SUMMARY I have been searching for a way to scale and reposition a .png image that i put in the timeline in kdenlive. It took me waaay too long. This is a usability issue that is on the one hand about me (and possibly others) mapping the word "scale" on what is called "zoom" in Kdenlive. On the other hand the non-accessibility of an intuitive way to access the position and scale effect. STEPS TO REPRODUCE What I have tried: 1. clicking the mouse on the image in the viewer (in the top right corner of kdenlive) in the hope that it would show me some a colored structure with corners to pull in and out and being able to move the picture with the mouse. It nothing happened. 2. searching for tutorials online for scaling. This videotutorial was the closest I came to a working solution (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBjMUpAwY3E). It seemed oddly complex. And it only works if you have another video or image in the track under it to composite with. 3. I try to search the available bug reports. Too many reports for my search terms. 4. Finally I decided to file a bugreport (I was about to give up completely), and in the "Possible duplicates" I find this post that mentions a clue toward "Position and Zoom". I searched it in the effects and there it was what I had been looking for. OBSERVED RESULT 1. clicking on the image in the preview window does nothing. 2. the effect called "crop, scale and tilt" does only scale the image after doing some extra things (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBjMUpAwY3E), and only if another image/title/video is in the track underneath it. EXPECTED RESULT I expected two things: 1. If I click on the preview window that shows the image I want to rescale, then I would expect controls to be shown for positioning and scaling. 2. I would expect the effect that does scaling to be called something with "scale" not "zoom". The word zoom is connected with the workings of camera lenses, while the word rescale is used in image editing programs like GIMP and Inkscape (and probalby adobe programs as well). This is how its mapped in my head. Extra confusing is then that the effect called "crop, scale and tilt" does not do scaling as expected. SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS Windows: MacOS: Linux/KDE Plasma: Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS (available in About System) KDE Plasma Version: KDE Frameworks Version: Qt Version: ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Thank you for the in deep explanation. As it is more a usability issue then a bug I change it to “wishlist” if you don’t mind.
Thanks for picking it up emohr :) The reason why I created the issue is that I believe that often times usability issues can have similarly disruptive consequences for the use of an application as a bug. I did spend several hours trying to find out how to rescale. It is of course up to you or the programmer who decides to pick this up to decide on its priority. I just hope that its priority will related to the amount of normal users affected and the severity, the loss of time and irritation. May I suggest to perhaps create a list similar to bugs called something like 'design issues', which could of course also have a wish list for issues that do not have a large effect on the normal user population or potential attraction of new users? Explanatory note: I recently thought about the classic focus on 'bugs' and lack of focus on usability, expecially in open source projects. 'Bugs' could be defined as unexpected and irritating behaviours of the application, unexpected at least for the programmer and most times also for the user. 'Usability issues' could be defined as behaviours expected to the programmer but not expected, irritating and/or time consuming for the user. When one would take a user centric view to developing and maintaining an application, then prioritisation of bugs over design issues by definition does not really make sense. I am thinking about this, because I would so much like to see more everyday users attracted to open source software. And I also see hurdles in collection and handling of user feedback which I think are detrimental to attaining this goal of use by the masses. Anyways, keep up the good work :D Cheers, Wouter
Just to add that today I went through this situation where I wanted to resize the image and to position it inside the frame. The first place where I looked was the image inside the project monitor, where I looked for a way to select the image, to activate borders where I could resize it, and drag and drop it inside the monitor. Since doing that was not possible, I tried to go with Clip Properties tab, and on the sub-tab Properties I could find something that could be adjusted, but it was only the Proportion rate, not the size (or relative size) itself, or positioning. I really had the feel that those properties should be there at that tab. Then I understood that an effect should be needed, but I had no idea of each one to test first. Tried "Corners", but it wasn't exactly what I was looking for. Then sow "Transformation", which I applied to the figure on the timeline and that worked pretty well, with all properties I was expecting to find at the beginning, from Clip Properties tab. My suggestion is that Kdenlive should by default to auto add the right effect to any figure added to the timeline, that would let users easily control the size, rotating and positioning of the figure. To this my experience, the "Transform" effect did the job pretty well.
We are looking into a viable solution by adding the transform effect automatically on clip import.