The developers of the KDE project have released the Kdenlive 20.12 video editor, which is positioned for semi-professional use, supports working with video recordings in DV, HDV and AVCHD formats, and provides all the basic video editing operations, for example, it allows you to randomly mix video, sound and images using the timeline and also apply numerous effects.
For those unfamiliar with Kdenlive, it 's an amazing free and open-source video editor for GNU/Linux and FreeBSD, and it relies on several other open-source projects such as FFmpeg, the MLT video framework, and frei0r effects.
As mentioned earlier, Kdenlive is built on the MLT video framework and ffmpeg , which provide unique features for mixing virtually any type of media.
Main news of Kdenlive 20.12
This new version notably adds transition functionality to the same track, simplifying the creation of transition effects for splices. Instead of adjusting overlap areas across two clips, the new feature allows you to simply define the transition duration and choose a breakpoint that determines the transition's peak when replacing one clip with another.
A new tool for adding and editing subtitles is proposed, integrated with the timeline and implemented as a dedicated track and a new widget. It also supports importing subtitles in SRT/ASS format and exporting them in SRT format. HTML tags can be used to change the text style and color.
All effects are grouped into a more detailed category structure. All effects and their parameters have been updated. Available sound effects are now displayed based on compatibility with their associated functionality in the current operating system. Broken and problematic effects have been moved to a separate category of obsolete effects awaiting removal in future versions.
It is also mentioned that new effects have been implemented:
- Pillar Echo to fill side areas in vertical videos with a blurry pattern
- VR 360 and 3D to work with stereoscopic and three-dimensional frames
- Video equalizer to adjust brightness, contrast, saturation and hue
- The Crop by Fill effect has the ability to snap to keyframes.
Of the other changes that stand out:
- Added ability to rename custom effects and add / edit descriptions to them.
- Work has been done to improve the usability of the timeline and increase the responsiveness of the interface. Clips in the timeline now change color based on attached tags in the project panel.
- Added the ability to control the inclusion of sound normalization from the track title.
- Added support for deleting multiple tracks at once.
- In the dialog to create a project archive, an option to archive only the clips present in the timeline was implemented, as well as an option to select the TAR or ZIP format.
- The online resource tool has been ported to qtwebengine and switched to resource loading over HTTPS by default.
How to install Kdenlive 20.12 on Linux?
For those interested in installing this new version, please follow the instructions below.
Installation You can do it by opening a terminal and executing the following command in it:
sudo snap install kdenlive --beta
Installation from PPA (Ubuntu and derivatives)
Another method to install this application on your system is with the help of a repository. Therefore this method is valid for Ubuntu and its derivatives.
In a terminal they will execute the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kdenlive/kdenlive-stable -y
Now they will update their packages and repositories list with:
sudo apt-get update
Finally they will install the application by executing the following command in the terminal:
sudo apt install kdenlive
Installation from AppImage
Finally the last method for any current Linux distribution is downloading the AppImage package.
In a terminal we are going to execute the following command:
wget https://download.kde.org/stable/kdenlive/20.12/linux/kdenlive-20.12.0-x86_64.appimage
We give execution permissions with:
sudo chmod +x kdenlive-20.12.0-x86_64.appimage
And finally you can run your application by double clicking on it or from the terminal with:
./kdenlive-20.12.0-x86_64.appimage