A quick follow-up from last week’s post about Ubuntu Linux video editors… I took the helpful suggestions you left there and elsewhere and installed Kdenlive.

Upon first boot I was walked through a helpful set-up wizard, after which the app promptly crashed. Oops. But a quick restart revealed the closest dead-ringer yet to this Mac refugee’s familiar Final Cut Pro. Check out the available effects in that centre panel!

Like Kino, Kdenlive can capture footage via FireWire from miniDV tape. I believe it makes use of the same command-line tool dvgrab, which I noticed was installed for me automatically using Synaptic. But unlike Kino, Kdenlive provides a more traditional timeline interface. Oh, and apparently you can even author DVDs through a built-in wizard.

I found Kdenlive to be a bit unstable as I mucked around with it last night, but that might have been due to the latest PiTiVi residing on my machine at the same time. For the record, the newer PiTiVi was fairly crashy itself while running on my older Ubuntu-derived OS.

I’ve since removed it and will take Kdenlive through its paces as I try to make a show DVD for the comedy troupe that’s been patiently waiting for it.

Kdenlive has been pre-compiled for the following distributions:

In English, “pre-compiled” means you should be able to find it in your distro’s package manager. 😉

Note that the additional installation of Qt libraries is required if you’re not running KDE.

Thanks again to everyone who pointed me towards this fine app. Video editing is kind of a big deal for me in that it was the most demanding task performed on my old Mac Pro. If Kdenlive works out like I think it will then this film school graduate will be able to preach the Linux gospel without reservations to anyone.

Fingers crossed…