4d ago

How good is kdenlive these days?

When i try to find reviews or people talking about Kdenlive on places like YouTube, I mostly find things that are 2-5 years old at this point and just seem relatively outdated. Does it have an active community of users? Is it worth using in 2025? I think it seems really promising but i haven't given it a shot yet.

Edit: up to this point I've been a user of premier pro and more recently DaVinci resolve

Another edit for further context: I wouldn't say I'm a "professional editor" but I'm not just making simple cuts either. I make video essays on YouTube and my style is pretty edit heavy. Lots of text, sometimes I'll have like 10 things on screen at once, etc

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Just stumbled upon this:
https://www.maketecheasier.com/adobe-premiere-pro-vs-kdenlive-video-editor/

It’s fantastic. I use it professionally. A lot of comments say it’s just for basic editing and I think they haven’t scratched the surface.
There are a lot of advanced effects like grading, time remapping, and motion tracking that simply are not basic effects. If you want basic, try out OpenShot. Kdenlive is a fucking gem. It’s replaced premiere for me.
- Do you have any like work samples you could share?
  
  No most of my work is company IP and internal so I wouldn’t be able to provide a link.

I switched from Kdenlive to revolver because it's rendering way faster. Maybe I could do the same in Kdenlive but it seems I'm to dumb. I would recommend both, Kdenlive and Revolver. Depending on the things You want to do.

I'm not a professional video editor, I only use it for basic stuff, seems pretty good and solid to me.

I edited several videos for work precisely 2-5 years ago and it was really good. That surprised me in the good sense because last time I tried it before that was like in 2010 and was rather funky, but so was my crappy laptop. And there's been a while since that and since KDE brought it to attention and the fundraising and you name it and it seems it has improven even more. Maybe with time it can be another famous representative from KDE targeted towards content creation as now it is Krita.
That being said, I just can't take any "review" from a "normie" about FOSS stuff seriously because most of the time they come from a propietary software mindset.
Take for example reviews about Inkscape or GIMP and you'll find most of them mentioning "they're not as usable as Photoshop/Illustrator". So people expect any alternative to work exactly as their non-foss counterpart, which is absolutely ridiculous.
- I'd say there's nothing ridiculous in expecting FOSS thing to be as good as non FOSS, both are made by human after all, yes more work is done by paid developers than by enthusiasts, but there's nothing impossible about FOSS software being as good as non FOSS.
  What's ridiculous is that people expect one software to behave the same as other software when the FOSS software does not imply in any way that it is a clone of a proprietary software and that it strives to behave the same way / be a direct replacemen. Like, yes, Inkscape is a great vector editor, but noone says it's an Illustrator clone. You can ditch Illustrator and use Inkscape, but it isn't a direct replacement, stuff will be different.
  There are "free clones", like double Commander is a clone of Total Commander, and in this case it is valid to expect one to behave exactly like another.
  
  What's ridiculous is that people expect one software to behave the same as other software when the FOSS software does not imply in any way that it is a clone of a proprietary software
  Well, that was exactly my point.
- Being usable does not imply being a clone.

I've used it for many of my videos and it's quite good. It's amazing for simple edits and can handle more advanced stuff, but from my experience it bogs down with many effects. For complicated projects I recommend Resolve, but for simple to medium complexity video edits I fully recommend Kdenlive, as it's better and more crash resistant than all the other FOSS video editors.

I'm also not a professional but I think it should be perfect for a YouTube-style video. You can easily overlay things, add text, etc.

I use it to produce video content for my company, so pretty good I'd say.
For context, I would not claim to be a "professional video editor", but I do have to edit videos in a professional context which is the same thing, technically speaking, but definitely not practically speaking. Anyways, for my purposes I've had no serious issues. Some crashes - save often - but no difficulty producing good looking results that my bosses have been happy with.

this channel has great tutorials. they're up-to-date, too.

It's good, but not comparable to Premiere or Resolve. I'd compare it to Vegas maybe.
- Every now and then I meet someone who uses Vegas still and it's just utterly baffling to me lol one of my colleagues is an excellent editor and somehow makes his stuff in Vegas. I truly don't know how he does it. He must be handrolling so many of his own effects.
  
  I'm not very knowledgeable as far as editing goes, but I know from experience a good artist working with a familiar yet basic tool can be surprisingly proficient.

It works about a well as video editing capabilities from the start of the movie making era from the 1920s onwards. You can make a simple basic straight forward production that can be shared online. It makes great documentaries or just simple straight forward film production that doesn't require any special effects.
They were able to make full featured films in the 1930s and 40s with far less editing capability. The only limitation is your ability to capture great images and content with your camera and video equipment.

I use it for my microbe videos. I really just do basic editing and color grading. I like it a lot. You can look at my post history if ya wanna see the videos.

I used it for a while, but switched to Olive for the little editing I need.

It’s a perfectly serviceable NLE but it’s very, very far from feature parity with the big 3. So if you’re not a professional I’d say rock and roll. If you are a professional, you can’t produce the deliverables expected of you with this software.

@bpt11
It's pretty darn capable in my opinion. I've been using it to make a few different types of videos, and as you might say, the shit just works"!
One thing I've done with it is create 5+ hour compilation videos. It handles very large projects with ease.

KDEnlive is improving, however Resolve is still more powerful and mature. That said, DaVinci's business model seems precarious. It feels like they could, at any moment, enshittify Resolve and force users into a subscription just to maintain access to old edits. I think for that reason KDEnlive is better for almost all users. If you are a professional filmmaker then the color and vfx workflows of Resolve are probably worth paying for, but in that case it's probably a FinalCut vs Resolve question anyway.
- I’ve been a resolve (and premier and FCPX in past l lives lol) user for quite some time now and I just don’t think that’s in their interest. Resolve is not BMD’s main business, it’s and anchor point to get you into their ecosystem. They make their money with switchers, encoders, and cameras to an extent. They then make all their devices talk to resolve and go through their pipeline seamlessly.
  Always be skeptical but as it stands I think the $300 price tag for studio is here to stay for some time. Especially since their cloud system already has license rentals for post houses so they already get some of that subscription-like money from folks willing to pay it. Plus their server/cloud storage is all subscription based and it prints.

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