About Kdenlive and OpenShot. Its main features

A few months ago, a reader was angered by my claim that Kdenlive was more powerful than OpenShot and challenged me to give it a try. The truth is that I was just repeating something that seems to be a consensus among some more or less professional videographers whose experiences with open source I usually readr. In particular, OpenShot was enough and more than enough for me on the occasional occasions that I had to edit a video and now I use online services. But, the time has come for me to answer the question.

Likewise, don't get into the habit of asking us to substantiate our claims. Be good readers, accept everything we say and click on the ad.

Seriously speaking, I recommend you take a look to comment that Shupacabras did in the first article of this series.

About Kdenlive and OpenShot

Kdenlive

Kdenlive is an acronym in English for KDE Nonlinear Video Editor, in a previous article we explained what are the characteristics of this type of editor. Built with Linux distributions in mind that work with the KDE desktop, it also has versions for Windows, MacOS, and BSD and MacOS.

The program can be used to produce all kinds of videos in addition to subtitling them, adding effects and transitions and creating devedé menus.. It can work with almost any audio and video format without the need to convert it since it is compatible with the Ffmepg library

The Kdenlive engine is the MLT framework from which Speak in a previous article. Designed by and for the television industry, it allows work with multiple audio and video libraries

It also takes advantage of other open source projects such as

LASDSPA: Specification for the creation of audio processing and effects plug-ins released under the LGPL license

fry: It is a framework for creating video effects. Provides filters, mixers, and generators based on a minimalist API for creating plugins.

SoX: It is a command line utility that allows you to convert audio files to other formats and add effects to them.

This software supports an unlimited number of videos and soundtracks and includes tools
to create, trim, move, delete video, audio, text and graphics clips.

Salient features

• Each audio and video track can be muted or blocked according to need.
• Configurable user interface and keyboard shortcuts.
• Creation of low resolution copies to save system resources during mounting. The export is done in the original format.
• Online download of rendering profiles, transitions, effects and templates.

OpenShot

The OpenShot non-linear video editor has versions for Windows, Linux, and Mac.

It has animation and keyframe capabilities that allow users to do things like fade, slide, bounce, and animate any component of a video project.. With the trim and join tools you can quickly change the length of a video. Using the video effects engine you can do things like remove the background, invert the colors, adjust the brightness, and much more.

Openshot works with the following open source projects

blender: Platform for creating 3D graphics.
inkscape: Software for creating vector graphics.
libopenshot: Library for multimedia editing.

Salient features

• Creation of 3D animated titles based on Blender.
• Playing videos in different directions and speeds.
• Graphing the audio waves and incorporating the graphics into the video.
• Download current frame as image by pressing a button.
• Predefined templates for creating 2D titles

The comparison between the two programs was made using Ubuntu Studio 20.10 (a Linux distribution optimized for multimedia production) Ubuntu Studio includes Kdenlive version 6.22.1 in its installation. The version 2.5.1 of OpenShot I downloaded it from the repositories of the distribution. Some of you may feel that testing is not done on an equal footing. Keep in mind that my goal is not to compare performance but quantity of tools and ease of use.

In the next article we will go into the matter. I swear on Stallman's beard.