Kdenlive/Manual/Installation

Installation

The information on this page may be of interest for historical reasons but you should visit the download page of the Kdenlive Web site for up to date information on installing Kdenlive. (Aug 2017)

Install binary packages

Most linux distributions provide recent binary packages of Kdenlive that can be installed from your Package Manager. However, in some cases you can find more recent versions in private repositories.

This page at the Kdenlive home has instructions on how to source these more recent versions, depending on which flavour of Linux you run. Instructions for Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, OpenSUSE, Slackware and Ubuntu are available.

As of May 2015, obtaining and installing the latest version of Kdenlive has gotten a little complicated. Development of Kdenlive up to this point has used a technology known as KDE Frameworks 4. And the last stable release using this technology is version 0.9.10, released 25th September 2014.
To use this you need to have recent versions of frei0r, Kdenlive , mlt and libvidstab, e.g.:

frei0r = 1.4.0+git20140826.72e51041
Kdenlive = 0.9.10
mlt = 0.9.3+git20141005.22abed67
libvidstab=2:0.98b

As of June 2015, this PPA has version 0.9.10 of Kdenlive , 1.4.0 of Frei0r and 0.9.3 of melt.

Development of Kdenlive has now switched to a new version of the KDE Frameworks called KF5 (KDE Frameworks 5). To install versions of Kdenlive using this underlying technology, you need to be on a Linux distribution which supports KF5. Ubuntu and its derivatives versioned 15.04 and higher support KF5. It is not possible to install KF5 on distributions earlier than 15.04 (except by chrooting your system). Versions using KF5 are distributed by the Kubuntu-CI Team. The sunab ppa (see below) now also distributes KF5 versions.
Version numbers of the KF5 flavour start at 15.04.0.
This author recommends using the sunab ppa to install Kdenlive rather than the Kubuntu-CI Team because the Kubuntu-CI Team PPA has many other packages in it which will attempt to uprade all sorts of things on your system—with the potential of breaking it.

Debian

Debian project has been shipping Kdenlive packages since the "squeeze" (6.0) release. However, to benefit from recent updates and bugfixes, you might consider upgrading to a "testing" release or even "sid".

Once your package management tool is pointed at an appropriate release, a simple apt install kdenlive should then work.

Sunab's PPA (see below) is not recommended for Debian because Debian uses a different lib layout for multiarch (reference: this post from vpinon).

Ubuntu and derivatives

Ubuntu also has offered Kdenlive since "gutsy" (7.10). However, to benefit from recent updates and bugfixes, you should consider upgrading to the latest release.

ppa:kdenlive/kdenlive-master is the development branch, with the very latest features additions.

ppa:kdenlive/kdenlive-testing is the feature-frozen branch, starting from the first beta, with bugfix updates as soon as solutions are found

ppa:kdenlive/kdenlive-stable is the last robust official release

Not all the packages in the ppa are necessary. Install or upgrade the following to get a 15.04 release (version numbers as at 13 July 2015)

kdenlive (15.04.2-0ubuntu0-~sunab~vivid4)
kdenlive-data (15.04.2-0ubuntu0-~sunab~vivid4)
libmlt++3 (0.9.6-0ubuntu0~sunab~vivid1)
libmlt-data (0.9.6-0ubuntu0~sunab~vivid1)
libmlt6 (0.9.6-0ubuntu0~sunab~vivid1)
libvidstab1.0 (2:0.98b-0ubuntu0~sunab~vivid1)
melt ( 0.9.6-0ubuntu0~sunab~vivid1)

Non-Kubuntu users will need to install the kde-runtime package to fix missing buttons and icons.

Fedora, RedHat and derivatives

RPM packages are not yet maintained in an official branch, so you must go through an unofficial repository such as RPM Fusion or packman (Has ver 15.12.0 29 Dec 2015). Follow the site's recommendations to make them available and end with yum install kdenlive.

Gentoo, Arch, BSD ports

Building scripts are ready for up-to-date systems, so run respectively emerge kdenlive or pacman -S kdenlive or pkg_add kdenlive, etc.

Windows

The first Windows version of Kdenlive (v16.12.1) is available for download here. Read the installation instructions for Windows.

Alternatively you could try and use some virtualized Linux distribution to run Kdenlive on Windows. Some advice can be found on this page.

There is also the kdenlive on win project on SourceForge which "consists of an Ubuntu VirtualBox image that is preconfigured to run Kdenlive". The project was last updated 2012-08-09.

MacOS

Kdenlive and MLT can compile and run under Mac OS X. Packages are available from the MacPorts project.

MacPorts is a source-based system — there is not a binary app bundle for Kdenlive. Therefore, Kdenlive and all of its numerous dependencies, including multimedia libraries, KDE, and Qt, must be compiled. This can take a long time and much disk space! Furthermore, it is not unusual for something not to build correctly; it is definitely not something for the novice, impatient, or "faint of heart".

You may have some success getting support for the MacPort of Kdenlive on the Mac Ports forum on MacOS Forge.

Installing from source

If you want to test latest committed code or your personal patches, you will have to build Kdenlive (and probably MLT) on your own.

Details on how to compile and install Kdenlive from source are available on the Community wiki.

You can use your distribution's package building procedure to use its software management system to install/upgrade/remove the binaries and data, and eventually share your builds (and even contribute to package maintenance - refer to the respective distribution manual).

If you prefer you can build & install Kdenlive to a local area (preferably not /usr, but rather /usr/local or $HOME/my_local_builds/kdenlive-last-release or similar). You could try using this build script to build the latest version from the sources. Or you could use the this build script to build kdenlive ver 0.9.10 ^[1] (Follow the instructions under "show kdenlive". These instructions will build Kdenlive and its dependancies [e.g. melt, ffmpeg] in a "sandbox").

Installing from pre-built binary packages

Kdenlive now offers pre-build binary packages deployed using Appimage technology - see Appimage section on the download page of the kdenlive web site.

Kdenlive developer Vpinon is making available compressed pre-built binary files for installing from http://files.kde.org/kdenlive/.

You can test these packages without changing your system. Just download the package and extract it to a folder of your choice. Inside that folder is a "start-kdenlive" executable that will start for you a recent version of Kdenlive.

Execute this by typing ./start-kdenlive in a terminal.

Pre-built binary packages are often an easy solution if you are having troubles with your install and can be preferable to building your own because you don't need to install a build environment.

The potential downside is that the pre-built binary packages are built from the unstable development stream and may contain bugs. On the plus side, your pre-built binary packages version and your main version of Kdenlive can live simultaneously on your machine.

Another downside is that these packages have been built with a version of ffmpeg that only has the free video codecs. The type of files you can render your video to is limited. Choosing the Theora profile in the Web Sites rendering destination does work.

Be sure to choose the correct download for the bitness your system:

kdenlive-debian7-x86_64-YYYYMMDD.tar.bz2 is for 64-bit Debian or Ubuntu-based distros. (As at October 2015 this is still a 0.9.10 version of Kdenlive).

kdenlive-ubuntu14.04-x86-YYYYMMDD.tar.bz2 (no 64 in the name ) is for 32-bit Ubuntu—(release 14.04 or higher) or other Debian-based distros.

Daily builds are often an easy solution if you are having troubles with your install and can be preferable to building your own because you don't need to install a build environment (which can be problematic on old distros).

Daily builds are likely to work even if your distro doesn't match the reference ones, as these references are older (with ascendant compatibility libs) and the important libs are embedded—they normally work without a problem.

The potential downside is that the daily builds are built from the unstable development stream and may contain bugs. On the plus side, your daily build version and your main version of Kdenlive can live simultaneously on your machine.