Kdenlive/Manual/Projects and Files/Clips

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Clips

Clips (Video, Audio and Images)

The button (Add Clip) brings up the Add Clip Dialog where you can choose video, audio or still image clips to add to the project tree.

The button labeled 1 toggles File Preview on and off. The slider labeled 2 adjusts the size of the preview icons. The Import image sequence checkbox labeled 3 enables the import of a series of images that can be used to make a stop motion animation. The Transparent background for images checkbox labeled 4 makes the process respect an alpha channel in the source images ref.

You can add other types of clips by choosing a clip type from the menu brought up from the drop down button next to the button.

Color clips

Color clips are images of a single color that can be added to the project tree. They can be useful to provide a background on which to place titles.

Add color clips by choosing Add Color Clip from the drop down button next to the button.

This brings up the Color Clip dialog from which you can choose a color and a duration.

Clicking OK adds the clip to the project tree. The clip can then be dragged to the timeline. The duration of the color clip can be adjusted on the timeline.

Title clips

See Titles

Slideshow clips

Slideshow clips are clips created from a series of still images. The feature can be used to make an animation from a collection of still images or to create a slideshow of still images. To create the former, use a short frame duration; to create the latter, use a long frame duration.

To create a slide show clip choose Add Slide Show Clip from the Add Clip drop down list.

From the Slideshow Clip dialog choose Filename pattern as Image selection method.

Browse to the location of the images that go to make up your slideshow and select the first image that will make up the slideshow. The subsequent images that are to be used in the slide show will be selected based on some sort of filename algorithm that predicts what the next image file name should be.

For example if the first image is 100_1697.jpg then the next will be 100_1698.jpg, etc.

Select an appropriate frame duration - this defines how long each image will appear for.

Then hit OK. A video file made up of all the images in the folder from where you selected the first frame file from will be added to the project tree.

You can then drag this video to the timeline.

Center crop: automatically fills the output video frame with the images while maintaining their aspect ratio by cropping equal amounts from a pair of edges. Said another way, it removes the black bars that will appear when the photo orientation or aspect does not match the video's.

Animation: adds preset slow smooth pan and zoom effects also known as the Ken Burns Effect. You can choose no animation, pans only, zooms only, or a combination of pans and zooms. Each option also has a low pass filter to reduce the noise in the images that may occur during this operation. Low pass filtering is much slower, so you should preview without it, and then enable it to render.

Proxy clips

Proxy clips are one of the most useful inventions for editing if you are not working on an ultra high-end machine. The trick is that the original clips are replaced by clips with lower resolution and a less complex codec. Video decoding, e.g. of H.264 clips, requires a lot of computing power, but computing power is required for rendering effects in real-time. If insufficient power is available, replay will stutter. Proxy clips will require hardly any computing power at all, which allows fluent replay.

Proxy clips can be enabled/disabled for the current project in the Project Settings (Project -> Project Settings).

To enable proxy clips by default for new projects, go to Settings -> Configure Kdenlive -> Project Defaults -> Enable Proxy Clips. See also Project Settings page

As soon as proxy clips are enabled, they can be generated for specific project clips in the Project Tree widget via the context menu Proxy Clip. After you select Proxy Clip for a clip, a job will start to create the clip. You can view the progress of this job by looking at the little gray progress bar that appears at the bottom of the clip in the Project Tree - see picture. Clicking Proxy Clip again disables the proxy for this clip.

You can multi-select clips in the project tree and select Proxy Clip to start a batch proxy clip generation job which will cue up multiple proxy clip generation jobs.

Once the proxy clip creation has completed the proxy clip will appear with a P icon in the Project Tree.
When rendering to the output file, you can choose whether to use the proxy clips as well. It is by default disabled, but for a quick rendering preview it is useful.

Clip Properties

You can display and edit clip properties by selecting a clip in the project tree and choosing Clip Properties from the Project menu or from the right-click menu.

Video Properties

Advanced Properties

The Advanced tab displays... well ... the advanced properties of the clip. You can edit the advanced properties here. For example you can use Force aspect ratio to tell a clip that seems to have forgotten it was 16:9 ratio that it really is 16:9 ratio.

Advanced Clip property options are:

Force aspect ratio
Force frame rate
Force progressive
Force Field order
Decoding threads
Video index
Audio index
Force colorspace
Full Luma range

Markers

You can use the Markers tab to add markers for certain points in the source file that are important. However, it is probably easier to add markers to your clips via the clip monitor because that allows you preview the file at the location where you are adding the marker.

Once markers are put in your clip, you can access them in the clip monitor by right-clicking and selecting Go To Marker (see picture.) Also note how the markers appear as red vertical lines in the clip monitor (see yellow highlighted regions in the picture.) You can turn on the display of the marker comments in the timeline too - See Show Marker Comments

Markers can also be added to clips on the timeline. Right-click the clip and choose Markers -> Add Marker. Markers added this way also appear in the clip in the project tree.

Generators

Countdown

This generates a clip of a countdown timer that you can put into the timeline.

The font number in the dialog is a font size in pixels. However Kdenlive displays the font in a zoomed in fashion and thus lower numbers appear to be lower quality. See the pic below which is a font number 10 compared to the screen shot above which is font number 576.

Apparently you need a pan and zoom effect to make the font of the countdown smaller

Noise

This generates a video noise clip - like the "snow" on an out of tune analogue TV.