This is not the normal "black screen"issue and I was shocked to eventually find out why. The normal advice of reconfiguring Xorg didn't work. Even booting into "Recovery Mode" did not help.
Here is the short end of the stick that fixed it:
sudo apt-get install mdm mate-desktop-environment
Yes you got it right, mdm and the mate-desktop-environment / gnome were somehow uninstalled. This must be whe........
When using the .sh script the rendering doesn't work after an upgrade of related packages to kdenlive.
kdenlive (kdenlive:amd64 (4:17.04.1+git201705191233~ubuntu16.04.1)) with affine or composite transitions was fine but is now broken during the time of transition it is just a white screen.
The previous version was fine:
kdenlive:amd64 (4:17.04.1+git201705191233~ubuntu16.04.1
But now I can't find it or install it:........