Feature Introduction of the Blender Video Editing Tool

SophiaBolton
Updated on 2021-08-05
Welcome to this tutorial demonstration. I'll try to walk you through some of the Blender Video Editing 3.0 alpha version features. 

Welcome to this tutorial demonstration. I'll try to walk you through some of the Blender Video Editing 3.0 alpha version features. 

The UI of Blender Video Editing Tool

First of all, we'll select the video editing template because it will come with a couple of settings that are pretty good for video editing in Blender. I prefer to sort of change the UI, but you, of course, are welcome to do whatever you like. 

1

We got two tabs. One is Video Editing, and the other is Rendering. Rendering comes with all the render settings and whatever the frame project frame rate and resolution. And you will notice that the very same information. I don't need that, so I drag in this corner to the right, and then it's gone. 

2

You'll also notice a file browser. The thing is that you can import files as well, and by doing it this way, you will get quite important import settings for the various file types, and you can import multiple files this way well. I prefer to remove that one as well. 

3

Now we got a more straightforward screen, but I like to make it even more explicit. We have some tools, but it's not developed into helpful something yet, so I prefer to switch off that double-height header and remove the tools and the sidebar because I prefer a nice wide area for the strips. I also like to have a nice big preview area. 

4

The thing is that when you import strips, you need to work with the settings of those strips. If I select Sequencer/Preview and open, you saw this tiny 'V' laying on the side? This will be the properties as well for the strips. It's also the property for the View.

Edit Your Strip in Blender Video Editing Tool

Import a strip into Blender Video Editor

6

Let me import a strip. I go to Add Movie and then import. This one is suitable. We can use that one. This is footage from an open-source film called 'The Cosmonaut.' You will see that we got the settings for the strip. We can sort of change the position and all stuff like that if we want to. We also got a green line. Here is the video and the sound with the audio. We got the Overlay settings, and these settings can be changed, of course, and now you can see its sound because it's got the waveform drawn. You can see it's got the sound and the icon for the sound and so on.

Split the strip with Blender Video Editor

We can do cropping, some video stuff, and there's a time panel, which you can use to sort of change if you prefer changing stuff that way. The main thing is that we want to do some editing, and if I go to the strip, you'll see that in Blender, it's called 'Split,' so split and the shortcut 'K' if I hit a split. Usually, it would make a cut in these strips, and you will be on with your work, but in Blender, you need to select everything before doing a split. You select, move the cursor, hit k, and do a split. That's just the way it is.

Chapter-2

You may have noticed that there was another way to split, called 'Hold Split.' Let's try that. We have to select first and then Hold Split. Let's move these out of the way. If I extend now, you'll see the strip has a different color, holding that frame. You can grow from that frame if you're doing a Hold split, but you do a freeze-frame. So, hot splits are actually for doing freeze frames.

In most cases, you do not want to use the hold split way of cutting strips.

5

Preview During Transform

In Blender 3.0, there's a new feature called Preview During Transform. You see, we will preview whatever is at the position of the playhead, but changing the handle will change the preview, and it's previewing the very frame we are moving. You can see there's a white outline, so this is called the 'Active strip.' If I select two strips, there's one with a white outline and some with orange outlines. These are the chosen strips, whereas this is the active strip. When previewing, it's always the active strip that will preview.

batch change values

One thing to notice about playful strips and selected strips is that you can batch change these values. For example, if I mute, you'll notice that only the active strip is changing, but if I press 'Alt,' you'll see all of the video strips changing. It can't also change the audio, which is a bit peculiar.

But that is one way to batch change values. You can also do this: right-click 'Copy to Selected.' Then the rest of them will be muted as well. What if we do this and then I Copy to Selected - it will still only copy the video once. But, well, at least that is a way to batch add things.

We can also, for instance, Alt change the duration, and then the time of all strips will be changed. That might come in nifty if you're doing like Slide Shows or something like that.

Insert a Strip in Blender

When trimming, we talked about the preview, but what if you have like two strips, and you want this strip in between those strips? If you do it, it doesn't go there. But notice, when I drag the strip, there's some text. It's pretty hidden, but it says 'G' or 'Alt' Expand Fit Off. Now I hit Alt: On Expand Fit. Now I press Alt, and then I release it. It inserts that material, and that will also work if you extend it. 

Remove Gap

Chapter-25

There is one feature we could use, which is called Remove Gap. That will remove the gap, but only if there's a gap on all channels, else you can't do it. 

Snap Strips to the Current Frame

What other functions do we have, Like 'Snap strips to the current frame.' That will snap all the selected strips. Now, when we got it like that and then stacked them. Swap strips, 'Move' - that is what you do when you're moving everything. You can also hit 'G' or drag. The selection is quite important because that does determine what strips you can work on. 

