I recently finished a long project and now it is time to make videos about it. Before starting I updated KDenlive from 23.x.x to 24.12.2. Long story short; no matter how hard I wiped the old version, KDenlive take 6 minutes to load on an i7 9700K, 32gb, 2080 GTX Ti, 7000mBps M.2 drive. I am not talking about a project, just the app. I clocked it multiple times, running it from the Start menu. Consistently 6 minutes.
I rebooted, I wiped the folders in AppData, I reinstalled the whole thing, it still take SIX MINUTES to start? Is this normal?
Standalone or Installer made no difference. The app takes ~06:30 minutes to load, either version. I tried to shut down every other application I have running (emptied my system tray). I wiped the AppData folder, both Local and Roaming, rebooted, reinstalled, and tried the standalone version, both on a 7000 Mbps M.2 drive with plenty of space.
I tested to run KDenlive in Safe mode. The app still take over 6 minutes to load. I can tell the app goes non-responsible almost immediately when I start it up. The behavior is the same in safe mode as it is when I run the full bootup into Windows 10.
Running KDenlive in admin mode made no difference. It still takes the same amount of time to load. If I start KDenlive along with Photoshop, Photoshop starts faster. I have never seen anything like this before to be honest. And weird enough its consistent. I clocked it with a timer. The main window opens in within 30 seconds, white. Then after about 6 minutes the window flips to normal (I can see its content) and after another 30 seconds or so it goes responsive and can be used as normal.
I tried to run it on another computer that never had KDenlive run before and there it boots quite quickly. Both my main and my 2ndary have access to the same drives but mapped differently based on if it’s physically on that computer or not. I try to keep my ongoing video projects on my main.
Initially I figured it might be an overlay that is causing hassle but I tried it without any running.
My %Video% Folder is actually on a mapped network drive. I can tell that a fresh installation of Kdenlive tries to use this folder by default in the settings. I tried to move it a local folder, but got the same result. I also tried to eject various other drives but couldn’t find any changes to the boot up.
I have been pondering if it is an issue with old settings somewhere, but I used the reset config options many times, both during boot-up and when the app is finally running. I have wiped both the installed folder manually, and tried using the “uninstall” in Windows, and tried do move it to a different drive, and use the standalone version, while deleting both %AppData%\Local\kdenlive\ and %AppData%\Roaming\kdenlive.
I tried to rollback to v23 and it actually asked me for access through the Firewall which v24 do not, but it have the same problem.
I also updated my k-lite codec pack (Mega) and my Graphics drivers for the nvidia card.
I deleted these folders (some of those are overlapping btw, and some were missing from my system). I had access to all of them. Restarted Kdenlive and got the same result.
My main work computer have 4 harddrives and 3 mapped drives. Two of the physical ones are M.2 drives (C:/T:), both 6-7000mBps r/w (samsung). One 1tb in which I run Windows 10 with plenty of free space. The other is a 4tb drive for games on which I also have linked %Documents%, %Desktop% and %Saved Games%.
The other drives are SATA Drives (M:/S:) at 7200 rpm that I updated with fresh new cables a few years back to ensure they ran at highest speed. Kdenlive is meant to be started from one of them (M:), and this worked in the past. During testing I also tried to run Kdenlive from C: with the same result. I assume that when I installed Kdenlive on C: it shouldn’t even know M: exist so I assume the presence of these two shouldn’t be relevant.
In addition my network is rigged so that some folders, including Video (K:\Video), Pictures (K:\Pictures) and Music (K:\Music) are linked to mapped network drives on a secondary computer (B:/K:/W:). These are large SATA drives (~30tB in combined size) through a 1000mbit cable through a 1000mbit switch. The secondary computer have M:/S:/T: as mapped harddrives.
My second computer runs Kdenlive just fine, within 30 seconds.
Let’s see if the event viewer shows any issues/delay while starting Kdenlive.
Try the following:
Hit the Windows key → type “event viewer” → start the program by clicking on it → Check the folder “Widows Logs” and “Applications and Services Logs” if you find any issues related to Kdenlive.
If not, please watch the event viewer while starting Kdenlive to see if any logs popping up.
I assume you mean “Windows Logs”. Under “Applications and Services Logs” I was not able to find anything kdenlive related. Browsing through the branches such as “Hardware Events”, “Internet Explorer” and “Windows PowerShell” did not show any relevant information about Kdenlive during the entire startup of the app.
I also checked activity in the Windows Logs (Application, Security, Setup, System etc). I see reports here only when I purposefully caused KDenlive to crash (clicking on it’s window multiple times while it is loading tells me it’s not responding and I am offered to close it, and this event appear in the log). However, there is no logs whatsoever from when I just starting the app and waiting for the 6 minutes it takes to start up.
