Linux DVD Production with kdenlive

I have finally finished the DVD for my Daughters wedding. This post is about experiences with this DVD creation. The primary tools were kdenlive and Imagination.

Description

Ingredients

• Video for a Wedding Shower
• Digital pictures from multiple cameras
• Sound file for wedding with wind noise
• Hand held video at low resolution
• HD digital camera files from back

I first aligned Digital video with sound.  A tedious watching mouth movement task.  See below for discovery of an easier way to align video.

Then cut dead spots out between prelude songs and added dissolve transitions, moving clips up and down tracks for transition overlaps.

Then output a new video (mp4) - could have used loss-less.

Start a new project and import this video and the 8mm video file.
Go through the 8mm file and select portions to place over the digital video - align then remove the sound ( Split audio, ungroup, select audio, delete audio ).  Often used the 8mm video sound for alignment.

Select and overlay pictures, mainly on poor video sections or where the tripod camera missed the action.  The addition of pictures adds interest to the long talking sections and helps to fill the screen where action is limited to a small section of the screen.

Lots of Affine transformations to make pictures full screen and fades plus a few fun transitions.  The Affine transformation can do wonderful actions - spin, fade, zoom, pan.  To use an Affine transformation (default on picture insertion)

1. Click the time line lower corner highlight of clip to add a transition (Dissolve default)
2. On transition tab ( Make sure View -> transition is selected ) use Type combo box to select Affine.  You can select a lower track to transition to.
3. Add keyframe points ( grey diamonds in the line) with the plus.
4. Set the parameters at each keyframe. Note: you can jump to the keyframes or end with the forward and back buttons.

A demonstration of how to achieve various affects with Affine Transformations in Kdenlive.
  
Render to mpeg2.

Finally, for the group pictures after the ceremony I added a slideshow to the DVD with music background. Originally, used QDVDAuthor to make the slideshow. Note: imported transition files after first attempt. Nice transitions but no music. I imported the vob file from QDVDAuthor's temp directory into kdenlive. Added music tracks and rendered to mpeg2.

DVD Wizard

I like a simple structure for the DVD.  A main menu with a picture background. The kdenlive DVDWizard is the perfect tool for this.  Restart kdenlive DVD Wizard - import both mpeg2 video files and transcode. Add chapter markers to videos. Can add more chapter markers than are to be used in the menu. This will effect the skip to next/prior section on playback. In DVD Wizard only one DVD menu can be created. This makes the DVD start playing quickly. Burned DVD.

Oh No - Problem - No video for slideshow. Found out this is a problem with kdenlive and could have been solved with ffmpeg transcoding. But switched to "imagination" slideshow software. Somewhat tedious setting slide times and pan & zoom.
The proper work flow for imagination software:

1. Import images - drag and drop to time line - all images added at end of time-line but can be rearranged later.
2. Import audio tracks into audacity, edit, and output as one mp2
3. Import the edited sound track. If all went well, Music Duration: should show the time.
   
4. Select all slides
5. Set slide duration and Transition speed
6. Click [Random] button - Adjust slide duration till Slideshow Length approximately matches audio duration
7. For each picture, set duration then click [add] under slide motion. Adjust the picture with scroll wheel on zoom slider and position in preview. Click add. Slide motion total time overwrites Slide Duration time. The Slide motion durations are from the current mark to the next mark with no motion for the last interval. Times are only to the second so some slides can have different times to adjust the Slideshow length to match audio length.
8. File -> export

Combining audio tracks in Imagination is not recommended - carefully watch the duration as audio is added to check if all is well.

Tips for using kdenlive

OpenSUSE - Use better version

Better results are obtained if all multimedia packages are from Packman repository. In YaST2 - Software management search for kdenlive, ffmpeg, mlt etc. Check versions tab. Select Packman version. In the fix dialog select the one with install from different provider options for dependent packages.

Titles over tracks with Affine transition/effects sometimes get double transformed.

Use Composite to overlay the title referenced to full frame.

Loss of video - black screen with sound after rendering

vob video shows in timeline but black when rendered. Need to transcode vob file to another format "ffmpeg -sameq -i <input file> <output file>"

Actually, I used another program, "imagination" to make the slide show with music.

Effect - Crop Scale and Position - leaves black bands around picture

Tilt X and Tilt Y are really Shift X and Shift Y, i.e. center location of image/video before scaling, scaling from top right corner.

Composite Reference differs from frame placement

Composite transition places image/video at top left, not centered. Manually adjust

Sometimes Dissolve fades in wrong direction

Click the reverse check box

Transitions blend with wrong track

Check the with track combo box - Auto uses next track

Affine transition out to a different track

Reduce Affine width to first track end, and add an out transition with next track specified and set parameters of the start of second transition to match end of first transition.

Since I was using a sound recording and two video recordings, fine placement of video with respect to audio was necessary. The main method was to zoom in on the timeline and shift but later research reveled a double click on a clip in the timeline brings up a dialog for frame level shifting. The entrees are

• Position - Start of clip in timeline
• Crop start - Start of clip in clip time - zone start or in
• Duration - duration in timeline - linked with Crop start/end
• Crop end - Time from end of clip in clip time

The times are hours:minutes:seconds:frames.
To shift a clip change only the position for audio alignment and don't forget to ungroup the audio.