Kdenlive

About

Kdenlive

Kdenlive is a free open-source multi-track video editor released under the GNU General Public License and developed under the umbrella of the KDE community. The project was founded in 2002 by Jason Wood as one of the earliest Linux-native NLEs, and the maintainer team led by Jean-Baptiste Mardelle has released cross-platform Windows and macOS builds alongside Linux since the KDE 4 era.

Kdenlive, short for the KDE Non-Linear Video Editor, was founded in 2002 by Jason Wood as one of the earliest serious open-source Linux-native video editors. The application became part of the wider KDE community and today is developed by a core maintainer team led by Jean-Baptiste Mardelle alongside dozens of translators, plug-in authors, and community contributors. Kdenlive is licensed under the GNU General Public License, and while the software is deeply tied to KDE's Qt-based technology stack, the project publishes native Windows and macOS builds alongside every major Linux distribution, so the audience extends well beyond the desktop-Linux community. The application is built on top of the MLT multimedia framework, giving it a large FFmpeg-powered format support surface. Kdenlive offers unlimited video and audio tracks, effects and transitions with keyframing, chroma keying, motion tracking, automatic scene detection, audio mixing and effect chains, proxy editing for high-resolution source material, and a titler that supports SVG-based text with animation. Version numbering follows the KDE calendar-based scheme, so releases such as 26.08 correspond to release month rather than incremental engineering numbers. Studio-focused features include batch rendering, project timeline previews, subtitle authoring, and support for a wide range of professional codecs through the FFmpeg backend. Kdenlive is packaged for every major Linux distribution and available through Flathub, the Snap store, and the AppImage program, and Windows and macOS installers are published through kdenlive.org and the Microsoft Store. Community channels include the official KDE forum, the Kdenlive Mastodon presence on floss.social, an active subreddit, a YouTube tutorial network, and the codebase on invent.kde.org. The Kdenlive project publishes translated user manuals through docs.kde.org and regularly participates in Google Summer of Code, which has funded several major features including the MLT overhaul and modern motion-tracking implementation.