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Introduction

It is easy to get started editing Kdenlive. In case you have never used any video editing tool before, maybe the interface won't be as intuitive for you as it was for me or it can be for someone that has experience with editing. The open source software has an interface that is very similar to the paid alternatives. When I have switched to Linux and was forced to use open source alternatives to the proprietary programs I was used to on Windows, but I have edited before on those tools, so I knew how the editing workflow is.

If you have ever before used any software editing tool, you won't find yourself stuck trying to figure out basic stuff, however, if you find yourself in such a situation, where you want to do something that sounds simple, but you have no idea how to do it on Kdenlive, their website has a very helpful user manual.

Kdenlive performance and speed

I will cover a bit in this post what are my experiences with Kdenlive in regard to performance. I won't go in depth about render times because they can vary too much from computer to computer. Even on my computer, if I mistakenly render with the CPU instead of my 2 graphics cards, it can be much slower. Also, the render time can be affected by what you are rendering, the source of the objects, the rendering configurations, and many other variables, even the room temperature! So I won't touch too much on that, though I will talk about my experiences in that regard.

I want to focus more on what are the tangible aspects of the performance that do not vary that much from computer to computer and from project to project, like the performance when scrolling and editing the timeline of a project, or the time it takes for a project to open, or for the software itself to open

What is Kdenlive

Kdenlive is a free and open source video editor, that is available for every major desktop operating system (Windows, Linux, and Mac), they describe themselves as a "libre video editor", being "libre" a Spanish word that translates both into "open" and "free". It is the same word choice used by another open source package of software called "libre office". The project has been running since 2003 and, according to the team, the program is designed to fulfill most needs, from basic video editing to professional work.

Lightning quick

You won't believe me if I tell you this, but trust me, Kdenlive takes around 1 second to open. I have recorded a GIF showing me opening and closing Kdenlive 2 times, the first time it was totally clean from the cache of the memory, I haven't opened the program for 1 or 2 days, and it took around 1 second, the second time I have opened it, it was a little bit faster, but honestly, the difference from 1 second to half a second is negligible.

For reference:
My computer is an around 5 years old Alienware 18. To be honest, I do not know it's age, but Alienware doesn't produce 18 inches Laptops for a few years already, so it is pretty old.
I am running Elementary OS 5 Juno, which is based on Ubuntu 18.04.
The drive where my operating system, Kdenlive and every file is hosted is an almost 256GB SSD, it has now a bit less than 256GB because when SSDs get old their storage capacity goes down to avoid data corruption, mine has 233GB of total storage capacity, so you can guess it is very old.

Yes, loading software from an SSD is faster, and I am aware that not everyone has an SSD, but in my opinion, around 1 second to open, even for SSDs standard, is very, very fast. Even if you use an HDD (Hard Disk Drive are slowed than Solid State Drives), I don't think you will even have time to think "wow, Kdenlive took 3 seconds to open on my HDD, that is slow".
Also, nowadays you can easily find a 512GB SSD, newer and faster than mine, for less than 80 USD dollars.

Yes, I also know it is hard to believe. Kdenlive for me does absolutely everything the old and expensive proprietary software did, it is a powerful tool, and it is so fast. 1 second to open does sound too good to be true, so I invite you to download the program and test for yourself.

The program is free, lightweight and runs on any desktop operating system, I can't see a reason why not to try.

Timeline performance

The topic mentioned above, the time the program takes to open, though a good benchmark for how well optimized the software is, is not the most important measure of performance of a program. Though relatively important, after all, no one wants to want 30 seconds to cut a clip, it is something that, for large projects, you will only have to do once or twice a day.

The timeline, however, for big projects, for many minutes or hours long clips, is where you will spend a big chunk of your time working. If the timeline does not have a good performance you will suffer editing.

I have had experiences with big and paid software running on slow machines, and it was very annoying to have dropped frames and slow overall performance while trying to work. If you edit 4k videos on old computers without graphics cards you will understand perfectly what I mean.

Sure, the computer I use nowadays is a beast, so it is expected that Kdenlive runs well on such a powerful and high-end computer, even if it is a few years old. I, sadly, do not have an older computer to try Kdenlive on, but based on peoples opinion and reviews online, and based on one of the main features, I expect Kdenlive to run well even on old computers!

This is thanks to a feature called "proxy editing", mentioned on the features section of their website.

Proxy editing means that, when you are editing a video, what you see on the preview screen is not the full video, but a compressed and smaller version of it, that should run fine even on old computers. So you use the preview with the small and lightweight proxy video to edit the timeline, but when you click render, the computer fetches the original file and applies, at render time, the edits you did on your proxied timeline.

That could make Kdenlive work fine even on an older computer. Most of the open source programs I have used are "old computer friendly". This contributes to effectively saving money from professionals and amateurs that want or need to edit video. If you ever need to edit something, I highly recommend you giving a try, for free, to Kdenlive before you consider paying for proprietary software.

Rendering performance

As I have said, I don't want to touch too much on the rendering performance, as it depends too much on too many variables. But what I can say about rendering is that it does not look a single bit slower than paid software. I have edited a few videos for my DTube channel, short videos, around 5 minutes long, a few near the 10-minute mark. I know that the time it took to render was faster than the time it takes me to go to the kitchen and, make and drink my coffee, so it is not slow, but I do not have Windows anymore so I can't compare it to proprietary paid editors. But I do not regret using it as my main editor in regard to performance, not at all!

Freedom to people

By allowing users to run their program on old machines, Kdenlive gives accessibility. Looking on the big picture of things, not everyone in the world has money to change their computers to fit the high-end requirements most software require, most people in the world, actually, do not even have the money to pay for the software, less so to upgrade their machines.

Imagine how can Kdenlive empower the lives of people that do not have the money to spend on a brand new computer and on proprietary software.

There is a sad stereotype that makes people think that open source software is not good, not ergonomic and bad writing. I have challenged myself last year too, for 30 days, use only Linux, I have deleted Windows from my computer and all of a sudden I didn't have any of the software I used to use on my Windows system. But after the challenge has ended, I was "allowed" to go back to my old life, but living open source only for a whole month has opened my mind.

Open source and free software are not like it used to be, nor how people imagine it is. Kdenlive is a very good example, the code is well written, the interface is very comfortable and intuitive, the performance is top-notch, matching and maybe, I dare to say, surpassing the paid competition.

Open source and free software are not anymore for the people that can't afford the paid software. Open source programs nowadays are high performance, stable and well tested. They give a run for the money to the big companies. If you can try giving a shot to edit using free software only, give Kdenlive a try, you don't have to do like me and limit yourself to only use it. Try using Kdenlive as your main editing software for a couple of days, maybe weeks, and use your old main editing software as a backup. If you do that, I would love to hear from you, if you try Kdenlive, please, give me your feedback of what did you think of it, if it fulfilled your needs and expectations, my needs for editing are low end, so I would love to hear what are the experiences the professionals have with it!

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Kdenlive Series - You Won't Believe How Fast It Is(Part 5)