Box Select Include Handles

And there's a feature called 'Box select include handles,' but this is mainly for selecting the handles, which is quite lovely if you need to. I hit 'G' to move a cut but keeping the sync. For instance, if you're doing music videos or something like that, you want to, if there are a few bad frames, you can move the cut like that. 

Chapter-31

Select Strips in Blender Video Editing

There are various ways to select. Now I press 'Control,' and then choose to the left or the right of the cursor. If I hit 'Alt,' I do some cuts. If I hold Alt and I will grab both of them and move the middle part. Or out and one more I can move those two outside, so the strip in the middle doesn't change frames. It's just moved horizontally; both content and in and out points are moved in the other version.

There's also the neighbor's selection. And channel selection. And we are linked. Means More is the next one; if I select More once more, it will choose another one.

Different Strip Types in Blender Video Editing

Then we have different strip types. There are like effects strips, but they're grayed out because you will need to add it to a strip, which it can be applied to. 

Video Strip / Movie Strip

We got a video strip or movie strip. And now there are things we can add to that one. Some of them need two strips. Some of them are still grayed out, so now they're for merging strips. Notice that these become lighter because they are assigned or attached to that effects strip.

And then we can do transitions. We got two movie strips overlapping. I right-click Add Transition: Cross, and then they will cross. 

Audio Strip

You can do the same thing with the audio. We select two audio files holding 'Shift' for multiple selections. It's a bit hard to see how we got the waveforms. We can remove these as well. All of the waveforms are still there. You'll know the f-curve.

These are the curves showing that the audio from one strip will disappear and the other will appear. If we open the graph editor, you can also notice that we got the curve. I select this graph and move it around; you can see it moving in the strip. This is what is happening. When doing audio files, it's with the f-curves. You can also do f-curve fades on movie strips.

'Fade in fade out' we got the curve going like that. It's a complete mess in the preview.

Chapter-34

Another nifty feature is that you can have a selection of strips. We want this audio and this video to become one strip; we can make a 'Meta' strip 

Scene Strip

Now, you can see that this one is made out of two strips, and hitting 'Tab', we can insert and change whatever. That's the change and return. Another strip type that might be interesting to use is these 'Scene' strips 'No items available,' because we need a new scene. 

Chapter-39

I'll add another Camera mode, View navigation, Walk navigation. There we have the 3d View. I'll go back to the scene with the video editing. You can see that there's isn't any video editing in that one.

Chapter-50

And now I can hit Shift + A to add the scene. And we got our 3d scene. It's got some settings as well. If we got several cameras, we could select the camera. There are two cameras, so if we duplicate that one, we can cut between those cameras. Now we have a cut between two cameras from within the same scene. And then we need to refresh it again. That should not be something we will have to do manually. But apparently, we do Cross. To make it transparent, we need to add Alpha.

Chapter-55

And again, we might have to refresh all. I'll do the same, Alpha Over. There are two Suzanne monkeys. We can have stuff from a 3D View within the Video Editor. 

Chapter-60

Other features of Blender Video Editing

Color Grading

Some other things we can play around with is if we want to do Color Grading. We can add modifiers. For instance, there's a Color Balance, and we have to make sure that the playhead is actually on that strip too we're working on, or else we'll be baffled, but we can change the colors like that. But wouldn't it be nifty if we could compare that image with another image from the same timeline? And the thing is, we actually can.

We go to View in both of these and switch on Frame Overlay. And Frame Overlay. If we set this one to Reference and the other one to Current. And that could potentially be two different shots which are pretty nifty so that you can compare the colors. But, if we need to get some histograms and all that, we can switch to that. 

Chapter-59

This one should be for the Current View and modifiers. We can see what we're doing in an image like that.

Chapter-61

Play All of the Strip Material

If I want to play all of my strip material, I will have to Select All and then go up: Range 'Set range to select', which will be within this range. Let's go to the Rendering tab and try that one out.

We have the Resolution and the Frame Rate. We hope that will fit with our material. And a path, but we don't want to render PNG image files. We want to use an FFmpeg video to convert our material to several different codecs and containers. We'll use this one. This one is Youtube friendly, and we want some audio as well: AC3 audio. And that's pretty much what we need to do, or actually, we might want to check color management. The View Transform should be set to Standard and not Filmic.

If it's set to filmic, the render times will be super slow, and the colors will be grayed out, so in most cases, using the video editor, you will not need the filmic setting anyway.

Now we need to render and what we do is go down to the View and select Sequence Render Animation, and then our mess of edit will show. It's a bit slower, quite a bit slower when rendering with 3d elements, but that's an area that could use some improvements - the speed of the scene strips, but hopefully, that will be addressed at some point.

Summary

This is pretty much it. Thank you! 

Other video editors to view:

Top 19 Free and Paid Video Editors for Beginners, Intermediate & Professionals