BASIC / Blender Video Editing 101
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101
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audio
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editing
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footage
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image sequences
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import
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remix
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scrub
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Today, I just want to write a super basic Video Editing inside Blender.
My aim for this little post is so that ANYONE with or without knowledge of 3D package --- and/or with little or no Blender background --- can simply download Blender, do some Video Editing and quickly render out or export out a new video clip remix.
Ok, let's get started.
QUICK INTRO
Not long ago, I found Blender Video Editing to be really simple and intuitive to use, and I really want to share this little bit of knowledge to anyone that would like to do video editing using the tool that is freely available for them.
Using Blender VSE, you can quickly do layering and blending of Video, Images and Audio pretty easily, very stable and fast.
The real strength also lies in Blender capability to do the whole 3D production, compositing, and then this part for Video Editing. Every part of production has very unified workflow, shortcuts, and all come together really nicely, I should really praise.
A bit of info, I previously have some experiences in using video editing package like Premiere, Final Cut Pro, and Sony Vegas. I learned and used Premiere and Final Cut pro during college time, but I can't afford the license of each upgrades unless I am really like a full on Video Editor.
Anyways, often times, I also found myself in the situation where I am at different computer and I just want to jump in to do a little bit of video editing. I can do that now easily, as long I have Portable Blender!
Keep in mind that I did not have special training on Blender Video Editor, this is just one of many cases where I just jump straight into it and start figuring things out and writing them. I stop and Google for any kind of additional information I want to add. So it is going to be interesting! Just have a go at it.
INTO BLENDER VIDEO EDITING LAYOUT
For Blender first timers, when you run Blender, you will get the Default Blender 3D View Layout.
Don't worry about this, we will just quickly switch mode to Blender Video Editing layout. Simply click on that layout button on top menu bar.
Now you are inside Video Editing layout, let's take a look around. As any other layout templates, the layout for Video Editing is divided into few useful panels.
A. This is Graph Editor, where you can see the animation you applied into the video/audio as curves.
B. This is the Video Sequence Editor, set as PREVIEW to display what you are editing at that particular frame in timeline.
C. This is (also) Video Sequence Editor, but displaying as SEQUENCE as strips blocks in channels..
D. This is the usual Timeline where you can scrub video/audio in time. Blender default time is 24 frame per seconds (fps).
You may notice that interesting panel, where Video Sequence Editor serves few different functions. Some panels indeed have hybrid functions like this. The interesting thing is that each Panel is connected with other panel somewhat. Blender layout is fully flexible you can quickly split horizontally, vertically and then switch one panel to be a certain panel.
But, I don't want to get into details of Blender UI, we can just leave it like that for now.
PROPERTY SUBPANEL (N)
Each different panel, have special Properties subpanel on the right side. If you toggle N, the Properties side panel with appear. This Properties is useful in giving you information about your selected object you are working on. We will take a look a this later.
You can maximize any panel area by pressing Shift+Spacebar. This is a hotkey toggle, so Shift+Spacebar again will toggle maximize panel and back to original layout.
UPDATE 2012.05.04 (thanks Larry!)
BEFORE IMPORTING ANY ASSETS
To make sure that your Audio and Video track imported correctly match the project timeline, before you import any Audio or Video files, you must first set the Resolution, Aspect ratio, Frame Rate of your project under the Properties panel, on the Default screen layout shown below.
You could do quick Set Render Size based on the current active sequence you are editing as shown below, but you want to ensure your sequence is imported as a correct FPS (Frame Per Second) strip.
Blender project is default to Film 24 FPS, but maybe your project is meant to output PAL (25 FPS) or NTSC (29.97 FPS). You don't want to get this wrong~
TIPS: Another suggestion is to put all your assets inside the same folder where you save your *.blend files to keep the relative linking correct.
IMPORTING ASSETS (Video, Audio, Image, Image as Sequence)
You can import the assets by just clicking on Add under the menu and selecting what asset you want to import into the Channels. Shift+A is the hotkey to quickly add elements into Channels.
Video, Audio, or Image Sequences that is added will come as Strip block that appears as ordered layers (Channel). You can specify which channel you want it to be placed from the File Import Menu.
For Audio (sound), it's really simple, Blender will accept WAV files, MP3 files, etc.
For Image, you have two options, either you import a single image or sequence of images. If you select more than one image, it will combine them into a single footage. You can select more than one image by shift clicking, but if you want to import all images in the directory, simply tap A (select all images) and import.
TIPS: More than one images imported will come as a single strip, but you can separate into each separate image strip by selecting Strip - Separate Images (Y).
