If you're superstitious, grab a four-leaf clover or a rabbit's foot and join me in learning about the Kdenlive video editor. This is the thirteenth application of our list of twenty-four.
Linux has a notable collection of video editors, including a few commercial titles like Da Vinci Resolve and Lightwork. The free ones generally have similar functions since they are usually graphical interfaces of the same multimedia libraries. However, the KDE video editor stands out for its excellent features. This includes being a year ahead of Adobe Premiere Pro in incorporating the transcription function since it has had it for more than a year.
Non-linear video editors
The first electronic storage media followed a sequential order. The first thing that should be recorded was the first thing that should be seen. So, if you wanted to start the video with a sequence that was recorded towards the middle of the movie, you had to advance the tape to the starting position and copy it to the beginning of the storage medium. The procedure was repeated until the video ended.
A non-linear video editor is an application that makes it easier to create and edit video content without the need to follow the linear sequence that editors were previously required to follow.. This means we do not need to work with the videos chronologically.
In this way, non-linear video editors They allow you to organize video segments in a non-sequential way, either as a list, a tree or a hierarchy. This gives the user greater freedom to create and edit audio, video and image content, because the order of the multimedia segments can be changed, allowing them to be accessed in a more logical and clear way.
The additional advantage is that The source multimedia content is not modified since you are working with copies. This, as long as the result is not saved with the name of the source file.
The Kdenlive video editor
Kdenlive is an open source video editing program part of the KDE project. It is one of the oldest Linux applications of its kind since it started back in 2003. If its graphical interface is based on the Qt and KDE libraries, the bulk of the multimedia editing tasks falls on the MLT framework. And, this is what makes this program highly recommended.
MLT is an open source multimedia framework that was traditionally intended for television broadcasting. It's a Very useful tool set for broadcasting, editing and multimedia playback, conversion between formats and web streaming.
Thanks to MLT, Kdenlive can:
- Process audio, video and images using tools to encode, decode, re-encode and apply filters to multimedia files.
- Synchronize audio and video.
- Add and edit subtitles.
- Expansion of functionalities through third-party plugins.
- Multichannel video and audio editing.
- Support for multiple formats audio and video.
Other features are:
- Configurable user interface and keyboard shortcuts.
- Creating titles in two dimensions with the possibility of adding graphics, selecting fonts and determining the position and size.
- Application of dozens of effects and transitions.
- Automatic saving of the project.
- Download free resources from Internet.
- Preview of the timeline.
- Effects from keyframes.
Kdenlive is available on all distributions based on the KDE desktop and comes preinstalled on the specialized multimedia production distribution Ubuntu Studio. More current versions can be installed as follows:
Ubuntu and derivatives
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kdenlive/kdenlive-stable
sudo apt install kdenlive
Flatpak format
flatpak install flathub org.kde.kdenlive
Can also be used without downloading in Appimage format just giving it execution permissions.
Although there are more and more online video editors, and even video creators based on artificial intelligence, using open source tools like Kdenlive allow you to preserve your privacy.