Refer to post “Windows Essentials A Sad Farewell”
I have been looking for an alternative to Windows Live Movie Maker (WLMM) so I checked out Ubuntu to see if anything on that platform would also run on Windows.
Kdenlive is easy to install on Ubuntu as it is in the Software Centre. Just search for it and click to install. You can also install via the terminal – sudo apt-get install kdenlive
This is a great program and there are any number of reviews on line with plenty of instruction videos on YouTube.
After playing with it on Ubuntu, I can confirm that the excellent reviews are justified. Therefore, I decided to install it on a Win 10 machine. I did it on an old PC that I use for things like this – so install at your own risk.
Detailed instructions are on the site here https://kdenlive.org/download/
and on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huZQwS1-eh4
Looks easy BUT I immediately ran into a problem with the download from the KDE Severs. Unlike in the YouTube video, this file is compacted into a .7z file and not a .zip. To extract it I went to the Windows Store for an App. I tried 3 free apps and all three took “forever” to complete – and by “forever” I mean several hours for an 83MB file. Then after the files were extracted and I completed the instructions, the .exe file would not open.
I then went to the .7z site and installed the program from there. (Note you get a UAC warning – “Unknown Publisher” but I allowed it and it seems OK).
This program worked and extracted / unpacked the .7z download quickly and without problems – (When you open the program add the files then Extract).
The next issue I encountered was in copying the contents of the ffmpeg “bin” sub folder. A warning comes up that these files already exist. Select “replace” for all, otherwise H.264 /265 will not be available.
After copying the contents of the “bin” and “presets” sub folders the .exe file worked. Note, it does not actually install the program and you have to run the .exe each time. I pinned a link to this file to the Start page.
Kdenlive seems to run on Win 10 as well as it does on Ubuntu. There is a bit of a learning curve but there are plenty of “How To” instructions on line / YouTube. From what I can see so far, it is superior to WLMM and almost as capable as the paid for editors – a bit like The Gimp.
When I get time, I will look at another 2 similar programs, OpenShot and Shotcut .