For Movie, this is also a really simple process, just point into the movie you like to import (AVI, MP4, MOV), it will import the movie footage into the timeline as strip.
Different colour of strips:
Playback the Timeline
To playback the timeline, you can use the Playback button, or Alt+A is the hotkey toggle for playback.
Memory Buffer for Playback
During playback, Blender will automatically buffer the data into memory. First time you playback it will usually buffer the data first, but second time it plays, it is going to load from memory and playback at full speed. You may want to increase the Sequence memory buffer inside User Preferences. It's only set to 256 KB memory by default. You want to increase that depending on how much RAM your computer have.
Go to File - User Preferences. Adjust your Memory Cache Limit for Sequence here.
Scrubbing anywhere
To scrub around on the timeline (or any time related panel), use Left Mouse Button (LMB) and drag to left or right. By default, Audio Scrubbing is turned off. If you want to have Audio to scrub when you LMB drag, activate Playback - Audio Scrubbing inside Timeline menu panel.
Zooming in and out your Channel working area
CTRL + MMB allow you to zoom in and out the channels panel.
Moving Strips
To select and move strips around, you click on any strip using Right Mouse Button (RMB) then press G (grab) and move the footage. You can use RMB and drag, but normally I would RMB to click and G to grab and move any elements.
Selecting more than one strip is possible by holding Shift and RMB click.
Using Left and Right Handle (In and Out of Strip)
You see, each strip has Left and Right handle which you can adjust also just by RMB click and G (grab) and move. Selecting between the handles if you want to select the Strip block itself.
Pressing E not at the exact Left and Right handle also give you the option to drag the handle just by hovering near each end.
Box Select
Marquee select is available by pressing hotkey B, and then drag a box around which elements you want to select as whole. Anywhere where the box touches will be selected. Selected strips will turn into darker colour strip.
Duplicate Strip
You can quickly duplicate any strip by selecting and Shift+D (duplicate hotkey) and drag.
Deleting Strips
To delete strips simply select the strip you want to delete and press Delete. Or officially hotkey X is to delete. You need to Confirm to delete.
NOTE: Remember like any Video Editing package, deleting Strips does not mean you delete your original files in the Hard Drive. All you did is to delete the instance of that data block. Your original files will stay the same untouched.
Cut Strips (Split)
There are two ways you want to cut your Strips, use the hotkeys below:
Watch this YouTube video to be really clear about Cutting Strips:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_Rao0NB0mE
Mute/Unmute Strips
To mute or unmute certain strip, you simply press H (hide). To bring back all, press Alt+H.
REPLACING DATA STRIP
If you like to switch certain Strip data with another data, you can do so by going to Strip Input subpanel (inside Property, click N if you do not see it) and point the Path into the new data sets in your directory. It's a good idea to point to the new data with the same length.
VIDEO STRIP: Simple Cross Fade
You could do Fades by keyframing the Opacity (inside Properly subpanel) of any particular Strip.
Keyframing on any parameter value can be done just by pressing I while hovering on that value. Actually the animation is quite straightforward once you understand.
But, there is another way, which does not require keyframing. Follow the steps below:
1. Firstly, you generate a Color Strip block of just a simple Color. Shift+A (add), Effect Strip, Color.
This Color strip is set to Black color by default, but perhaps you want to fade into certain color, you can change that easily under via the Property panel (N).
2. Set the Strip block so that they are a little bit overlapping each other at different Channel like shown below. The area where they overlap will be where the Cross fade will happen.
Now, all you need to do is to select both 2 strips (Shift + RMB) and then add Effect Strip - Cross.
Your channel will now looks like below. Based on our common understanding of layering, the higher block in the channel will cover the lower channel at the bottom.
Ensure that Blend is set to Replace on the Property Subpanel and now you can have a nice fade from that Color strip into your other Image Sequence or Movie Strip.
3. You can also create Cross fade between 2 videos or image sequences.
AUDIO STRIP: Simple Volume Fade In and Out
For Audio, to make the volume to fade in, you do that by keyframing the Volume parameter. Keyframing is not difficult, you just simply create 2 keyframes, one to key the Volume at 0 and the other to have the Volume at 1 (default volume). Blender will create graph curve that will interpolate the volume in the background.
AUDIO STRIP: Draw Waveform
This option is available inside the Property subpanel. Select your Audio Strip and activate Draw Waveform.
MORE VIDEO EFFECTS
For any of your movie or image sequence Strip block, you can check some available effects available for you. Select your Strip first, and then Shift+A (to add) and select Effect-Strips. Try all the different effects and filter available. Maybe you want to use Glow effects or even Transform and animate your video. There is also Speed control effect to speed up or slow down your video.
