Heya. I’m incredibly new to the editing process, and I’m having a hard time using Google to get answers, probably because I don’t know the right jargon.
I want to make a music video using footage from an old TV show as a practice project. I have video files of the episodes I need; I can load the episode files into Kdenlive; I can find the clip within the episode that I want to use. What I’m trying to do is take that piece of footage within the episode, and save that as its own video file, either outside Kdenlive or within a saved project. I can use the Razor tool to isolate that clip.
After that, I don’t know what to do. If I try to Export the clip, nothing happens. Trying to set up a Zone on the timeline does nothing. (The general handbook for Kdenlive does not seem to have a glossary section to explain what a zone is within this software.) If I do a basic copy, the only place it wants to paste is on the V2 timeline; it doesn’t look like I can drag and drop from the timeline to the project section. Maybe I could cut out everything else around that 30 second clip and move it to the start of the timeline and then render that as it’s own video file, but it seems really tedious to do that over and over, especially if I have lots of clips I want to take from the same episode.
I feel like I’m missing something very obvious. It’s probably something super simple, but I’ve been trying to find an answer on my own for a couple hours now, and I’m too frustrated to see what’s probably staring me in the face. Any help is appreciated.
Looks like you managed an important piece of editing I’m assuming you have the entire episode in the timeline, cut the pieces off to the left and right of the section you want to keep. So, the timeline probably shows empty to the left and right of that section. Right?
In order to export that clip as a video, you have to render it. Before we do that make sure you have moved the clip in the timeline to the beginning of the timeline. Then go to the Kdenlive Menu > Project > Render. Select the output format you want. See this section of the Kdenlive Manual.
If you want to create Zone in the timeline for the clip only, select the clip in the timeline and press Shift+Z. The definition of a Zone can be found in the Glossary.
You could also select the clip in the project bin, play it in the clip monitor and use I and O to set in- and out-points for the section you want to keep. Then right-click in the clip monitor, select Extract Zone, and then specify where on your file system you want that section to be saved.
EDIT: Here is a screenshot of the Extract Zone function in the Clip Monitor:
There’s two slightly different questions depending on the details there, so the Right Answer™ depends a bit on which one best suits your use…
If what you want to do is just isolate an otherwise unedited clip segment for reuse in other projects later, so you don’t have to carry around all the other bits that you know you don’t want - then kdenlive probably isn’t the best tool to do that part of the job with. You’d be better off cutting that bit out with GitHub - mifi/lossless-cut: The swiss army knife of lossless video/audio editing (and I’ll let that page explain why).
Once you’ve got that clip - or if you do actually want to edit it and don’t mind having the rest of that footage around for that project - then kdenlive is the right tool to learn to use.
In the latter case, if you just want to have a short segment of the overall footage as its own clip in the project bin (and don’t mind having the rest there even if you don’t actually use it) - then there are (at least) two ways you can do that …
You can drag the clip to the timeline as you did and cut it. If you then right click on that clip, the context menu will give you an option to “Save clip part to bin”.
Or you can mark a zone ‘directly’ on the clip (without placing it on the timeline) then a right click in the clip monitor will give you a context menu with the option to “Insert zone in project bin”.
Neither of those things actually makes a real ‘copy’ of your segment though, they still depend on the parent clip being part of the project - but they let you easily manipulate that part for later editing mostly as it if it was a copy.
The first option is what I would do if I wanted to create a clip library of footage snippets to use in later projects. The second is what I would probably do if it’s a one-off project to make a video from just parts of that particular old show, and aren’t likely to use those snippets in other projects again later, and do want, or don’t mind, keeping the full original episodes around.
If for whatever reason, you ever really do want to do something like this:
You don’t actually need to cut or move it - you can either set a zone around it, or timeline guides at the start and end of it, and then use “selected zone” or “guide zone” options in the render dialog to render just a part of the timeline. But that’s not what you want to do to answer your original question unless you actually wanted to save your clip snippet with some effect ‘permanently’ applied to it or some other editing done to it beyond just simple cutting.
I’m assuming you have the entire episode in the timeline, cut the pieces off to the left and right of the section you want to keep. So, the timeline probably shows empty to the left and right of that section. Right?