The issue I ran into with Kdenlive was that I couldn't figure out how to cut within a clip without saving to a separate file.

I don't have much experience with Kdenlive or video editing in general but am looking for an Audacity-like tool that can slice out useless portions of longer videos (and also mute sections of audio). For now I use ffmpeg on the command line, but wrangling timestamps is cumbersome.

When I need to trim part of a clip in Kdenlive, I just use the Cut tool on the timeline and delete the portion I don't need. This doesn't create a separate file, it just tells it to only use a portion of the original file. It's been a while since I've used it though, so there might be an even easier way.

For muting you can apply the Mute audio effect for the required portion of the video.

I think I was expecting cutting to work with a selection (a click + drag to select a range) rather than clicking to cut at the start, then again at the desired end, and finally removing the newly segmented portion.

Appreciate the help as I learn how to properly use this tool!

You can also just drag the edges of the clip in the timeline.

Nice - I forgot about that!

Have a look at avidemux, which can even cut videos without re-encoding.

Avidemux is a great tool, but it would require creating a second file I believe.

My workflow is usually to use Avidemux to do a rough trim of a clip (e.g., to take a five minute clip and trim it down to about a minute with the interesting parts in it) and get it into the format I want, then I use Kdenlive for the finer work.