How to Group and Ungroup Clips in Kdenlive

Managing multiple elements on your video editing timeline can quickly become chaotic. This guide provides a straightforward, step-by-step walkthrough on how to group and ungroup multiple clips in Kdenlive, allowing you to move, edit, and organize your media assets with maximum efficiency.

Selecting Multiple Clips

Before you can group clips together, you must select the files you want to bind. You can do this using one of two methods:

Manual Selection: Hold down the Ctrl key (or Cmd on macOS) and click on each individual clip you want to select.
Marquee Selection: Click on an empty space in the timeline and drag your mouse cursor over the desired clips to create a selection box.

How to Group Clips

Grouping clips links them together. Once grouped, any action performed on one clip—such as moving it along the timeline or deleting it—will automatically apply to all other clips in the group. This is highly useful for keeping separated audio and video tracks in perfect sync.

To group your selected clips:

Select the clips on the timeline.
Right-click on one of the selected clips and choose Group Clips from the dropdown menu.
Alternatively, use the keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + G (or Cmd + G on macOS).
You can also go to the top menu bar and select Timeline > Group Clips.

How to Ungroup Clips

If you need to edit, move, or delete an individual clip within a group without affecting the rest of the assets, you will need to break the link.

To ungroup your clips:

Click on the grouped clips in the timeline to select them.
Right-click on the selection and choose Ungroup Clips from the dropdown menu.
Alternatively, use the keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + Shift + G (or Cmd + Shift + G on macOS).
You can also select the group, go to the top menu bar, and click Timeline > Ungroup Clips.

Once ungrouped, the clips will return to behaving as completely independent elements on your timeline.