State of Kdenlive
by f_r_d on 4/18/2026, 11:42:37 AM
https://kdenlive.org/news/2026/state-2026/
Comments
by: visiohex
Kdenlive hits the perfect sweet spot for me. It's much more capable than basic editors like iMovie, but doesn't have the overwhelming learning curve (or steep hardware requirements) of DaVinci Resolve. Like others have mentioned, pairing it with OBS for screen recording and Audacity for audio makes for an incredibly powerful, 100% FOSS media creation stack. It's amazing to see how far open-source video editing has come.
4/18/2026, 1:10:55 PM
by: Daunk
Every KDE app I try (and the Plasma desktop) seems so good on paper, and they promise me the world! Then, wen I actually try them out, they always end up crashing or doing something weird. Like I cannot stand GIMP, so I've tried using Krita, but I don't think I've ever managed to finish something in it before it crashes. It's the same with Kdenlive.<p>Damn shame.
4/18/2026, 2:55:57 PM
by: marginalia_nu
Kdenlive has some unfortunate performance regression when working with larger projects with many clips.<p>I managed to track down a few of them while evaluating Claude Code a while back (mostly certain actions doing O(n) scans over all clips every mouse event needing debouncing), and got it mostly back down to tolerable levels again, but have been holding onto them because unsolicited drive by AI PRs are very annoying from a code project maintenance perspective, as the changes are almost certainly poorly factored.<p>Was half considering creating a Kdenvibe fork, but that would also be in bad taste. So right now I don't know what to do with the diff.
4/18/2026, 2:01:03 PM
by: popcar2
Glad this project is still going, but have they ever fixed its stability and being able to change the framerate without breaking the whole project? Last I tried, trying to export the video with a different fps just broke all the keyframe timings...
4/18/2026, 12:23:47 PM
by: aleda145
I recently switched from Shotcut to Kdenlive. Kdenlive's UX is much more intuitive. Lots of features, I still feel like a beginner, which is such a fun feeling!<p>I'm using it together with OBS to post short demo videos of my side project. I could use Loom I guess, but I prefer to keep my tech stack FOSS when I can.<p>Creating "non standard" video resolutions is a bit of a pain though. But I've solved that with an ffmpeg oneliner.
4/18/2026, 12:31:11 PM
by: throwaway2046
That's quite the impressive feature set. I do want to use Kdenlive but coming from Shotcut I didn't find the UI as easy to use, especially when it comes to handling the timeline... Maybe I'll try it again one day.
4/18/2026, 2:10:23 PM
by: pjmlp
Projects like this is why making languages like C++ safer is also relevant, we're not rewriting the world.<p>Kudos for keeping improving Kdelive.
4/18/2026, 2:13:38 PM
by: dadoomer
I've used Kdenlive for years. I'm someone who only needs video editing every once in a while, but even then I definitely recommend learning it.
4/18/2026, 12:55:34 PM
by: embedding-shape
Interesting that they went to visit the Blender offices, considering Blender still has it's own video editor (that seems to be ramping up on receiving improvements as of late too) which is basically a "competitor" (as far as FOSS has competitors) to Kdenlive.<p>I'd love to know more what actually went down there, is there plans about sharing of code or something similar, considering the two applications serve similar use cases when it comes to video editing?
4/18/2026, 12:24:56 PM
by: annnoo
Holy! When I moved over to Linux (2018ish) video and photo editing was still the thing, where I was still moving back to Windows or macOS But apparently I should really take another look at Kdenlive, looks like a lot of things have improved heavily, that it could hit the sweet spot between my love hate relationship with Resolve and the ease of use of Sony Vegas back in the day. Thanks for posting !
4/18/2026, 1:33:53 PM
by: longitudinal93
After trying all the alternatives I can say that Kdenlive has become my goto for video editing. It's so great to see the team adding amazing new features and optimizing sub-systems. Well done.
4/18/2026, 12:27:52 PM
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4/18/2026, 2:00:23 PM
by: vladde
has someone here moved from DaVinci Resolve to Kdenlive? how was that experience?<p>i just was a bit shocked to find out Resolve didn't support h.264 on their free tier on Linux, and i don't want to re-encode all my footage to AV1
4/18/2026, 1:57:41 PM
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4/18/2026, 11:42:37 AM
by: ekianjo
Good progress but kdenlive still cannot handle HDR videos
4/18/2026, 1:15:13 PM
by: magic_hamster
It will be a beautiful day when I can finally lose all my Adobe accounts and software. Kdenlive is definitely on the right track BUT having a real risk to lose my project after days and weeks of work is not something I am able to afford. I am following this with great interest and waiting for the right time to jump on board.
4/18/2026, 2:00:45 PM
by: echelon
Is Kdenlive owned/part of KDE?<p>What's the story with KDE?<p>How is KDE doing with respect to QT, given that QT is commercial (with LGPL licensing) and has passed through several ownership changes?<p>Is QT actively being maintained, and is KDE able to incorporate (or better - steer) those changes?<p>How are they doing with respect to the GTK/Gnome folks? (Did Gnome ever get over their issues? I tuned out around the time of Gnome 3 and the headaches everyone was having with Ubuntu vs. Gnome with respect to the desktop compositor.)<p>Should I choose Gnome or KDE for a desktop environment? (This is not a moral question! No religious fights. I'm seriously curious.)<p>Which distro(s) have the best KDE? I've been stuck on Mac for a bit and want to dive in again soon.
4/18/2026, 1:03:55 PM