<p>You can box-select clips by dragging the mouse while holding the shift key and and left mouse button.</p>
<p><a href="https://userbase.kde.org/Kdenlive/Manual/Timeline_Menu/Selection" rel="noreferrer">kdenlive &quot;Selection&quot; manual</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>If the clips you want to select are all contiguous, you can press Shift + left-click and drag your mouse over all the clips</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/kH5vf.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/kH5vf.png" alt="enter image description here" /></a></p>
<p>(and <em>ctrl+shift+mouseDrag</em> to add more clips to the selection)</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-09-15T13:49:41.577Z
Very useful tip, which was somewhat non-obvious from reading Help material or other tutorials.
bdutta74
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-10-27T17:07:06.840Z
This is a life saver! Holding shift+left mouse click to drag and select multiple items in the timeline still works in Kdenlive 20.08.1. Thank you for sharing this!
Yusuf Ismail
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-11-04T01:57:28.650Z
2021-10-28T02:09:46.563Z
2021-10-28T02:09:46.563Z
Klesun
<p>I didn't find a way of selecting a range of clips but the main problem is solved by the spacer tool which can be invoked by pressing <kbd>M</kbd>. One then grabs the left end of the clip to the right of a gap and drags it to the left until the gab is closed. By doing so, all clips to the right are automatically moved to the left as well.</p>

<p>When browsing through the different tools, I incorrectly assumed the spacer tool to be a restricted version of the selection tool because of its mouse pointer symbol: I assumed one could use it to expand clips to the left or to the right like with the selection tool (but not select clips).</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-06-25T20:43:48.993Z
2017-06-25T20:43:48.993Z
UTF-8
<p>I'm editing a video in Kdenlive. After I cut out stuff, there are holes (parts with no video nor audio with video and audio to the left and to the right where the parts to the left and to the right should be concatenated) which need to be removed.</p>

<p>There seems to be a feature for removing those holes as there is a context menu entry called <code>Remove Space</code> when right-clicking empty space in a timeline.</p>

<p><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/JoNgG.png" alt=""></p>

<p>However, it always displays the error message</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Cannot remove space in a track with a group</p>
</blockquote>

<p>because I grouped my clips and it apparently can't remove space automatically if groups are used.</p>

<p>There is exactly the same amount of space on all tracks which have any content at this point on the timeline as I cut out part of a group.</p>

<p>The only way I see to close such a gap is to select all clips to the right of it and move them to the left. This is very cumbersome there are dozens of clips or groups of clips to right and I don't see how I can select many clips or groups of clips at once.</p>

<p>How I currently go about it is to click the first clip to the right of the gap, then hold down the control key, and then click every single other clip on all tracks. This not only is very cumbersome but it also yields the problem that if I miss any clip, I have to start over again, as I can't move my selection in this case and finding the clip that's not selected is virtually impossible.</p>

<p>Is there an easy way to close such a gap? Possibly by selecting a range of clips? So that I only have to click some part of the time line and then another part of it and it automatically selects all clips in that range? Or this thing file browsers commonly allow you to do where you draw a rectangle around the items you want to select:</p>

<p><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/0znrv.gif" alt=""></p>

<p>I use Kdenlive 15.12.3 on Ubuntu 16.04. As of this writing (2017-06-05), this is the newest version in the official Ubuntu 16.04 software repositories.</p>

<hr>

<p>Edit: I just posted this question in the Kdenlive forum: <a href="https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=265&amp;t=140571" rel="noreferrer">https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=265&amp;t=140571</a></p>

<video><video-editor><software><kdenlive>
Select range of clips in Kdenlive
UTF-8
# Select range of clips in Kdenlive

(Asked by: username_0 on 2017-06-05)

I'm editing a video in Kdenlive. After I cut out stuff, there are holes (parts with no video nor audio with video and audio to the left and to the right where the parts to the left and to the right should be concatenated) which need to be removed.

There seems to be a feature for removing those holes as there is a context menu entry called `Remove Space` when right-clicking empty space in a timeline.

![](https://i.sstatic.net/JoNgG.png)

However, it always displays the error message

> Cannot remove space in a track with a group

because I grouped my clips and it apparently can't remove space automatically if groups are used.

There is exactly the same amount of space on all tracks which have any content at this point on the timeline as I cut out part of a group.

The only way I see to close such a gap is to select all clips to the right of it and move them to the left. This is very cumbersome there are dozens of clips or groups of clips to right and I don't see how I can select many clips or groups of clips at once.

How I currently go about it is to click the first clip to the right of the gap, then hold down the control key, and then click every single other clip on all tracks. This not only is very cumbersome but it also yields the problem that if I miss any clip, I have to start over again, as I can't move my selection in this case and finding the clip that's not selected is virtually impossible.

Is there an easy way to close such a gap? Possibly by selecting a range of clips? So that I only have to click some part of the time line and then another part of it and it automatically selects all clips in that range? Or this thing file browsers commonly allow you to do where you draw a rectangle around the items you want to select:

![](https://i.sstatic.net/0znrv.gif)

I use Kdenlive 15.12.3 on Ubuntu 16.04. As of this writing (2017-06-05), this is the newest version in the official Ubuntu 16.04 software repositories.

---

Edit: I just posted this question in the Kdenlive forum: <https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=265&t=140571>

**Tags:** video, video-editor, software, kdenlive


---

## 2 answers

### Answer by username_0 on 2017-06-25. Score: 7 | Accepted answer

I didn't find a way of selecting a range of clips but the main problem is solved by the spacer tool which can be invoked by pressing `M`. One then grabs the left end of the clip to the right of a gap and drags it to the left until the gab is closed. By doing so, all clips to the right are automatically moved to the left as well.

When browsing through the different tools, I incorrectly assumed the spacer tool to be a restricted version of the selection tool because of its mouse pointer symbol: I assumed one could use it to expand clips to the left or to the right like with the selection tool (but not select clips).


---

### Answer by username_1 on 2019-11-04. Score: 9

You can box-select clips by dragging the mouse while holding the shift key and and left mouse button.

[kdenlive "Selection" manual](https://userbase.kde.org/Kdenlive/Manual/Timeline_Menu/Selection)

> If the clips you want to select are all contiguous, you can press Shift + left-click and drag your mouse over all the clips

[![enter image description here](https://i.sstatic.net/kH5vf.png)](https://i.sstatic.net/kH5vf.png)

(and *ctrl+shift+mouseDrag* to add more clips to the selection)

> **Comments:**
> **username_2**: Very useful tip, which was somewhat non-obvious from reading Help material or other tutorials.  
> **username_3**: This is a life saver! Holding shift+left mouse click to drag and select multiple items in the timeline still works in Kdenlive 20.08.1. Thank you for sharing this!  

---

