Kdenlive 19.08 review – Film Noir Redux
Updated: September 2, 2019
About a year ago, I reviewed the beta version of
Kdenlive 18.08. It proved
to be an okay program, an incremental improvement, even though there were some issues that you’d expect
to find in beta-quality software. Overall, there weren’t any big surprises, but I was hoping for a more
streamlined workflow and improved consistency.
Twelve months later,
Kdenlive 19.08 has been
released, and it’s time for another review. After all, this is my favorite video editor, and I’ve used
it to create all of my funny and unfunny
Youtube videos, so I’m always very keen on what
new things and improvements we can have here. Let us commence then, ever so gingerly.
First steps … not promising
Once I had the program set up, I launched it. As expected, you’re greeted with a dark theme, but
this can be remedied relatively quickly. All right. Kdenlive 19.08 did not start the session with a
wizard, probably because I’ve used other versions before, and there was a configuration file
somewhere.
Now, the most important part – actually working with multimedia project. Well, just as I did last
year, I decided to import a handful of my videos, including .kdenlive project files plus dozens of
clips and images that normally constitute a complete media package. I tried to load one of them – the
Casey Ryback tribute – and Kdenlive simply closed. I presume
crashed. I re-launched the program, and the icons were gone from the
interface – fixed by changing back to the Dark theme (or any than the selected one) and then back to
it.
To see what was happening behind the scenes, I ran the program from the command line. And I
discovered a whole bunch of warnings and errors. No idea why they show up or what they mean, but it
doesn’t look promising.
./kdenlive-19.08.0a-x86_64.appimage
WARNING : Fails to parse “avcolour_space”
WARNING : Fails to parse “avcolor_space”
WARNING : Fails to parse “avdeinterlace”
WARNING : Fails to parse “swscale”
“avfilter.abench” is blacklisted
“avfilter.acompressor” is blacklisted
“avfilter.adelay” is blacklisted
…
WARNING : Fails to parse “deinterlace”
++++++ Unknown asset : “avfilter.acompressor”
++++++ Unknown asset : “avfilter.aecho”
++++++ Unknown asset : “avfilter.agate”
Warning: duplicate custom definition of effect “frei0r.alpha0ps” found. Only last one will be
considered. Duplicate found in
“/tmp/.mount_kdenlivW6BXX/usr/share/kdenlive/effects/frei0r_alpha0ps.xml”
…
“frei0r.xfade0r” is blacklisted
Loading bin playlist…
//////////////////////
Trying to construct 5 tracks.
////////////////////////////////
SUSPICIOUS: we weren’t expecting a producer when parsing the timeline
i18n() needs at least one parameter
And then, when I tried to open a project file:
Case insensitive sorting unsupported in the posix collation implementation
Numeric mode unsupported in the posix collation implementation
qt.qpa.xcb: QXcbConnection: XCB error: 3 (BadWindow), sequence: 1684, resource id: 37765112,
major code: 40 (TranslateCoords), minor code: 0
Calling appendChild() on a null node does nothing.
/tmp/.mount_kdenlivW6BXX/AppRun: line 26: 4315 Segmentation
fault (core dumped) kdenlive –config kdenlive-appimagerc $@
The plot thickens
I was able to make partial progress by moving the project files and the associated assets into the
Videos sub-folder in my home directory manually, trying to recreate the structure that was as close to
the original setup in which the .kdenlive files were created and saved. But it’s also super-troubling
that Kdenlive is so sensitive to something like, and does not have a graceful way of handling
paths.
With project files in a new location, I now had a new prompt – Kdenlive couldn’t load files because
they were created in a
different locale. What. Why? And who cares. The solution is to either
install a new locale, which you can do, or edit the project file (it’s just XML), and change the
relevant field.
<?xml version=’1.0′ encoding=’utf-8′?>
<mlt title=”Anonymous Submission” version=”0.9.0″ root=”/home/roger”
LC_NUMERIC=”ar_SD.UTF-8″>
<profile width=”1920″ display_aspect_den=”9″ colorspace=”709″ frame_rate_den=”1″
description=”HD 1080p 24 fps” height=”1080″ display_aspect_num=”16″ frame_rate_num=”24″ progressive=”1″
sample_aspect_num=”1″ sample_aspect_den=”1″/>
And despite this, Kdenlive 19.08 crashed … again.
I tried with other project files – like my Risitas & Firefox one, to no avail. Then, I decided
to actually create a brand new project, import clips, and then drag & drop them onto the relevant
audio or video track in the main interface. But this didn’t really work either! I wasn’t able to drag
& drop files at all.
This is as far as I got – nothing to do with old projects, the bugs are
essentially 19.08.
Back to an old version
To see whether my project files were truly that horrible, or there was something wrong with
Kdenlive, I also installed the repository version, which in Kubuntu 18.04 stands at 17.12.3. Then I
started the program and tried the first project. Lo and behold, Kdenlive notified me that there were
some files missing, and whether I’d like to search for them. Then, the project loaded just fine – and
was converted to the new format.
I had placeholders for missing clips, which is understandable, but everything worked correctly. Then
I loaded another project – same prompt, a successful recursive search that found all the assets, the
project was converted to the new format (plus backup), and done. No issues. Which meant there was
little else for me to do with the latest version except to conclude this review not-review. As if
I needed more bad stuff to cheer me up in an otherwise overwhelmingly vibrant and productive modern
Linux reality. Not.
Conclusion
Apparently, the issues I’ve first observed a year ago weren’t strictly beta. The latest version is
also affected, and while the other one actually did run for me, I am unable to do even basic stuff with
19.08. In a manner that is eerily similar to Linux distributions, we have a loss of momentum, reduced
quality, and the slow slide toward irrelevance.
I wish I had better news, lovely screenshots, awesome project work. But I didn’t get that far, and I
dread to think what will happen with the next major version, because I do rely on Kdenlive, and I need
it to make my video clips. Alas, Kdenlive 19.08 is too buggy to use, and I’m quite leery of the
yesteryear trend. While I had no cardinal reasons not to like the 2018 release, now I have no reasons
to like this one. Me sad. And cut.