Paused Recording in Studio Mode => Can't delete Clips in Timeline?

[chrisspiegl]

Description

I have a camera only recording in studio mode and I hit pause a few times.

Once in the Studio Mode editor, I tried to one of the paused clips from the timeline. This does not work.

I tried splitting the clip with "C" and then deleting a segment, that works; untill you have only one clip left of that "pause clip". Then it can't be deleted?

Reproduction

1. Record "Camera Only" and hit pause / resume a few times during the recording.
2. Do so in Studio Mode
3. Finish the recording.
4. Studio Mode will open
5. Try to delete (hover + click on a clip) and hit Delete key.
6. The clip will not delete.

Additional Context

• Cap version: 0.4.81
• Operating system, version: macOS 26.3.1
• Device (optional): MacBook Pro M1 Max

[linear]

CAP-671

[tembo]

Looking at the codebase, I found the relevant deletion logic in apps/desktop/src/routes/editor/context.ts at lines 276-299. The deleteClipSegment function has a guard condition that prevents deletion:

deleteClipSegment: (segmentIndex: number) => {
  if (!project.timeline) return;
  const segment = project.timeline.segments[segmentIndex];
  if (
    !segment ||
    !segment.recordingSegment === undefined ||
    project.timeline.segments.filter(
      (s) => s.recordingSegment === segment.recordingSegment,
    ).length < 2
  )
    return;
  // ... deletion proceeds
}

The issue is that deletion is only allowed when there are at least 2 segments with the same recordingSegment value. For camera-only recordings with pauses, each pause creates separate recording segments (segment-0, segment-1, etc.), and each timeline segment has a unique recordingSegment property. When you split a clip with "C", it creates two timeline segments sharing the same recordingSegment, allowing deletion until only one remains.

This appears to be an intentional safeguard to prevent deleting the last clip of a recording segment entirely, but it doesn't account for the paused recording workflow where users might want to remove an entire pause segment.

Related PRs for context:

• #556 "allow deleting split clips" - introduced the original deletion capability
• #1295 "desktop: multi-select in clip and scenes track" - added multi-select deletion

A potential fix would be to modify the guard condition to allow deletion when there are multiple recording segments total (not just multiple segments of the same recording), while still preventing deletion of the very last clip in the timeline.

[chrisspiegl]

I understand the logic here.

I would suggest it would be better to allow the deletion of the last segment of a clip (aka remove a pause clip completely) while maybe asking the user more specifically if they really intend to do that?

Alternatively, it could be made possible to have a "trash" or "media manager" where the clips are able to be pulled into the timeline again.