Monitors

Kdenlive uses two monitor widgets to display and play back your videos, images, titles, animations or audio files:

• Clip Monitor
• Project Monitor

The monitor widgets can be switched on or off by checking Menu ‣ View ‣ Clip Monitor and Project Monitor, respectively. Once activated, they can be selected by clicking the corresponding tab which appears at the bottom of the monitor window.

Kdenlive supports an external monitor display using Blackmagicdesign DeckLink cards.

The Clip Monitor plays the clip selected in the Project Bin. The Project Monitor plays the timeline of the project starting at the position of the playhead.

Controls and Elements

Monitor controls (see this table for more details)

Monitor areas and elements (see this table for more details)

Monitor Display Toolbar

The monitor display toolbar appears when you hover over the defined hotspot. By default this is the top right-hand side of the monitor area. Click on transform-move-horizontal to move the monitor display toolbar to the left-hand side or back. You can switch it off altogether by right-click in the monitor area, and selecting Current Monitor Overlay ‣ Monitor Info Overlay.

The toolbar has the following options:

Icon	Description
view-fullscreen	Switch full screen. See here for more information.
view-grid	Change overlay. Click through the different available patterns. You can change the color of the patterns in Menu ‣ Settings ‣ Configure Kdenlive ‣ Colors and Markers.
zoom-in	Zoom in
zoom-out	Zoom Out
list-add	Add guide
list-remove	Remove guide
transform-move-horizontal	Move Toolbar. Click through to move the toolbar from the right (default) to the left and back.

Monitor and Effect Direct Control

Effects which have parameters for X, Y, width, height, opacity (alpha, optional) and rotation, can be controlled directly in the monitor. For example: Transform or Crop by Padding.

Make sure Edit Mode is enabled.

Once such an effect is applied either to a clip in the project bin, a clip in the timeline, a track or on master, the following additional tools are available in the monitor tool bar:

Icon	Description
snap	Enable a grid to which the editing handles will snap. You can change the grid size in Menu ‣ Settings ‣ Configure Kdenlive ‣ Colors and Markers.
keyframe-next	Go to the next keyframe.
keyframe-previous	Go to the previous keyframe.
keyframe-add	Add a keyframe
keyframe-record	Add automatic keyframe

Grab the handles to change the size of the clip. Holding Shift maintains the aspect ratio, holding Ctrl resizes in all directions equally (essentially keeping the center position in place).

Note Once such an effect is applied, the monitor overlay selection panel does not have the list-addAdd Guide/Marker and list-removeRemove Guide/Marker icons anymore. To show them again disable the effects by clicking on the view-visibleEffects enabled icon in the Effect/Composition Stack header. To enable direct control again, click on the view-hiddenEffects Disabled icon.

Direct Control is available for the following effects:

• Alpha Shapes
• Alpha Shapes (Mask)
• Audio Level Visualization Filter
• Audio Spectrum Filter
• Audio Waveform Filter
• Dynamic Text
• GPS Graphic

|

• Motion Tracker
• Position and Zoom
• Pillar Echo
• Spot Remover
• Timer
• Transform
• Crop by padding

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Monitor Change Overlay Color and Grid Size

The color of the guide and grid overlay as well as the grid size can be changed in Menu ‣ Settings ‣ Configure Kdenlive ‣ Colors and Markers.

Resizing the Monitor

You can resize the monitors by dragging the widget’s edges. Make sure the mouse pointer changes to the sizing shape.

Monitor Zoom Bar

Monitor zoom bar (audio file example)

The timeline rulers of the monitors have zoom bars. To activate, hover over the timeline ruler and use Ctrl+MW[[2]]. A zoom bar will appear with a scrollbar that has handles on the left and the right. At the same time, the timeline ruler scaling marks will change according to the zoom factor. This is helpful when trying to make frame-accurate cuts or setting zones.

Preview Resolution

Changing the Preview Resolution speeds up the editing experience by scaling the video resolution of the monitors. It can be used instead of proxies or with proxies. Speed improvement depends on your source files.

Playback speed depends on several factors: source material, use of proxies, type and number of effects, and the CPU capabilities. There is limited to no GPU support for video playback. Preview Rendering is highly recommended if playback speed is lacking.

Multitrack View

You enable the multitrack view via Menu ‣ Monitor ‣ Multitrack view or via right-click in the Project Monitor area and selecting Multitrack View or by pressing F12.

The multitrack view interface allows you to select a track in the timeline by clicking on the project monitor. See the section about multicam editing for using it during Editing.

Clip and Project Monitor in Separate Windows

If you want to have the Clip and/or the Project Monitor in their own individual windows click on the respective tab and drag the monitor widget out into its own window. This undocks the widgets from their space. From there you can move them even to other monitors you may have connected.

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

To put the monitors back into the tabbed view click on the monitor’s title bar (enable it via Menu ‣ View ‣ Show Title Bars) and drag the window on top of another widget. See the Customizing the Interface chapter for more details.

Note There is a small risk that the monitor widget has no title bar (intermittent defect). In this case you will need to reset the Kdenlive settings by deleting ~/.config/kdenliverc (Linux) or C:\Users\<user_name>\AppData\Roaming\kdenlive\kdenlivestaterc (Windows).

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[[1]]

LMB = Left mouse button

[[2]]

MW = Mouse wheel *[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