(boring disclaimer to open, I was running this on a very outdated machine. Kdenlive isn’t positioned as a programme for low power machines, I was just taking the mick and seeing what I could get away with)
I have been making video and particuliarly editing for over 20 years at this point. The college where I was taught still had a machine for physically splicing film reel together in its editing suite. the camera I shot on sat on my shoulder and recorded 1080i footage to what looked like mini VHS tapes. I have been doing this for a really, really long time. And whilst I can do lots of cool stuff like work in virtual 3d environments with simulated lighting, and animation – most of my work is not that. Most of my work is chopping from one track to the next, with some fades and graphics thrown in. To that extent Kdenlive is more than equipped to get the job done (even on my terrible laptop). There’s all the usual quality of life things you would hope for like track marking, and if you’re a regular Davinci Resolve or Premiere Pro user, you will feel right at home. I found myself reverting to keyboard shortcuts I was used to without thinking about it, which translated fine. So if you’re an existing editor who wants a FOSS alternative to Davinci, or to leave Adobe behind forever, I think there’s something worth investigating here. The only real issue for me was hardware limitation. It’s not unusual for me to work with 20 or so video tracks, but my laptop started making jet engine noises at 4 or 5 video tracks. I also didn’t find the colour corrections anywhere near as good as with Davinci – but that was what prompted me to move away from Prem Pro, so thats not entirely surprising.
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