Overlay one video on top of another video (a tricky one, but possible and there are few ways to do this).
BLEND: ALPHA OVER ALPHA UNDER
Let say you want to have a setup where you want to have Video or Image Inset on top of another.
This is probably one of the video editing technique that is a little bit advance, but I will show this method to you anyway, because it is actually simple if you know how to do it.
So, for any video you want to inset, you certainly want to Scale down the size first. You do that by using Transform Effects. Do Shift+A (to add) and select "Transform".
Once you do that, there will be effect strip on top of your Video/Image strip. Now, you can Scale, Rotate, Translate and animate your video basically. But you are not finished, you need to turn on Alpha Over and Alpha Under, this is to ensure the Blender understand the video is modified and it will create Alpha (transparent) on top of video below it. Once you set this, your Video Inset is ready.
Remember that when using Effects Strip, watch the Property subpanel (hit N) and experiment with different parameter and settings. You actually have Color Balance adjustment also inside the Property subpanel.
Blend paramater is certainly one that is important key when you are doing layering of one sequence strip on top of another. Similar to Photoshop where you can have different kind of Blender, here it is also you need to consider how one strip will blend into another strip.
PLUGINS
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.4/Manual/Sequencer/Effects/Plugins
Blender by deafult will also render out image sequences as PNG sequence, and without Alpha (you need to set to RGBA if you want alpha channel to render) at the temporary folder called TMP. Just change this under Property panel into what format you want Blender to output it out.
Clicking on Render - Animation will output your final sequence as the format you like. CTRL-F12 is the hotkey to render animation.
That is pretty much what I like to share for basic Video and Audio editing using Blender Video Sequence Editor. Hopefully this post is useful for you. You should now be able to edit, remix and produce some videos using Blender.
My aim for this little post is so that ANYONE with or without knowledge of 3D package --- and/or with little or no Blender background --- can simply download Blender, do some Video Editing and quickly render out or export out a new video clip remix.
Ok, let's get started.
QUICK INTRO
Not long ago, I found Blender Video Editing to be really simple and intuitive to use, and I really want to share this little bit of knowledge to anyone that would like to do video editing using the tool that is freely available for them.
Using Blender VSE, you can quickly do layering and blending of Video, Images and Audio pretty easily, very stable and fast.
The real strength also lies in Blender capability to do the whole 3D production, compositing, and then this part for Video Editing. Every part of production has very unified workflow, shortcuts, and all come together really nicely, I should really praise.
A bit of info, I previously have some experiences in using video editing package like Premiere, Final Cut Pro, and Sony Vegas. I learned and used Premiere and Final Cut pro during college time, but I can't afford the license of each upgrades unless I am really like a full on Video Editor.
Anyways, often times, I also found myself in the situation where I am at different computer and I just want to jump in to do a little bit of video editing. I can do that now easily, as long I have Portable Blender!
Keep in mind that I did not have special training on Blender Video Editor, this is just one of many cases where I just jump straight into it and start figuring things out and writing them. I stop and Google for any kind of additional information I want to add. So it is going to be interesting! Just have a go at it.
INTO BLENDER VIDEO EDITING LAYOUT
For Blender first timers, when you run Blender, you will get the Default Blender 3D View Layout.
Don't worry about this, we will just quickly switch mode to Blender Video Editing layout. Simply click on that layout button on top menu bar.
Now you are inside Video Editing layout, let's take a look around. As any other layout templates, the layout for Video Editing is divided into few useful panels.
A. This is Graph Editor, where you can see the animation you applied into the video/audio as curves.
B. This is the Video Sequence Editor, set as PREVIEW to display what you are editing at that particular frame in timeline.
C. This is (also) Video Sequence Editor, but displaying as SEQUENCE as strips blocks in channels..
D. This is the usual Timeline where you can scrub video/audio in time. Blender default time is 24 frame per seconds (fps).
You may notice that interesting panel, where Video Sequence Editor serves few different functions. Some panels indeed have hybrid functions like this. The interesting thing is that each Panel is connected with other panel somewhat. Blender layout is fully flexible you can quickly split horizontally, vertically and then switch one panel to be a certain panel.
But, I don't want to get into details of Blender UI, we can just leave it like that for now.
PROPERTY SUBPANEL (N)
Each different panel, have special Properties subpanel on the right side. If you toggle N, the Properties side panel with appear. This Properties is useful in giving you information about your selected object you are working on. We will take a look a this later.
