Problems with importing video clips onto the timeline

I’ve been using ShotCut with my students and I absolutely love the simplicity and that is all for free! Thumbs up!

My problem, however, is that after adding a few videoclips onto the timeline from the playlist, it will not allow me to put anymore clips into the timeline. I only get this “illegal action” symbol (red circle with a dashed red line) next to the mousepointer while “drag-n-dropping” the video onto the timeline.

What’s even more odd, is that I CAN, however, add ALL the video clips in order of the playlist by using the “Add all to timeline” button in the menu. It works, but it isn’t really an optimal solution.

Also, is there a way to “mark” all or some of the videoclips in the timeline? It’s really annoying when you want to delete multiple video clips from the timeline and you have to mark each and every videoclip seperately.

Thanks in advance! :slight_smile:

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Hi, glad you are liking Shotcut! :slight_smile: This thing is a recurring error from time to time, which usually comes with a specific set of steps to reproduce. Last time, the most accurate set of steps I could find goes like this:

  1. Load clip and add to playlist
  2. Drag to timeline
  3. Add new video track
  4. Move clip to new video track
  5. Drag new clip from playlist again into timeline

However that is from an older version, and I think the issue reappeared around December, and it may have been fixed. It’s not very clear. So far I cannot produce the error in 17.03.02, so make sure you are using the latest version. See this for more details. Supposedly it was an issue with the GUI toolkit. In your case I would just try to be mindful of what steps you’re taking that causes this.

If you’re looking for a workaround, you can edit clips of videos in the playlist as I’m sure you know, and the append to track button should still work for individual clips. Saving the .mlt file and reloading it again should also fix it.

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Hi, as it was said, this is something that happens sometimes. One workaround is to save the project, exit Shotcut and open it again. Other simple way is to use the plus button to had a selected clip in the playlist: