Hi, Is there a way, as a working video editor/producer, to contribute to this project as a test dummy of sorts;)
I’m a huge fan of how Blender and Krita have invited artists like David Revoy and others in for focused feedback to bring these applications to the next level.
It may not be obvious, but this IMHO contributed greatly to their success since they helped provide clarity of the key features and weaknesses that should be addressed instead of blindly adding functionality that is less critical in real world applications.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated, I’d love to contribute in a way that would benefit the project.
Thanks for offering to provide direct and focused feedback. This is a very good place to do just that as it also gives other users an opportunity to chime in.
Essentially, we are already following that approach sort of informally. One of the core team members is a professional working with broadcasters. Moving forward, we want to use a more structured approach with personas (like “producing professional documentaries for TV broadcast”), so maybe here is an opportunity to start this.
Post your current/planned work with Kdenlive, what the features are you really like, what features you would need, in a structured hierarchical way. That would help a lot in shaping the roadmap.
Sorry, when it’s quoted back it sounds a bit harsh.
I only meant to say “feature creep” is a real thing and some projects for example will add an infinite amount of filters or effects when maybe core performance should be a primary focus.
One thing off the top of my head that could use improvement is something I mentioned in another thread, the ability to work with sequences of varying dimensions in the same project, which I think could optimize performance of clips in their native resolution.
Also, the preview playback in the record window currently has presets where IMHO it should behave in a more dynamic way. The size of the window determines the playback resolution. There is no need having it playback 1:1 if the actual size of the window is 1/3 of that.
In my personal experience, having quick access to keyboard shortcuts that more or less match up with standard conventions, the ability to drag/drop most things, access audio key frames, transform etc w/o adding an effect, and quick colour correction are core features that are basically “bread & butter” tools that are core functionality.
Kdenlive is an amazing project and the polish it has achieved in the last few years is unbelievable, I want to emphasize these comments are meant to be constructive:)
On it’s own, if it had been an accusation … but I didn’t read it as one here, and it is a very real problem that’s all too easy to repeat.
At the risk of throwing fuel on any of several raging garbage fires, in the free software space it’s the All Too Often difference between projects where it’s the developers’ day job to “work on the project”, and where the project is instead just a tool that helps the developers do their actual other job(s).
The projects where you have a bunch of developers ‘volunteering’ time on a shared resource that is useful in their Day Jobs, with plenty of peer review, tend to be qualitatively different to the ones where people are payed to work on the project as a full time job, with little oversight or review or veto from the people who are actually using it to do other things than ‘look busy developing it’.
That’s not a trap kdenlive has fallen into yet though - it’s still at that tricky stage where What Would Be Awesome To Have still exceeds the number of people it would be awesome to have actively working on those things. But they’ve been doing an amazing job of picking the right things to get better at next, even if small niggles can sit in the bug tracker somewhat indefinitely still.
I think Bernd does a pretty awesome job of triaging and filtering what gets discussed here to the people who are doing all the behind the scenes work at present. If I ever get through my own current bottomless todo list it would be nice to get properly familiar with the code and start throwing some patches at the things that niggle at me the most - but that is how that list got bottomless in the first place …