22 Troubleshooting


22.1 Reporting bugs


When you notice a bug, you can file a bug report by sending an email to the cinelerra-cv mailing list including the following information:

  • GIT revision number of Cinelerra CV. Example: r959e
  • Distribution name and version. Example: Debian SID
  • Steps to replicate the bug. That is very important since it really helps people trying to fix bugs. Example:
    • launch cinelerra
    • open the recording window
    • click on OK
    • Cinelerra crashes
  • When Cinelerra CV crashes, a debugger output is welcome. Run:
    • gdb cinelerra
    • run
      (You trigger the bug and Cinelerra CV crashes)
    • thread apply all bt
      Then copy all of the information displayed into your bug report.

Do not hesitate to attach any file which you think could be useful, such as a screenshot for example. The gdb output is more useful when Cinelerra is compiled with debugging symbols. See section Compiling with debugging symbols, for compilation instructions.

Moreover, if the bug you noticed concerns a problem loading a specific file into Cinelerra-CV, uploading a small sample of such a file on the internet is appreciated. That would allow people fixing bugs to load that file themselves in Cinelerra and look at what happens.

22.2 Playback does not stop


If playback of audio tracks doesn’t stop on the timeline and keeps going after the end of the video, go to Settings -> Preferences -> Playback and click on the Stop playback locks up checkbox. This checkbox is shown only if you set ALSA as audio driver.

22.3 Buz driver crashes


First, Zoran capture boards must be accessed using the Buz video driver in Preferences->Recording and Preferences->Playback. Some performance tweaks are available in another section.
See section Improving performance.

Once tweaked, the Buz driver seems to crash if the number of recording buffers is too high. Make sure Preferences->Recording->Frames to buffer in device is below 10.

22.4 Dragging edit boundaries does not work

Sometimes there will be two edits really close together. The edit boundary selected for dragging may be next to the intended edit if those edits are too small to see at the current zoom level. Zoom in horizontally.

If you think you can’t drag all the edits starting at the same point on armed tracks, zoom in horizontally to check if they really start at the same point. Sometime vertical synchronization of edits can be lost just because you did not set properly project attributes (e.g. PAL/NTSC). Check Settings -> Format.

22.5 Locking up when loading files


The most common reason loading files locks up Cinelerra is because the codec is not supported. Another reason is because Cinelerra is building picons for the Resources window. If you load a large number of images, it needs to decompress every single image to build a picon. Go into settings->preferences->interface and disable Use thumbnails in resource window to skip this process.

22.6 Synchronization lost while recording


If the rate at which frames are captured during recording is much lower than the frame rate of the source, the video will accumulate in the recording buffers over time and the audio and video will become well out of sync. Decrease the number of frames to buffer in the device in preferences->recording so the excess frames are dropped instead of buffered.

22.7 Applying gamma followed by blur does not work


The gamma effect uses the pow function while the blur effect uses a number of exp functions in the math library. For some reason, using the pow function breaks later calls to the exp functions in the math library. You need to apply gamma after blur to get it to work.


22.8 Copy/Paste of track selections does not work in the timeline

If you are running the KDE Klipper application, either disable it, or right-click its taskbar icon, select Configure Klipper and ensure Prevent empty clipboard is not selected.

22.9 Cinelerra often crashes


Do a clean install. Be sure that you do not have libraries from previous installations. Delete your ‘$HOME/.cinelerra-cv/’ directory too.
rm -f /usr/local/lib/libguicast*
rm -f /usr/lib/libguicast*
rm -f /usr/local/lib/libquicktimehv*
rm -f /usr/lib/libquicktimehv*
rm -f /usr/local/lib/libmpeg3hv*
rm -f /usr/lib/libmpeg3hv*

22.10 Theme Blond not found error


If the followin g error message appears: Aborted, MWindow::init_theme: Theme Blond not found, then:

  • You should check for the file ‘defaulttheme.*’ in ‘/usr/lib/cinelerra’ or ‘/usr/local/lib/cinelerra’. If it does not exist, you need to install the plugins again.
  • Try to delete the ‘$HOME/.cinelerra-cv/’ directory
  • Look into ‘$HOME/.cinelerra-cv/Cinelerra_rc’ and find THEME, it should be => THEME Blond