You can maximize any panel area by pressing Shift+Spacebar. This is a hotkey toggle, so Shift+Spacebar again will toggle maximize panel and back to original layout.
UPDATE 2012.05.04 (thanks Larry!)
BEFORE IMPORTING ANY ASSETS
To make sure that your Audio and Video track imported correctly match the project timeline, before you import any Audio or Video files, you must first set the Resolution, Aspect ratio, Frame Rate of your project under the Properties panel, on the Default screen layout shown below.
You could do quick Set Render Size based on the current active sequence you are editing as shown below, but you want to ensure your sequence is imported as a correct FPS (Frame Per Second) strip.
Blender project is default to Film 24 FPS, but maybe your project is meant to output PAL (25 FPS) or NTSC (29.97 FPS). You don't want to get this wrong~
 |
| Set Render Size from currently selected Video/Image Strip. |
TIPS: Another suggestion is to put all your assets inside the same folder where you save your *.blend files to keep the relative linking correct.
IMPORTING ASSETS (Video, Audio, Image, Image as Sequence)
You can import the assets by just clicking on Add under the menu and selecting what asset you want to import into the Channels. Shift+A is the hotkey to quickly add elements into Channels.
 |
| Each Panel has useful subpanel Properties on the right side that can be toggled by pressing N. |
Video, Audio, or Image Sequences that is added will come as Strip block that appears as ordered layers (Channel). You can specify which channel you want it to be placed from the File Import Menu.
For Audio (sound), it's really simple, Blender will accept WAV files, MP3 files, etc.
For Image, you have two options, either you import a single image or sequence of images. If you select more than one image, it will combine them into a single footage. You can select more than one image by shift clicking, but if you want to import all images in the directory, simply tap A (select all images) and import.
TIPS: More than one images imported will come as a single strip, but you can separate into each separate image strip by selecting Strip - Separate Images (Y).
For Movie, this is also a really simple process, just point into the movie you like to import (AVI, MP4, MOV), it will import the movie footage into the timeline as strip.
Different colour of strips:
- TEAL GREEN = Audio
- PURPLE = Image
- BLUE = Movie
- YELLOW GREEN = Effect Strips
GENERAL WORKFLOW INSIDE VIDEO SEQUENCE EDITOR LAYERS
Once you have all assets in as Strips Blocks, you can start doing some editing.Playback the Timeline
To playback the timeline, you can use the Playback button, or Alt+A is the hotkey toggle for playback.
Memory Buffer for Playback
During playback, Blender will automatically buffer the data into memory. First time you playback it will usually buffer the data first, but second time it plays, it is going to load from memory and playback at full speed. You may want to increase the Sequence memory buffer inside User Preferences. It's only set to 256 KB memory by default. You want to increase that depending on how much RAM your computer have.
Go to File - User Preferences. Adjust your Memory Cache Limit for Sequence here.
Scrubbing anywhere
To scrub around on the timeline (or any time related panel), use Left Mouse Button (LMB) and drag to left or right. By default, Audio Scrubbing is turned off. If you want to have Audio to scrub when you LMB drag, activate Playback - Audio Scrubbing inside Timeline menu panel.
Zooming in and out your Channel working area
CTRL + MMB allow you to zoom in and out the channels panel.
Moving Strips
To select and move strips around, you click on any strip using Right Mouse Button (RMB) then press G (grab) and move the footage. You can use RMB and drag, but normally I would RMB to click and G to grab and move any elements.
Selecting more than one strip is possible by holding Shift and RMB click.
Using Left and Right Handle (In and Out of Strip)
You see, each strip has Left and Right handle which you can adjust also just by RMB click and G (grab) and move. Selecting between the handles if you want to select the Strip block itself.
Pressing E not at the exact Left and Right handle also give you the option to drag the handle just by hovering near each end.
Box Select
Marquee select is available by pressing hotkey B, and then drag a box around which elements you want to select as whole. Anywhere where the box touches will be selected. Selected strips will turn into darker colour strip.
Duplicate Strip
You can quickly duplicate any strip by selecting and Shift+D (duplicate hotkey) and drag.
Deleting Strips
To delete strips simply select the strip you want to delete and press Delete. Or officially hotkey X is to delete. You need to Confirm to delete.
NOTE: Remember like any Video Editing package, deleting Strips does not mean you delete your original files in the Hard Drive. All you did is to delete the instance of that data block. Your original files will stay the same untouched.
Cut Strips (Split)
There are two ways you want to cut your Strips, use the hotkeys below:
- Soft Cut (K) --> create a cut while keeping the whole strips data
- Hard Cut (Shift+K) --> will actually cut the strip and create a new strip block, there will be no data where you cut.
