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Windows Issues

Version 21.12.3 has a few issues that have workarounds. The purpose of this section is to document these issues and their workarounds.

Title tool, display real background not working in “DirectX” backend​

Something with the settings went wrong. Go to: Menu ‣ Settings ‣ Reset Configuration and try again.

Render problems​

After rendering you get de-synced audio or wrong effects or black frames at end of the last clip: Download version 20.08.1 or higher from the download page.

Disable Parallel Processing in the render dialog window (check More Options).

Windows issue with scopes, scopes don’t show anything​

Note Added in version 21.12.2: All video scopes are working with DirectX.

Workaround: Change the back-end to OpenGL via Menu ‣ Settings ‣ OpenGL Backend ‣ OpenGL

If it is still not working go to: Menu ‣ Markers ‣ Timeline Markers Locked and try again.

Audio crackling while playback​

Change the audio driver in Menu ‣ Settings ‣ Configure Kdenlive (or Ctrl+Shift+,), select Playback ‣ Audio Backend and play around with WinMM (Win7), Wasapi (Win10), or DirectSound to see what gives the best result.

You have to restart Kdenlive after each change.

Message This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be initialized​

Open Menu ‣ Settings ‣ Configure Kdenlive (or press Ctrl+Shift+,). Then go to the Environment ‣ MLT Environment section and make sure the paths point to the same path as “MLT profiles folder”.

Download: qt.conf. Put the file qt.conf into the bin folder (the folder where kdenlive.exe is).

First time use of Kdenlive​

This issue should be solved with version 19.04.2-6. In order to make sure kdenliverc is correctly set up start Kdenlive twice (start -> close -> start). Then start your work.

Intel graphics card driver​

Updated Intel graphics driver version leads to a corrupted Kdenlive GUI.

Solution 1: Open Kdenlive. Move the mouse to the top. The menus are showing up. Try to reach Menu ‣ Settings ‣ OpenGL Backend and select OpenGLES. Restart Kdenlive. This should solve your Intel graphic driver issue.

Solution 2: Press Win+R and type appdata. Go to Local and within it open kdenliverc with an editor. Search for [misc] and delete [misc] and the following entry. Then restart Kdenlive.

Timeline right-click menu closes immediately after releasing mouse button​

Don’t use the application style Fusion.

Go to: Menu ‣ Settings ‣ Application Style and choose Default or Windows.

Icons are missing​

Go to: Menu ‣ Settings and click on Reset Configuration. Kdenlive restarts, and you should see the icons.

Cannot open projects made with previous version, timeline snaps back, cannot import clip​

Go to: Menu ‣ Settings ‣ Reset configuration.

If this is not solving the problem: Press Win+R and type appdata. Go to Local and within it rename kdenliverc to kdenliverc.old. Start Kdenlive, close it and then start Kdenlive again.

If you have still problems, delete proxy clips and other cached data by going to Menu ‣ File ‣ Project Setting ‣ Cache Data where you can delete cached data.

Windows 10: timeline stuttering or Kdenlive hangs​

Most probably you got a major Win10 update (i.e 1809). If so, you have to update all drivers for audio and video.

Intel drivers can be updated with this Intel Updater.

Message Clip is invalid, will be removed​

This message can appear if you do a clean reinstall of Kdenlive (see above). Simply close and open Kdenlive once, and it should be fixed.

Additionally this can be a problem either with the kdenliverc file or you have some mismatch in the %APPDATA%\local folder.

Message Failed to filter source in Motion Tracker effect​

You may get an error of mlt_repository_init: failed to dlopen C:\Program Files\kdenlive\lib\mlt/libmltjack.dll or animation initialized FAILED followed by many lines of Current Frame: <f>, percentage: <p>.

In this case, delete all kdenlive folders in C:\Program Files\, %AppData%\Roaming\, and %AppData%\Local\, and then do a new install of Kdenlive.

Any critical bug​

This describes the process of doing a clean install on Windows®.

Firstly, delete your normal Kdenlive folder (containing the application).

Access the Appdata folder (Win+R and then type APPDATA in full caps). Go to Local and search for folder kdenlive.

Note If you have any saved effects, or clips stored in your library, make a backup of the library and the effect-templates folders.

Then delete the kdenlive folder.

Reinstall the latest version of Kdenlive from the download page.

JPG files appear as white picture after rendering​

This issue should be solved with version 19.04.0. If not, convert the JPG to PNG and it renders correctly.

Play/Pause issue​

This issue is solved with version 18.08.2 (30. Oct 2018). Get the current version from the download page.

Qt rendering crash​

Hit Ctrl+Shift+, or go to Menu ‣ Settings ‣ Configure Kdenlive, and then to Environment and make sure the paths point to the same path as “MLT profiles folder”.

