Integrate Natron or Any Video Editor (Even Browser Based!) into Kdenlive Projects

Brainstorm
1

So there is a very useful and simple feature in Kdenlive that you can use to establish a link between Kdenlive and any video editor. That is the hot reloading in videos.

Basically, if you add a video to your project, it will automatically update the video at all positions in the project if the video has been updated. So you can render an empty video, link it, then overwrite it to update the video. To achieve something like this:

I don’t know if everyone knows about this, but I guess it could help beginners?

And here are the exact steps I took and how you can do it too:

  1. Open your project in Natron.
  2. Add a write node and set your preferred video name and location; this video will be the main connection.
  3. Connect the write node to the last node (the node before the viewer node).
  4. Render the write node (from the render menu or any other way) initially to create the video (connection) itself; this is also the composition you will use in your Kdenlive project.
  5. Open the Kdenlive project and insert the created video as usual. You can use the video anywhere in your project, and it will still update.
  6. That’s it; to update the output in Kdenlive, simply render the write node again with the changes, and the video will update automatically at all locations in Kdenlive.

See? It’s quite simple :smiley:
It doesn’t have to be only Natron; it can be ANY video editor. You just need it to be able to rewrite a particular video, created as a link.

Note: if you render the video at a shorter length, any clips of the video resized to the fullest will automatically clamp between the max length of the updated video.

And by the way, there’s a leak of what might be my next plugin. If it already exists, please make me aware of it!

1 Like
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Step by step tutorial on how to achieve this would be great.

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I hope I got this right, but here is the general gist of how to accomplish this:

  1. Render any said video clip as an IMAGE SEQUENCE (This is important for natron)
  2. Re-import said image sequence and add it to project.
  3. Now, open the said image sequence into natron and do whatever you want with it. It’s important it’s an image sequence because even the natron docs say using video will probably crash it.
  4. When you use the write note, be sure to overwrite said sequence (This means it’s a destructive modification, so only use it on clips you’re willing to throw away).
  5. Right click your modified clip and click the reload button. Lo and behold, your clip is now destructively modified.

This could be useful I guess for quick n dirty effects such as fog imported from natron. Thanks for the heads up.

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Uhh, I don’t know.
I almost never used image sequences.

I’ll update the post with a step-by-step guide; it’s quite simple.