i thought this question could fit here as this is a community about open source software after all, anyways… i was gonna do editing for the first time and wanted to use something that’s free and open source, i was considering either shotcut or kdenlive but i wanted to at least hear the community’s opinion about it, i’ll be waiting for the replies. thanks
For your first time, either is definitely good enough. They’re both pretty full featured, and they both follow “normal” editing conventions - so if you want/need to use a different program in future, you already know how to use 90% of it, you’re just looking for where the buttons are. It’s all very transferable learning.
As mentioned by another reply, there’s currently a lack of hardware acceleration for timeline playback in Kdenlive which means if you’re really stacking the effects up, you won’t be able to play back in the timeline at full frame rate until you pre-render. It won’t make any difference in simple edits.
I’d add it’s usefull to know that in case of poor performance you can still lower the preview resolution or use something called proxies, to continue editing, not always ideal but it does the job. Performance also depends on your hardware, even without hardware acceleration, so the more horse power the crazier you can go with effects. Kdenlive also greatly improved (in my experience at least) regarding performances, even though hardware acceleration would still be a must.
Chiming in that editing with proxies, while potentially cumbersome, is pretty standard. Feature films and TV shows are often edited in 720p for that exact reason. ProRes or h.264, depending on your needs and capabilities. Final renders are just a matter of turning the proxies off.
I dabbled in kdenlive for half a day while looking for something my nephew could use for a school project. Didn’t realize the lack of hardware acceleration until this thread. Still, it’s a great piece of software and I’m looking forward to watching it develop further