I am using kdenlive in linux and lightworks in windows.
I think kdenlive is better to work in total, but edit, cut, paste, move, adjust... is better in lightworks.

What I meant is that in addition to "drag and drop", you could use the "mark and park" that has Lightworks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qu9kgRLQ7n8

What Kdenlive lacks (and really it's essential it gets added) is proper three point editing. Mark in on the clip, out out the clip, in on the timeline, click insert or overwrite and boom. Similar the there need to be a two point extract edit function on the timeline.

Currently I find I need to mess around with the razorblade tool and dragging and dropping far too much for my liking. It makes for sloppy imprecise editing and far too many mouse clicks and moves per edit.

it's one of the three features that Kdenlive really needs in order to to move up, along with realtime monitor feedback for timeline trimming and rendered effects proxies.

I'd suggest there's a fourth feature for that list: smooth keyframe interpolation for pans & zooms. Lightworks has it.
It's been mentioned on this forum before, but I wanted to cast my vote again. :-)

@jjfro - Maybe but it's a fairly minor feature compared to lacking fundamental editing tools like insert editing. Don't get me wrong Kdenlive is great and the features I mention are probably non trivial to implement.

Complex panning and zooming is something I'd probably do in Blender anyway.

There is a mark in and out points and then insert the edit to timeline. Click on the footage watch the monitor window, in there u can make in and out point. But it doesn't have shortcuts i suspect. Thats the main thing missing. I divide monitor and project window for this specific workflow purpose

@dylanpank:
"What Kdenlive lacks (and really it's essential it gets added) is proper three point editing. Mark in on the clip, out out the clip, in on the timeline"
I was only answering for this question. Yes, i know kdenlive misses insert edit, overwrite edit.

Flowblade. Yes, its far from finish. But it is a good start and i think avid users like it. I can do realtime edit with flowblade where kdenlive doesn't do that job. Though i miss EDL import export, timecode management in flowblade.

Kdenlive has an "Insert mode" option http://userbase.kde.org/Kdenlive/Manual/Timeline/Editing#Insert_Mode in its toolbar. But it is apparently not implemented yet. Perhaps JBM has something like what you describe here in mind when he gets around to implementing it. The implemented modes are "normal" and "overwrite". See link above for what the difference is.

@Mohahoni - I wasn't clear but I realise I'm using Adobe/Final cut terminology which maybe not everyone is familiar with (heck even Avid uses a different term, for what I'm referring to) What I mean is the ability to insert a clip on a track timeline, and it push aside the material after it, other tracks affected depending on whether they are locked, or synced in Premiere and FCP. This is referred to as an insert edit, on Avid they refer to it as a splice in (the true technical term dating back to all three machine offline online decks running off EDLS is a "ripple edit"). With Kdenlive you have to open a space in the timeline using the spacer tool, place your clip in the timeline in the new gap, then again use the space tool to close the space.

What there needs to be is a function that somehow automatically invokes the spacer tool to shift the relevant clips along the timeline by the same distance as the mark in mark out points on the clip.

So, after you have marked in to out on your clip, and possibly mark an in on your timeline, on the keypress for insert edit
1. Kdenlive gets the time from the in to out on the clip, lets call that value X.
2. If necessary it marks a cut in the on the timeline at mark in point, (if there is no mark-in, default to the playhead).
3. Shift all relevant the footage (i.e everything on unlocked tracks after the mark-in or playhead) forward by X*
4. Insert The clip from in to out into the new space.

Presently you have to do all this manually and it's not fame accurate so you have to clean up a bit after you've made the edit, which doubles or even triples the number of mouse and keyboard actions associated with one edit.

*of course this might get more complicated with regard to which tracks have split, grouped clips, but frankly this happens all the time on Avid and FCP, and the reply is "learn to organise your video and sound tracks properly!"

You're right that What Kdenlive can do an overwrite edit, where you mark in and out on the clip, and then hit V and it will place it at a mark in point on the timeline laying over any existing footage. However three point editing should mean the points could be one point on the clip and the in and out points set on the timeline, Kdenlive lacks this, and as well as no insert/splice in capability, lacks the ability to lift/extract based on mark-in/mark-out points too.

What you can do on Kdenlive is drag your timeline playhead to a point, place a cut in the clip by click-selecting the clip, then hitting shift-R, going to the second point, Shift R, then selected in the footage between the two new cuts, and hitting delete, then selecting the space if you want to close the gap and deleting the space.

Another editor FLOW BLADE is attempting to use these editing but currently it's less reliable and lacks other features that still make Kdenlive preferable.

Having said that I'd really rather see live updates in the monitor of edit trims introduced, so for example as you're are dragging the start or end points of a clip on the time line back and forth, you'd actually see the frame updated live in the monitor. Currently no NLE that I've tried on Linux seems to have this capability.

@ttguy -- Indeed, it's been there a while as a greyed out option, but I understand it might be extremely tricky to implement, seeing as how many subsequent clips a given ripple edit might need to affect, but it seems to me using some of the functionality of the spacer tool might be the way forward.

However overwriting between in-and-out points on the timeline seems to would be far easier to implement and these things are and still very useful (though I say this as a total novice programmer, and things always seem easy when you're asking someone else to do them)

And Lightworks most likely never be "open source":

http://jeff.ecchi.ca/blog/2012/11/10/lightworks-is-not-anywhere-close-to-open-source/