Kdenlive/Roadmap

Roadmap

This roadmap was specified during the Randa 2014 meeting.

Short term

• Bugfixing to maintain/improve Kdenlive’s stability and to release new releases
• Break big classes into smaller ones as intermediate step targetting the refactoring branch. This way, small portions of the code can be refactored towards the proposed architecture (see below) without breaking everything™:
  • Cutsomtrackview (=>commands, …)
  • Renderer
• Code documentation for new code, including big-picture view. I.e.: Do not just describe the class by typing its class name a bit differently, but explain to someone new to the code what it does, why it is required, and who it interacts with.
• Workflow documentation
  • How to set up a build environment
  • What are the git branches used for

Mid term

• Refactoring is a crucial step for further work on Kdenlive. At the moment, small features require changes everywhere. Refactoring the code is required to make Kdenlive maintainable and extensible again.
  • Introduce concepts from the proposed architecture step by step: Core, ProjectManagement, …
  • Port UI to QML
• Port Kdenlive to KF5 (KDE Framework 5)

The proposed architecture can be found in the refactoring branch in refactoring-doc/ – find some snapshots here (not updated, just to get an impression):

Long term

• New features should be implemented after refactoring, or the code needs to be touched twice, which is not so much the point of it. Some great ideas (other points why to accomplish refactoring soon):
  • Write an OpenGL display. When this is done, Movit can be integrated.
  • Alternative timeline view specialised on editing transitions; see refactoring-doc/Timeline_TransitionView.svg in the refactoring branch
  • Project clips effects, so e.g. colour grading is done only once on the clip in the project bin and not every time in the timeline
  • Project clip effects. For example, you could add a color correction effect. Then, all occurences of the clip in timeline will have that effect, and a change to the effect will directly be reflected in timeline clips. The plan is to allow editing of project clips. Triggering the editing will open a new Timeline view with the clip, and the user can then drop and adjust effects in this timeline like in the project timeline. - JBM
  • WebVfx editor for titles; the titler should be an SVG editor with effects and candies, so writing our own does not make sense. See [1] for a demo on what WebVfx can achieve. (Original comment by JBM: The titler's code is currently quite broken and hard to fix. Using webvfx seems an interesting option, it would allow to create titles using HTML, javascript or QML. For those interested, I created a sample title with the webvfx module that can be viewed here: Titler sample video- JBM)

Alternative timeline layout (snapshot, just for demonstration; click for full size and see the SVG in the refactoring branch for infinite size):

ARCHIVE: Refactoring branch

This is an attempt to coordinate the work on the deep refactoring that began in 2012. If you want to work on some parts, leave a note here to know who is doing what. Design ideas can also be explained here.

Project Bin

Done:

• Add clip to Bin
• Create clip using the list of available MLT producers
• Play Bin Clip in Monitor

In Progress:

• Manage clip zones - JBM
• Clip timeline and effects (will allow to open a project clip in a separate timeline and add effects to it) - JBM

Todo:

• Edit clip properties
• Add MLT Playlist, Slideshow and Title clip types
• Clip jobs

Monitors

Done:

• Set to full screen (double click)
• Switch between available modes (SDL / OpenGL / GLSL / QGraphicsScene)
• Overlay info messages
• Basic zone functionnality

In Progress:

• Manage several zones / markers, display overlay info - JBM

Todo:

• Play / loop zone
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Add settings dialog option to select single / dual monitor config and default display format (SDL, OpenGL, GLSL)

Timeline

Done:

• Open basic MLT playlist

Todo:

• Add clip to timeline
• All clip operations (move, cut, ...) - framework is partially there
• Track operations
• Effects

Rendering

Todo:

• Should we use MLT presets?

Recording

Todo:

• Add config dialog to select source
• Add Multi consumer to save recording to file
• Port StopMotion widget, using the new Scene Mode so that we can use all QGraphicsView features.

Titler

Todo:

• What to do with it? Full rewrite? Would WebVfx be an option? See discussion here

Scopes

Todo:

• Adjust them to the new framework