Leo:Blender

Blender is a great tool for video sequencing among other things.

This is a wiki of my notes.

Video tutorials

• Blender Video Editing by Mikeycal

My notes

Initial Setup

Properties Section

• Start Blender
• Select View layout to Video Editing
• If you see graph Editor, replace it with Properties window (with "drop-up button")

Properties

Dimensions

• Change the preset to your format, e.g. HDTV 720
• Check the Resolution
• Check the Frame rate. E..g. 30fps for youtube (should match the source video).

Output

• Check the location of the output file
• Set File format (e.g. H.264 or Xvid)
• Select RGB (for color)

Encoding

• Set preset to the same video format
• Bitrate: 6000 is ok
• Select Audio Codec (e.g. AAC or MP3)

Timeline Section

Playback menu:

• + Audio Scrubbing
• + AV Sync
• + Frame dropping

Save as defaults

• Menu -> File -> Save Startup File

System settings

Open: Menu -> File -> User Preferences -> System

• Sequencer / Clip Editor:
  • Prefetch frames: 500 (later versions may not have this setting any more)
  • Memory Cache limit - set to reasonable memory size in gigs: e.g. 10G out of 16G total RAM

Sequencer

• Right click selects a stream
• Home key zooms to the whole (project) view
• S - sets start frame. E - sets end frame
• Box select: Press B, then draw a rectangle over the target strips
  • Shift B - selects and zooms to the selection
• Grab: G - grabs the selection and can move to different channel or time point
  • G, X moves only in X azes. Y restricts to Y axes.
  • Shift while moving strips slows down the movement - better precision.

Add media:

• Add media: Sequencer Menu -> Add -> Movie...
  • Make sure the frame rate matches.
  • To match the size for the whole movie, select the strip, then go to Sequencer-Menu -> Strip -> Set Render Size

Cuts:

• Soft cut: K (menu-strip-cut). Can move handles left-right to change the cut boundaries.
• Hard cut: Shift+K
• PageUp - PageDown takes you to the previous/next cut

Combining resolutions:

• Select the largest resolution strip for the final resolution
• The other strip: in properties check "Image offset" to keep the aspect ratio.

Hiding strips:

• press "H" or menu -> Strip -> Mute Strips

Blending

• Top strips will take all screen, unless you select "Blend" type in strip properties, e.g.
  • Alpha over - for images with transparent backgrounds
  • Over Drop - for overlay videos

Fade in/out:

• Sequencer-menu -> Add -> Effect Strip -> Color
• Select the color strip, then the video strip
• Sequencer-menu -> Add -> Effect Strip -> Gamma Cross

Crossfading sounds

• Select the audio strips
• Sequencer-menu -> Strip -> Crossfade sounds

Wipe transition

• Select the video strips
• Sequencer-menu -> Add -> Effect Strip -> Wipe
  • Can select the input in the Wipe stripe properties and blur the lines

Correcting color, hue, etc

• Select strip, then in strip properties go to Modifiers. Make changes.
• Better to add adjustment layer and do the corrections there:
  • Sequencer-menu -> Add -> Effect Strip -> Adjustment Layer

Meta Strips

Make meta strip:

1. Select multiple target strips (with box select)
2. [Ctrl+G] Sequencer-Menu -> Strip -> Make Meta Strip