[Kdenlive-devel] Hello... Some suggestions, bugs and questions...

[Fabricio Rocha]

Hello to everyone!

	Please let me introduce myself at first -- named Fabricio Rocha, I am a 
TV reporter in Brasilia, Brasil; Debian user for 3 years or so. I have 
discovered Kdenlive 0.4 some weeks ago and this piece of software really 
catched me :) I have even written about it for the "Debian Package Of 
The Day" blog (but the admins did not post the article yet, I don´t know 
why). Also, I have already subscribed to the Kdenlive wikibook, added 
some links corrections and some information about the available transitions.

	I had just finished an edition with Kdenlive -- a compact of the 
Australian F-1 GP. Looks pretty nice, so I would like to thank all of 
you for providing a really useable/useful software in a so early stage 
of development! However, I subscribed to the list for reporting some 
user experience, which I hope will be useful (well, it is one of the few 
ways I found to contribute with Kdenlive development...). I must say 
that I have not tested version 0.5, so some of my complaints and 
suggestions might be already attended there.

	So, let´s go:

	-- Maybe you already know it: whenever I try to add a "Wipe" transition 
between clips, I get an empty "Transitions" tab (in the top-left panel; 
default view) and then a SEGFAULT.

	-- I got a SEGFAULT also when trying to add a song as a clip project. I 
could discover why: the MP3 file had a special, accented character in 
its name. I could add it to the project, but Kdenlive SEGFAULTed when I 
clicked once in the filename for having it played in the top-right 
panel. When I renamed the file without the character (an acute-accented 
"e"), it worked.

	--- I could edit the properties for transitions very rarely. I presume 
that this should be done easily with a double-click over a Transition 
rectangle between clips, but this method will work only once or twice. A 
different "transition section" is selected or the previously selected 
one keeps the focus, no matter how much I click in the transition 
rectangle I want to edit. Am I doing something wrong, or is this a bug?

	--- The "Export Timeline" dialog does not show it is working after the 
"Export" button is clicked. I could only notice that something was being 
done with the help of a CPU usage monitor. It took a long until I could 
notice the progress bar placed in the main window´s status bar. I think 
that the progress bar would have more effect if it was placed in the 
"Export Timeline" dialog.

	--- I don´t know exactly why, but I can have a "text clip" shown over a 
"normal video clip" ONLY when the text clip is placed in the timeline 
track right above the one with the video clip -- for example, text in 
Track 0, video in Track 1; the inverse order will not work. Is this ok?

	--- Unlike I have read somewhere in the website, I don´t think the 
"Export" dialog is ugly :) But I would not try to create a custom format 
using "libavformat" parameters (?!?). It is intimidating for 
non-developers, you know? Are such parameters the same ones used for 
ffmpeg? If a suggestion is welcome, I think that some basic parameters 
(video codec, audio codec, bitrates, sample rates, file split, etc) 
could be presented as comboboxes and/or checkbuttons, and the parameters 
line could be kept available for advanced users...

	-- I have read a suggestion for an automated "audio crossfade" effect; 
and I really feel the need of something like that. I suppose it could be 
easily created with the already existent "Volume" effect packed with 
everything needed. Also, I miss a "volume/gain control" which would 
affect the whole audio track (it could hypotetically be shown in the 
"Clip Properties..." dialog for the audio track). I don´t know if there 
is already a way fo doing that, but for a background audio clip I had to 
use the "Volume" effect three times -- one for fade in, one for fade 
out, and one between the "Start" and "End" points among the previous 
effects just for lowering the track volume. I guess it would be more 
simple to have a "Volume (max gain)" control somewhere...

	--- Even simpler, I think, would be an option, in the Transitions tab, 
for having the audio between clips crossfaded automatically.

	--- A previous message in this list suggested the use of one of those 
"Bulletin Boards", vBulletin-like forums, and I agree that this would be 
greatly appreciated. The Wiki is not really a space for questions and 
answers, bug reports and such; and I admit that I am sorry and afraid of 
writing such a big, general message in a developers forum. But it is the 
ONLY contact/discussion way I could find.

	--- I feel glad in contributing to the wikibook as much as I can, and I 
am really interested in helping the development of Kdenlive. But I don´t 
know how to do it; and, as far as I could see, there is not something 
like a "how to contribute with *this* or *that*". Although I can do 
something in C and GTK, I don´t know a thing about C++ and Qt, so I 
won´t try to put my hands in the real grease. Also, I still have no 
experience in contributing to a free software. However, I would enjoy to 
contribute with a Brazilian-portuguese translation; or submitting some 
interface files for one or two dialogs (the "mockups", isn't it?). But 
how can I do things like that? And would anybody be interested in 
creating a topic about these things in the wikibook, for example?


	Enough said, huh?? :) In fact I had some other things to say, but I 
can´t remember now, and I know it´s been way too long for now!

Thank you very much once again for Kdenlive!

Fabricio Rocha
Brasilia, Brasil

		
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