Qt-based Kdenlive video editor has just issued a new release — and if you’re serious about your video editing on Linux you’re going to love what’s on offer.

Kdenlive 20.08 introduces new layouts (though for added confusion Kdenlive team also call them workspaces). Whatever you call them, Kdenlive’s new layouts rearrange the various on-screen elements to tailor the tool’s UI (and thus your workflow) around a specific editing task.

Kdenlive layouts available in 20.08 include:

  • Logging – review your footage 
  • Editing – compose using timeline
  • Audio – mix and adjust sound
  • Effects – apply and edit video effects
  • Color – color grading

For instance, the Color layout/workspace looks like this:

While the layout for Audio editing is arranged like this:

On the subject of audio editing in Kdenlive this release debuts with multiple audio stream support. The feature, described as an early implemented, lands ahead of advanced audio routing and channel mapping in future builds — making the editor one-step closer to supporting real professional workflows.

Other changes include:

  • Zoom bars on effects panel, clip monitor
  • New cache management interface
  • Handful of new keyboard shortcuts
  • “Save Copy” project action
  • Luma transitions
  • Misc project bin tweaks
  • Proxy icon added to clips in timeline
  • Change colors of audio thumbnails

One other important change you should be aware of is that projects edited in Kdenlive 20.08 are NOT backwards compatible. Even if you only make the most minor of minor edits to an existing .kdenlive project file in 20.08 you won’t be able to open that project in anything but 20.08+ going forward — so be aware!

Get Kdenlive 20.08

To download Kdenlive 20.08 just head over the project’s official homepage. There you’ll find builds for Windows, macOS and Linux, with the latter offered as a standalone .appimage runtime as well as Snap and Flatpak builds.

Prefer a more traditional install? The official Kdenlive PPA provides new stable builds for supported Ubuntu releases. To add the Kdenlive PPA run:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kdenlive/kdenlive-stable

Then install (or upgrade) the editor:

sudo apt install kdenlive

Go grab this update and start creating, folks!