 3 generates when recording. I’ve been reading all kinds of tips and tricks articles but most of it is just basic stuff. Anyone using Kdenlive have more advanced tips to share? Particularly anything around title generation and animation as I’ve found Kdenlive’s system to be a little clunky. Let’s talk!
I’ve been using Glaxnimate which integrates with Kdenlive. It’s a tool for animating SVG elements. It’s a bit clunky I find but it’s nice in that you can have shapes and text follow animation path with different time curves. It can be used directly from Kdenlive which is pretty cool.
As for other tips, one I use a lot is Timeline Preview Rendering. If you have a whole pile of effects, playing in the project monitor can become very choppy. With the prerendering, you can just render that section and it will play smooth while still allowing you do edit the audio.
Finally, for getting the footage from clips, I use
IandOto set the start and end of a part of the clip I want and then withCtrl+II can create a zone that shows up in the Project bin. I use that a lot to get the fragments I want first and then build the fill timeline later.Very interested to hear about Glaxnimate - I’d not heard of that one and will definitely have a look - thanks for bringing it to our attention :)
I saw the option for adding a new animation in the project bin, and installed Glaxnimate with the intention of giving it a shot, but the software manager in Mint only has the Flatpak version available which obviously won’t work. As for timeline preview rendering, it’s awesome! I use it to pre-render all of my titles and transitions before I record my voice over so the project monitor doesn’t stutter and throw off the timing on the audio recording. Works a treat! Speaking of voice over, I REALLY wish there was an option for a sidechain compressor input. As it stands now I record my VO, then render out each of the audio channels and then import into Audacity to apply the audio ducking and other effects before importing it all back into Kdenlive. It’s a bit of a headache but it does work.
Oh, I see what you mean about the Glaxnimate Flatpak. I just tried it out.
You can get it to work, but it’s a bit of a hack. You first need to create a script containing:
Let’s call it
glaxor something like that. Then make it executable:chmod +x glaxThen in Kdenlive, go to Settings -> Configure Kdenlive -> Environment -> Standard Applications, change the one for editing animation to point to that script. Should work now. At least, it did for me!
And yeah, shame about the audio processing.