Hi, I’m using kdenlive 24.08.0 on Arch Linux and I’m having problems importing some avi files into my Kdenlive project.
I received the files from a video studio where I sent some old Video8 cassettes to be digitized. They play fine on my system, but when I import them in kdenlive I only get a white screen.
This is the information I returned by mediainfo:
General
Complete name : XXX.avi
Format : AVI
Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave
Format profile : OpenDML
Format settings : BitmapInfoHeader / PcmWaveformat
File size : 2.45 GiB
Duration : 3 min 8 s
Overall bit rate : 112 Mb/s
Frame rate : 29.970 FPS
Writing application : Lavf61.1.100
Video
ID : 0
Format : YUV
Codec ID : Y41B
Codec ID/Info : YUV 4:1:1 Planar
Duration : 3 min 8 s
Bit rate : 110 Mb/s
Width : 640 pixels
Height : 480 pixelsPreformatted text
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:1:1
Scan type : Progressive
Compression mode : Lossless
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 12.000
Stream size : 2.43 GiB (99%)
Audio
ID : 1
Format : PCM
Format settings : Little / Signed
Codec ID : 1
Duration : 3 min 8 s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 1 024 kb/s
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 32.0 kHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Stream size : 23.1 MiB (1%)
Alignment : Aligned on interleaves
Interleave, duration : 17 ms (0.50 video frame)
Looks ok to me, but still difficult to say what is tripping Kdenlive. First suggestion is to use the appimage of Kdenlive. Second would be to convert from .avi to .mkv (there are tools out there like Handbrake or MakeMKV or ffmpeg CLI) and then see whether Kdenlive can read it.
Perhaps you share a small snippet (use losslesscut for creating a clip with just a few seconds from the main one) so ppl could test it on their computer, but I understand and of course respect any privacy concerns.
Hi, thanks for your prompt reply. I tried the Appimage, and I get the same behavior.
Let me explain the problem in more detail: when I import the clip with the default settings (1080p 25 fps) it sort of works, although with some hiccups. But when I try to adjust the settings to fit the video clip (640x480 29.97fps), either manually or using the option “adjust profile to current clip”, I only get a white screen or alternatively it gets frozen on the first frame.
I’m not sure what you meant by “convert from .avi to .mkv”. If you mean just changing the container, it doesn’t change anything. If you mean recoding, then of course the problem disappears.
I created a short snip, not sure how I can share it. Even a 5 second snip is very big.
I’m sorry, I have no idea how I can share a video on the forum.
And it seems I can’t include a link to WeTransfer either. How can I share a video clip?
Ok, thanks for uploading. I can confirm that something is not right because the file plays fine in the native media player on my Pop!_OS 22.04 distro but does not play at all in Kdenlive (24.08). I only get a static image (first frame?), regardless of whether I keep the project settings are have them adjust to it based on the video’s resolution (if I let Kdenlive switch to that I get a white image but it changes to the static image from the video shortly afterwards).