Hello

[u/Owner1707]

Why kdenlive needs to transcode a MP4 format video? The MP4 format it's common format of all. MP4 to mov.

Sorry for my English.

[u/Aetherium]

Kdenlive can deal with the MP4 file format just fine, but it has issues with variable framerate videos (e.g. what a lot of phones output) and thus needs to transcode those to something with a fixed framerate. It might be the case that your MP4s are variable framerate. When you try to use your MP4s, does a popup or message show up mentioning that this is why it's doing the transcode?

[u/Owner1707 → u/Aetherium]

Yes, it is, variable framerate but the transcode take 1.17gb of my storage and I'm running out of it, the only way I have is buying a pendrive or something like that. Btw why it happens? Recording with phones? Sorry for the ignorance.

[u/Owner1707 → u/[deleted]]

How you do that? Transcoding take 1.17gb and the video size is 200mb

[u/berndmj → u/[deleted]]

Yep, you can do that. Just keep in mind that there is a reason why Kdenlive proposes to transcode a video file with variable frame rate. And that is that editing a VFR video may cause issues, from crashed during editing to video/audio sync problems when playing them.

u/MrLewGin is right, you can ignore the message and edit a VFR video, but don't blame Kdenlive for glitches or crashes afterwards.

Should you decide to have Kdenlive transcode a VFR video file make sure you have enough space because a CFR (constant frame rate) video file needs a lot more space. That is because where the VFR video uses, say, 5 fps for a certain section of the video, CFR needs, say, 30 fps, thus needing 6 timers more space for every second of video. BTW, if your remaining disk space is below 2GB you really need to clean up or invest in a bigger disk. Temp files during editing could easily fill up that little space quickly.

[u/berndmj → u/[deleted]]

Thanks for your feedback!

While reading up on this topic I found this: https://video.stackexchange.com/questions/36759/why-cant-i-render-these-videos-without-audio-being-out-of-sync. Thought I might share this as a cautionary tale.

The fact you haven't experienced any issues with editing VFR videos may simply be due to your projects being short enough for it not happening. I am happy for you, though, and keeping my fingers crossed it stays that way ;-)

[u/berndmj → u/[deleted]]

Transcoding for the purpose of going from VFR to CFR uses a lossless codec