The project was initially started by Jason Wood in 2002. The development of Kdenlive moved on from the K Desktop Environment 3 version (which wasn't originally made for MLT) to KDE Platform 4, with an almost complete rewrite. This was completed with Kdenlive 0.7, released on 12 November 2008.[11] Kdenlive 0.9.10 released on 1 October 2014 was the last KDE 4 release.
In early 2017 the development team started working on a refactoring of the program, and by June 2017 a first preview was available.[15] By December 2017 the refactoring became the main focus of the development team with the release of the first usable preview.[16] Release of the refactoring version was originally planned for August 2018 in the KDE 18.08 Applications release.[17] The refactored version of Kdenlive was released on 22 April 2019 in the KDE 19.04 Applications release.[18]
On 20 September 2022, KDE began the first fundraising drive for Kdenlive, with the funds to be used to implement major features and bring Kdenlive up to the standards of more professional video editors. By 18 October 2022, the initial goal of €15,000 had been met.[19]
Features
Kdenlive video & audio effectsKdenlive compositions
KDE's Kdenlive makes use of MLT, Frei0r effects, SoX and LADSPA libraries. Kdenlive supports all of the formats supported by FFmpeg or libav (such as QuickTime, AVI, WMV, MPEG, and Flash Video, among others), and also supports 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios for both PAL, NTSC and various HD standards, including HDV and AVCHD. Video can also be exported to DV devices, or written to a DVD with chapters and a simple menu.[20][21][22]
Multi-track editing with a timeline and supports an unlimited number of video and audio tracks.
A built-in title editor and tools to create, move, crop and delete video clips, audio clips, text clips and image clips.
A wide range of effects and transitions. Audio signal processing capabilities include normalization, phase and pitch shifting, limiting, volume adjustment, reverb and equalization filters as well as others. Visual effects include options for masking, blue-screen, distortions, rotations, colour tools, blurring, obscuring and others.
Rendering is done using a separate non-blocking process so it can be stopped, paused and restarted.
Kdenlive also provides a script called the Kdenlive Builder Wizard (KBW) that compiles the latest developer version of the software and its main dependencies from source, to allow users to try to test new features and report problems on the bug tracker.[23]