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So, now that you know the basic layout of Kdenlive, it’s time to start putting it to good use. In this part we’ll cover some basic cutting, moving and overlapping video, then, for good measure, take a quick look at transitions.
First, though, drag (or load) a video file into Kdenlive and drag it down to video line 1.
Looking
The first thing you’ll want to do is look through your video to see what you want to keep and what you want to cut. You can, of course, use the video playback window at the top right. To be more precise though, you can click anywhere above, or below, the file you have in the timeline. You’ll see a vertical line appear. The vertical line shows where you are in the video, and shows you that frame in the playback window. You can click and drag anywhere above/below the video to scrub through it.
Let’s say I want my video to start where my current line is and disregard anything to the left of it.
Non-Destructive Cutting
More often than not a piece of video will contain extra footage at the start, or end, of the piece. This is easy to fix. You simply hover your pointer over the start or end. Your pointer will change to show arrows pointing left and right. Simply click and drag to where you want the video to start or end.
So, in this case, I’d click on the very left edge, hold down the left mouse button, and drag (to the right) to where the vertical line is.
One thing to note with this technique is that you haven’t chopped off that start piece, you’re simply hiding it. You can easily left-click, hold, and drag to the left to reveal it again.
Destructive Cutting
This time I’ll use the Razor tool. This is the icon above the timeline, showing a pair of scissors. Clicking the icon will change your mouse pointer to a pair of scissors with a red vertical line. Where you place this red line, and click with the left mouse button, is where the video will cut. To stop cutting, click the Selection tool beside the scissors.
You’ll notice that you now have two video files. You can subdivide as many times as you like.
Let’s say you have a bit in the middle of your video that you don’t want. You’d cut at the start of that point and cut at the end of that point. Left-click on the video in the middle (that bit you don’t want) and press delete. It’s gone. You’ll have a hole in your video, but that’s OK – you can move the videos around. Which is what we’ll look at next.
Moving Audio/Video
Moving is simple enough. You use the Selection tool which, as I mentioned before, is beside the Razor (scissors icon) tool.
With the Selection tool selected, your mouse pointer will become a hand icon when over video or audio. Simply left-click, hold, and drag the audio/video.
Drag the second video up to video line 2 and have a bit of an overlap.
If you play the video it will abruptly cut to the video on line 2 and mash up the audio of line 1 and line 2. Not exactly what you’d want.
Obviously you don’t have to overlap videos. They can quite happily touch one another on the same timeline.
Transitions
A transition will let you go nicely from one video to another as long as they have an overlap of some amount.
Select the ‘Transitions’ tab beside the playback window. Thankfully, Kdenlive has a good amount of choice. For this example, we’ll use ‘Dissolve’. This will smoothly fade from one video to the next.
Left-click and hold on Dissolve. Drag it down to the timeline to where the two videos overlap. Now let go of the mouse button.
It’ll be a bit squished because it’s not a very long dissolve time, but you’ll see a red box covering the overlap. That’s it. You’re now dissolving line 1 into line 2.
Click above/below the videos on the timeline to see it happening in the preview. Or play the preview to see it in real time. If your PC can handle it.
If you want to delete the dissolve you can click on it (to highlight it) and press the Delete button on your keyboard or right-click on it and choose delete.
Rendering (Briefly)
I won’t go into rendering video here, but if you’re happy with what you have, and want to get a final video, then click the ‘Render’ button (at the top of the screen), choose a video format, and click ‘Render to File’.
I’ll go more into rendering at a later time.
That’s it for this month. Next month I’ll discuss adding text to videos.