Just recently switched back to Linux after more than a decade away. (I’m currently running Mint Cinnamon if anyone is curious) On Windows I was using the free version of Davinci Resolve for all of my video editing. I quickly discovered that the free version of Resolve for Linux doesn’t support H.264/H.265 so after trying every Linux video editor I could find (even Blender) I’ve settled on using Kdenlive. I’ve been having a good time getting everything dialed in and learning Kdenlive. I was able to get hardware acceleration working with my Nvidia GPU, and I really appreciated that it could natively utilize the proxy clips that my DJI Action 3 generates when recording. I’ve been reading all kinds of tips and tricks articles but most of it is just basic stuff. Anyone using Kdenlive have more advanced tips to share? Particularly anything around title generation and animation as I’ve found Kdenlive’s system to be a little clunky. Let’s talk!
haha, yeah figuring out those ffmpeg flags is an absolute nightmare. My problem there isn’t so much the output format from Resolve, but source format I’m using. My camera only has the option to record in H.264/H.265 (consumer grade, what can you expect?) which Resolve can’t properly import on Linux. I could take the time to transcode them with ffmpeg before editing, but I’m usually working with ~2 hours worth of video per project and I don’t really want to wait all day for a transcode job to finish before I can even begin editing. On top of that my camera (rather neatly) generates its own proxy files while recording, and I’ve found leveraging these is necessary for getting good timeline performance on my aging rig. Now I could let Resolve generate its own proxy clips like I have in the past, but that’s more time waiting around before editing. I was SUPER stoked to see Kdenlive can natively utilize the proxy clips my camera generates.
Oh wow, I didn’t know (free) Davinci didn’t support using H.264 as source media, that feels rather limited.