When switching from version 17.12 to 18.04/18.08, a Qt rendering crash appears. To make sure this doesn’t happen, you need to edit the kdenliverc file in the AppData\local folder. To access your appdata, press Win+R (Windows key and R key simultaneously) and type appdata. Go to local and within it rename kdenliverc to kdenliverc.old.

Kdenlive cannot be deleted, running process on exit​

This issue is solved with Windows version 18.12.1. Get the current version from the download page.

If you want to reinstall Kdenlive or re-run Kdenlive, it may tell you “The file or folder is open in another program”. Windows® then won’t let you delete or re-run Kdenlive.

To fix this you have to kill the running process: press and hold Ctrl+Shift+Esc and expand the task manager by clicking All details. Then find kdenlive.exe and dbus-daemon.exe, and click End task for both of them.

Or download Kdenlive-kill.zip. Unpack it and just double-click the batch file which kills all running Kdenlive processes.

Kdenlive crashes at start up, Kdenlive cannot be uninstalled​

If Kdenlive crashes at startup or if the uninstaller doesn’t work delete the entire folder: C:\Program Files\kdenlive.

Re-install Kdenlive.

You may have to manually delete the Kdenlive folder in the Start menu.

Kdenlive crash or green monitor​

Get all newest Windows® updates. Afterwards, update your graphics card driver, your sound card driver and your printer driver. Some crashes could occur of incompatibility of the graphics card and sound card with the newest Windows®10 updates (18.09 update). After you have updated the drivers re-start the computer and try again by starting kdenlive.exe.

If this is not solving the problem switch your standard printer to “Microsoft XPS Document Writer” and try again to start Kdenlive.

Delete the kdenliverc file.

Make sure you set concurrent threads to 1: Go to Menu ‣ Settings ‣ Configure Kdenlive (or Ctrl+Shift+,) and then in Environment ‣ Proxy and Transcode Jobs set Concurrent threads to 1.

Audio pops and ticks in render​

The current Kdenlive version (November 2018, version 18.08.3) has audio issues that have workarounds. If this problem appears make sure the audio file uses 16-bit PCM WAV format. *[RGB]: Red Green Blue *[VFX]: Visual Effects *[feathering]: Smoothing or blurring the edges of a feature *[LFO]: Low-Frequency Oscillation *[dB]: decibel *[LUFS]: Loudness Units Full Scale *[AI]: Artificial Intelligence *[LLM]: Large Language Model *[HSV]: Hue, Saturation, Value *[SOP/Sat]: S(lope), O(ffset), P(ower) / SATuration *[CDL]: Color Decision List *[HSL]: Hue, Saturation, Lightness - Using HSL color space is useful for subtle color changes *[px]: pixel *[hh:mm:ss:ff]: hours:minutes:seconds:frames *[Hz]: Hertz *[CIE]: Commission internationale de l'éclairage, French for International Commission on Illumination *[DCI]: Digital Cinema Initiative *[nadir]: direction pointing directly below a particular location *[OS]: Operating System *[decibel]: Unit of measurement (dB) for sound levels *[clipping]: A form of distortion that limits a signal once it exceeds a threshold *[Spectrogram]: Visual representation of the spectrum of frequencies of a signal as it varies with time *[prevent clipping]: Dynamic range compression (DRC)is an audio signal processing operation that reduces the volume of loud sounds or amplifies quiet sounds, thus reducing or compressing an audio signal's dynamic range. *[SNR]: Signal-to-Noise Ratio *[dbFS]: Decibels relative to full scale *[QHD]: Quad-HD *[UHD]: Ultra High Definition *[XML]: Extensible Markup Language *[fps]: frames per second *[NTSC]: National Television Standard Committee - defined the TV system used in the United States, Japan and many other countries *[PAL]: Phase Alternating Line - a colour encoding system for analogue television *[LFE]: Low Frequency Effects *[RAW]: The RAW file format is digital photography's equivalent of a negative in film photography: it contains untouched, raw pixel information straight from the digital camera's sensor *[DSLR]: Digital Single Lens Reflex *[DOF]: Depth of Field *[NDF]: Neutral Density Filter *[AVI]: Audio Video Interleave *[BT.601]: A standard from 1982 defining how RGB color primaries get turned into the YCbCr channels used by modern codecs *[BT.709]: A standard from 1990 which does the same at BT.601 but the transfer coefficients are slightly different *[grep]: A Unix command-line utility for searching plain-text data sets for lines that match a regular expression *[MLT]: Media Lovin' Toolkit - An open source software multimedia framework designed and developed for tv broadcasting *[SD]: Secure Digital - a proprietary, non-volatile, flash memory card format developed by the SD Association *[SFX]: Special Effects *[VBR]: Variable Bit Rate *[HD]: High Definition *[GUI]: Graphical User Interface