Customizing the Interface

The user interface model allows you to freely adjust the different panels to support your workflow. You can add widgets to and delete them from the different panels, rearrange them, change the size of the panels, and save the workspace layout so you can have different layouts with different widgets depending on the stage of your post-production work. For example, you can have different workspace layouts for video editing, color correction and sound editing. Kdenlive comes with four different workspace layouts already defined. See the Workspace Layouts chapter.

Kdenlive’s default workspaces (example uses the Editing view; click to enlarge)

Here is a quick reminder of the different workspace panels (see User Interface). In this section we want to focus on the panels 1 thru 4 and panel #6. Panel #5 (timeline toolbar) is not really a panel by itself but is part of the timeline. Panels 7 and 8 are described in more detail in the Status Bar (#8) and Toolbars (#7) chapters.

Kdenlive allows you to arrange the predefined five panels as you like by grabbing an empty part where there are no tabs.

Widgets can be rearrange the same way.

Here an example where the layout is arranged in column or rows:

Columns (click to enlarge)	Rows (click to enlarge)

You can have widgets as tabs (see the yellow box in the screenshots above) regardless of the dock orientation setting.

Rearranged layouts are stored in the project file when saving.

Adding Widgets

You can add widgets (e.g. Library, Project Notes) by enabling them in Menu ‣ View. Likewise, disable them by taking off the check mark right next to their entry in the menu.

Moving Widgets

You move a widget by grabbing the tab or the title bar and moving it to a new position. It is possible to move the widget to a different position within the same panel thereby simply changing the sequence of the tabs.

A widget can also be moved to a new panel, to its own (new) column or row, or undocked as a floating window. Put a floating window on a second screen on which you can dock other widgets to create a new panel.

Note In order to move widgets without a tab they must have title bars. You can switch them on and off in Menu ‣ View ‣ Show Title Bars.

This shows you the title bar of each widgets when un-docked

On the title bar are 3 icons

• Undock window. The window get undocked and ready for moving.

• Close. The window get closed and can be re-opened in Menu ‣ view

In the example below the Clip and Project Monitor widgets are being undocked and turned into floating windows:

Moving Clip and Project Monitor to their own independent windows (undocking)

The Kdenlive layout reacts to your dragging of the widget and you need to pay close attention which docking indicator change color when you move over them.

1:

Panel docking indicator. Docking inside the panel: top, right, bottom, left or center. In this example it would be placed to the left side showed by the blue indicator.

2:

Edge docking indicator. Docking outside of a panel: top, right, bottom, left. Here a window can be auto-hided

3:

Blue indicator where the widget would land if you release it

Tip When trying to move a floating window to a new position Kdenlive may think you want to move it to a panel or create a new row or column. It is recommended to use the standard size handles of the window manager to adjust the top left and bottom right corners accordingly.

Auto-hide

Click the pin icon (first icon in the title bar) to enable the auto-hide feature which lets you pin dockable window (widgets) to the edges (top, right, bottom, left; See point 2 above) of the main window, making them disappear into a sidebar and reappear as overlays when clicked.

Restoring: Click the pin icon again (now on the overlay) to restore it to its original docked position.

Resizing Widgets

You can only resize the column or row the widget is docked in. Hover over the widget’s edge on either side and the mouse pointer will change into the re-size pointer. Now drag the edge until the desired size is reached. You can only drag horizontally or vertically individually.

Saving the Layout

Once you have arranged the widgets to your liking you can save the layout via Menu ‣ View ‣ Save Layout. A dialog windows opens where you can name the new layout. If you enter the name of an existing layout a warning will appear but you can overwrite the layout.

The current layout is saved within the Kdenlive project file.

It is good practice and very helpful to have different layouts for the different tasks of post-production. See the Workspace Layouts chapter for more details.

Loading a Layout

You can load a layout either by selecting it from Menu ‣ View ‣ Load Layout, or by clicking on the desired one listed in the menu bar (top-right hand corner of the screen).

Managing Layouts

Kdenlive displays only eight saved layouts when selecting Menu ‣ View ‣ Load Layout, and in the menu bar only four are displayed. But you can have many more.

Selecting Menu ‣ View ‣ Manage Layouts opens this window where you can manage the workspace layouts available.

Use go-up and go-down to move the highlighted layout up and down in the list. The first eight from this list will be available through the menu.

Click on view-refresh to refresh the list. Use edit-delete to delete the highlighted entry.

You can export document-export and import document-import saved layouts. *[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