Watch this YouTube video to be really clear about Cutting Strips:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_Rao0NB0mE
Mute/Unmute Strips
To mute or unmute certain strip, you simply press H (hide). To bring back all, press Alt+H.
REPLACING DATA STRIP
If you like to switch certain Strip data with another data, you can do so by going to Strip Input subpanel (inside Property, click N if you do not see it) and point the Path into the new data sets in your directory. It's a good idea to point to the new data with the same length.
VIDEO STRIP: Simple Cross Fade
You could do Fades by keyframing the Opacity (inside Properly subpanel) of any particular Strip.
Keyframing on any parameter value can be done just by pressing I while hovering on that value. Actually the animation is quite straightforward once you understand.
But, there is another way, which does not require keyframing. Follow the steps below:
1. Firstly, you generate a Color Strip block of just a simple Color. Shift+A (add), Effect Strip, Color.
This Color strip is set to Black color by default, but perhaps you want to fade into certain color, you can change that easily under via the Property panel (N).
 |
| Color Strip can be any color you want. |
 |
| Prepare the overlap for Cross fade. |
Your channel will now looks like below. Based on our common understanding of layering, the higher block in the channel will cover the lower channel at the bottom.
 |
| The Cross effect added at the very top. |
3. You can also create Cross fade between 2 videos or image sequences.
AUDIO STRIP: Simple Volume Fade In and Out
For Audio, to make the volume to fade in, you do that by keyframing the Volume parameter. Keyframing is not difficult, you just simply create 2 keyframes, one to key the Volume at 0 and the other to have the Volume at 1 (default volume). Blender will create graph curve that will interpolate the volume in the background.
AUDIO STRIP: Draw Waveform
This option is available inside the Property subpanel. Select your Audio Strip and activate Draw Waveform.
 |
| The Waveform shown in the Strip Audio block. It is a good idea to enable CACHING on the panel above so that your Audio is buffered into memory and playback smoothly. |
MORE VIDEO EFFECTS
For any of your movie or image sequence Strip block, you can check some available effects available for you. Select your Strip first, and then Shift+A (to add) and select Effect-Strips. Try all the different effects and filter available. Maybe you want to use Glow effects or even Transform and animate your video. There is also Speed control effect to speed up or slow down your video.
Overlay one video on top of another video (a tricky one, but possible and there are few ways to do this).
BLEND: ALPHA OVER ALPHA UNDER
Let say you want to have a setup where you want to have Video or Image Inset on top of another.
This is probably one of the video editing technique that is a little bit advance, but I will show this method to you anyway, because it is actually simple if you know how to do it.
So, for any video you want to inset, you certainly want to Scale down the size first. You do that by using Transform Effects. Do Shift+A (to add) and select "Transform".
Once you do that, there will be effect strip on top of your Video/Image strip. Now, you can Scale, Rotate, Translate and animate your video basically. But you are not finished, you need to turn on Alpha Over and Alpha Under, this is to ensure the Blender understand the video is modified and it will create Alpha (transparent) on top of video below it. Once you set this, your Video Inset is ready.
 |
| Transform Blend = Alpha Over |
 |
| Video/Image Blend = Alpha Under |
Remember that when using Effects Strip, watch the Property subpanel (hit N) and experiment with different parameter and settings. You actually have Color Balance adjustment also inside the Property subpanel.
Blend paramater is certainly one that is important key when you are doing layering of one sequence strip on top of another. Similar to Photoshop where you can have different kind of Blender, here it is also you need to consider how one strip will blend into another strip.
PLUGINS
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.4/Manual/Sequencer/Effects/Plugins
EXPORT / RENDER OUTPUT
By default, Blender will render out at 1920 x 1080 but at 50% of that set resolution. You can see this if you switch to Default 3D View Panel, and check under Properties panel.Blender by deafult will also render out image sequences as PNG sequence, and without Alpha (you need to set to RGBA if you want alpha channel to render) at the temporary folder called TMP. Just change this under Property panel into what format you want Blender to output it out.
Clicking on Render - Animation will output your final sequence as the format you like. CTRL-F12 is the hotkey to render animation.
 |
| Select the format you like to output the file as. I usually export this out as AVI Raw for maximum quality and then I will compress it using FFMPEG. But you could also just render it out from Blender as AVI MP4 compression. |
 |
| Output settings for Video and Audio. |
That is pretty much what I like to share for basic Video and Audio editing using Blender Video Sequence Editor. Hopefully this post is useful for you. You should now be able to edit, remix and produce some videos using Blender.