To be clear, here is what happens;
I currently experiment with the Standalone version on one of my 7200rpm SATA drives. I extracted it in a folder. I doubleclick on kdenlive.exe. The purple banner appears for aprox 20-30 seconds, then it switch over to the app window that opens up all white and say “Kdenlive (Not Responding)”. It then takes aprox 6 minutes before the content of the app window to materialize itself. After that it freezes again for aprox 30 seconds before the window content gets responsive and from then on the app can be used normally. Overall it seems like something is happening in the early initialization that causes a temporary hickup before the app is able to continue loading itself up.
SATA drive M:\ with Kdenlive installed and S:\ with data
On M.2 C:\ 1tb is Win10
On M2. T:\ 4tb you have linked from C:\
%Video%
%Documents%
%Desktop%
Drive K:\ 35tb, shared to the network, and on the secondary computer mapped.
PC1 (where do you have physically drive K:\ ?)
Laptop
K:\Video
B:\
K:\Pictures
K:\
K:\Music
W:\
Kdenlive 23.x.x (Qt5) starts without issue with this configuration.
Kdenlive 24.12.2 (Qt6) needs 6 minutes to start with this configuration.
I guess Kdenlive tries to read the files from these 3 linked folders and is waiting to long for a time-out. This is why you don’t see any errors from Kdenlive in any log.
I think we should implement %Video%, %Documents%, %Desktop%, %Music% so Kdenlive finds the user defined path according to the Windows internal link per user.
I just saw that you have updated the “k-lite codec pack”. Mmh. Do you really need that codecs? If not remove it as there could be a conflict with FFMPEG and their codecs (Kdenlive uses FFMPEG codecs only).
I have found the issue and indeed it seems to have been a drive initiation issue where Kdenlive attempted to access a drive it should not have poked at, but it was surprisingly not among the usual suspects. And funny enough this lead me to fix another persistent issue with Disk Manager!
I went completely nuclear on all drives in my system, removed all links to network drives, ejected a DVD I had in an old burner, removed an old Samsung phone I had attached etc. Then I went even further and begun to remove all image-mounting apps such as Daemon Tools. Around then I also realized that “Disk Management” also load suspiciously slow, and I had two devices I couldn’t see where they came from. One used Elby Virtual CloneDrive and the other appeared as “BR17 DEVICE V1.00 USB Device.” which is a device I have no idea what it was. One post I found elsewhere said it might be some weird ghost driver from a speaker.
I do not have that particular speaker but I uninstalled the driver.
I do not know which one fixed it but once Elby Virtual CloneDrive and the “BR17 DEVICE V1.00 USB Device.” ghost driver was gone, KDenlive now starts up in 3 seconds!
As full transparency I will give you a list of things I also did while trying to fix it that did NOT address the issue below:
I tested to relink %Video% to a local folder on T: (one of my faster M.2 drives) and it did not fix the issue. As a nuclear test I also disconnected fully all my mapped harddrives, ejected a DVD player and removed an android phone I tend to have connected. None of these fixed the issue.
23.08.5 and 22.12.3 also took 6 minutes to load.
I have been able to run Kdenlive in the past (and used it) without a hitch. Kdenlive runs on my 2ndary also without a hitch. But its been about half a year since I last did so and it is only now I get this issue at boot up.
As requested I tried Kdenlive after fully uninstalling K-Lite (with a reboot). It did not fix things.
I wiped the system32\temp folder as well, no change.
I made sure that all Overlays (Nvidia, Bandicam and Discord) were turned off.
I disabled my webcam since it’s the only other hardware change I could think of this year, and updating to Logitech Gaming Hub (I used their older driver before).
I forced a full Windows 10 update.
I disabled Windows Defender’s realtime protection and firewall.
Also; what you wrote above is not entirely true, so for the sake of saving you guys a headache searching for issues;
You wrote “On M2. T:\ 4tb you have linked from C:\ %Video% %Documents% %Desktop%”. But this should be; “On M2. T:\ 4tb you have linked from C:\ %Saved Games% %Documents% %Desktop%”
You also asked where K: is physically located. It is a ~10 terrabyte SATA drive which is physically installed in my 2ndary computer (which is a full tower, not a laptop). This is mapped on my main as K: and I have changed the location to %Video%, %Pictures% and %Music%.
First guess would be probably KIO or something related probing for drives during its initialisation. Nothing in kdenlive itself should be looking for or caring about obscure corners of the filesystem. I don’t know offhand if we can tell it to be lazy about that.
