Kdenlive for the Win

Earlier this evening I was attempting to open a 25+ GB mp4 file to edit (1920×1980 resolution, 35 mins long). I tried using Premiere Pro on my Gaming rig (Windows), as I figured that I would get the best performance on that machine, and I’m the most familiar with Premiere Pro out of all of the Non-Linear Editors. However, the program locked up for almost 10 minutes on the initial import, and was pretty much unusable once the video was imported. I could attempt a proxy setup, but I didn’t think that the video should be that hard to import.

On to Premiere Pro on my Mac… which refused to even load. Crashed or hung every time I tried to open it.

So, what options were left? Well, I could go back to Premiere Pro on my PC, and I would have to use proxies, which would probably work. But it’s been a few years since I used proxies in Premiere, and I wasn’t looking forward to using them again.

As a last ditch effort, I decided to try using Kdenlive on my Linux PC. I’ve used it before, and have always been rather underwhelmed. But, since I had already failed a few times, I figured it was worth the quick test. I did a little reading ahead of time, and found out that proxies are also recommended for Kdenlive when using large files. So, I enabled them, and then tried to import my footage.

And… it worked! Kdenlive happily ingested my video, created the proxy on the fly, and I was able to start editing immediately! Was it as nice as editing in Premiere Pro? Absolutely not. Kdenlive has more lag, and feels less powerful than Premiere. However, since it’s currently working, I’ll try to finish out this project in it, and see how well it performs, especially after hours of use…

I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload (Day 52/100). You can join in yourself by visiting https://100DaysToOffload.com.