Kid asked me how to use keyframes in Kdenlive. Keyframes are a good way to move things around on the screen in a video. They can also be used for some other things, but for now we’ll just stick to using them to create movement.

The first thing we want to do is add the Composite transition to whatever clip we want to move around. Your clip could be a piece of video, or a picture, or a .png file with titles that you want to scroll across the screen. Drag the clip from the project tree to the timeline and then right-click on the clip. Click on Add Transition -> Composite.

A new thing should appear that looks kind of like a clip overlapping your clip. Click on it and drag the ends to match up with your clip. They should snap into place. Above the timeline on the left should be three tabs: Project Tree, Effect Stack, and Transition. If you’re not already on it, click on the Transition tab. The red rectangle in the dark area represents where on the screen your video appears. Right now it’s centered and covering the whole screen. Just below that is another timeline of sorts. On the left end of the timeline you should see a red triangle pointing down and a black triangle pointing up. The red triangle marks where a keyframe is. Kdenlive always puts a keyframe at the beginning of the clip for you.

To add another keyframe, drag the black triangle to the point on the timeline where you want to add it, and click the Add Keyframe button. It’s the fourth one from the left, just below the timeline.

So with keyframes, it basically tells Kdenlive where you want the video to be at a certain points. Kdenlive takes that information and moves the video between the two points over the course of the timeline between keyframes. For example, let’s say we wanted the video to move off the bottom right corner of the screen. We’ll just drag the red rectangle down and to the right while the black triangle is lined up with our keyframe. You’ll see in the project monitor on the right that the video has moved the same as the red triangle on the Transition tab. Also, Kdenlive draws a red line representing the path that the video will follow between the two keyframes.

Now we can add another keyframe farther along the timeline and move the video in a different direction. Just move the black arrow to the new point, click Add Keyframe, and drag the video to the new spot on the timeline. The video in the project monitor moves accordingly, and Kdenlive draws another red line showing where the video will move across the screen.

If you make a mistake while editing keyframes, don’t press Ctrl-Z, because Kdenlive will remove all the keyframe edits you have made since adding the composite transition. To get rid of a keyframe, you can move the black triangle to line up with the one you don’t want and click the Delete Keyframe button.

Now if you want to make titles scroll across the screen, all you have to do is create the titles using Inkscape. Make sure they have a transparent background and export them as a .png file in Inkscape. Import that file as a clip in Kdenlive. Right-click on it in the Project Tree and click on Clip Properties. Make sure the transparent background box is checked. Then drag the titles clip to the timeline. It should already have a Composite transition attached to it, but if it doesn’t, just add it with the method shown above. Drag the end of the clip to make it as long as you want it to be. On the transition tab, click the first button on the left below the timeline and resize the clip to its original size. Then position the red rectangle to where the top of the clip is below the screen. You can click on the first button below the timeline and align it to center horizontally. Move the black triangle to the end of the clip and add a new keyframe. Drag the red rectangle so the bottom is above the top of the screen. Align it to center horizontally again, so the titles will scroll straight up and down.

Related posts:

1. Making Kdenlive titles with Inkscape
2. Fun with Kdenlive
3. Video editing in Linux
4. Gimp Layer Mask
5. Gimp: Paths Tool