Please add filter to black out video segment

Suggestion
1

I’ve looked through suggestions and questions and searched for this online without finding a straightforward way to accomplish this task.
What I’d like to be able to do is define a video clip, then add a filter to make that part of it black. That way, the audio continues, just no video, and the remaining video is lined up with the audio.
The problem is that when I take out the clip, everything slides to the left, and it’s hard to add a black clip of the same length or use some other workaround, including ones I saw online and the one I created for myself, which I include below. It seems a filter would work great.
Here is what I did:

1. Add track.
2. Detach audio
3. Make a split or splits where you want to cut out video.
4. Create new video track
5. Drag and drop orginal .mlt file of whole video into it
6. Create break at same place
7. Delete rest of clip
8. Click Open Other
9. Choose black
10. Overwrite the clip. It will be longer than the clip, but that’s ok. You can compare to the original track to make a new split.
11. Make new split at same place
12. Cut off rest of track
13. Clip out part of track on the first track (the original one that was to be modified). Everything will ripple left.
14. Then copy the black part onto that track.
15. Then it ripples right

So that works, but it’s clunky. Thanks for thinking about it!

2

Hi @Cooter

What about the Brightness filter?
Make cuts at the moments you want the black out to begin and end, select the clip, add the Brightness filter and bring down the Level parameter to 0.
And you don’t have to detach the audio if you don’t want to.

1 Like
3

Use keyframes and you don’t even need to make all the cuts.

1 Like
4

True. Adding keyframes takes a bit more time though. But it’s a better option when there are many different parts to black out.

Another fast method (still involving splitting the video) would be to create a black clip and store it in the Playlist. Then:

  • Make the splits.
  • Double-click on the black clip in the Playlist.
  • Rick-click on the clip in the the Timeline and choose Replace

The black clip will match the length of the split clip, whatever it’s length. No need to resize it.

1 Like
5

Wow, that worked great! And so simple! Thanks!
I guess my only wonder now is whether it’s possible to clip out part of a track and have it stay fixed in place without sliding over. That was my first thought, but I couldn’t figure out how to do that although in Kdenlive it does that (stays in place) by default.
I might leave this as not solved yet because I don’t want to close the thread until some other thoughts might come along.

1 Like
6

That’s a great idea, too. I had a heck of a time making black clips fit in, but I think I see how to do it, now. Thank you.

7

Select the clip, then use the Lift button to remove a clip from the timeline.
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You can also lift a clip with the “Z” keyboard shortcut, or the Delete keyboard key, or right-click the clip and choose Lift.
When using Lift the other clips in the same track won’t move.

2 Likes
8

And thanks for putting in the effort to make those video clips. That’s really helped! Above and beyond anything I could have hoped for. :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like
9

You’re welcome. Glad I could help.

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10

Thank you again! I feel like I finally found the Holy Grail because this has been something I couldn’t figure out for a long time. I guess I thought that if there is a mute filter for audio tracks, why not a blackout filter? But that’s superfluous with the brightness filter. Sometimes it’s a matter of not having the right vocabulary to ask the question. Thanks again!

1 Like