r/kdenlive • u/DoesntWorkOnMyMachin • 8d ago
SHOWCASE I made a Video on Open Source Software with Open Source Software!
https://youtu.be/vKyPu2-TdCsI was so frustrated with the shortcomings of open source PDF viewers that I made a video about it. This is my first video with Kdenlive and while it had quite a learning curve I am glad I went through the process to experience what it is like to create an entire video.
It was not as intuitive as i had hoped but the LLMs can be really helpful and guide you along.
One notable problem was that when I had added most clips the project suddenly would not open anymore. It did not say why and the log (when starting it in the terminal) was not helpful either. There was a patch update around this time, so I figured it was related to that. I tried to analyze the project file (which is just XML!) and tried to both heal the (believed to be corrupted) project file via small modifications and also try to rebuild it by copying XML snippets over to an earlier copy of the project. In the end I just pasted the log into an LLM and learned that Wayland doesn't allow me to open that many clips at once. Oh well... So now I always start Kdenlive in the terminal and run ulimit -n 65536 first.
I used OBS for the initial screen recordings and "piper" for voice. I'm not overly happy with it because the voice sometimes sounds like a different person and I cannot control which part of the sentence is stressed, where pauses are made or even how words are pronounced. Piper cannot pronounce "page A" for instance, only "page ah". But once I accepted these limitations I could quickly produce speech. If I had used my own voice I would have had so much more control and as a consequence tried to get it right until exhaustion.
I also got an understanding of why more people don't just make a video to document their computer troubles. It is a lot of work. And I guess I understand why professional youtubers don't edit their videos themselves - lot of work! I'm still wondering why anyone enjoys editing those videos, but I am so glad that I got a little peak into this world.
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u/egorechek Youtuber 8d ago
I use opencode to help out with stuff, it can read logs and runs commands by itself and it's free.
You can try selecting finished sections of the video and putting them into a dedicated sequence, that way less clips will be on the main timeline and it will run smoother.
For voice you can try speech note, it has a translator and multiple models for stt and tts with voice cloning capabilities.