Video Editing#

Blender comes with a built-in video editor capable of assembling movie clips, image sequences, sound effects and music into a finished movie file.

Watch this video to learn the basics, and use the written annotations below the video to confirm your understanding and to quickly find what you're looking for later.

00:00 New Video Editing File#

To configure the user interface to be convenient for video editing: File->New->Video Editing...

This will give you two workspaces: Video Editing and Rendering.

01:30 Adding Clips#

Add->Movie

or

Use the File Browser in the upper left.

Note: The author brings in a video clip with the frame rate 29.98 frames per second. This is NOT our frame rate. We will be using 24 or 23.976 frames per second.

02:09 Basic Transformation Commands#

Select a video clip and press

Command	Result
K	Cut the selected video clip at the location of the time bar.
G and then Move your Mouse	Move the selected video clip.
G and the Move your Mouse	Trim the end of the video clip (if you have selected one of the ends).
X	Delete the selected video clip.
H	Hide (disable) the selected video clip.
Alt H	Un-Hide (enable) the selected video clip.

03:45 Alpha Over#

Select a clip that is above another clip.
Add->Effect Strip->Transform
Select the Transform strip.
Change the Blend Mode to Alpha Over.

05:44 Transitions (Cross-Fades)#

Put your time bar at the start of your where you want your fade.
Set your opacity to 0.0.
Press I to set a keyframe on the opacity.
Put your time bar at the start of your where you want your fade.
Set your opacity to 1.0.
Press I to set a keyframe on the opacity.

06:19 Slow Motion#

Select a video clip.
Add->Effect Strip->Speed Control.
Select the end of your video clip and make it longer for slow-motion or short for fast-motion.

07:13 Music#

Audio clips have a Volume property.
Press I to set keyframes on the Volume if you want to animate the volume level over time.

07:51 Text#

Add->Text

The author was using a version of Blender where the ability to change Fonts was temporarily missing. It's back now!
Use different Fonts by clicking the Open button by the Font property.
On a Mac, your basic Fonts will be in /Library/Fonts
If you change your File Browser to Thumbnail View you'll see a preview of the Font before you open it.

The author talks about making custom titles in a tool like Photoshop or GIMP or Krita as though it's a bad thing. I'm not sure why he uses that tone because most animators are going to want to make their own custom titles rather than just using a font. After all the work of making an animated film from scratch, why not make a nice custom title as well!

10:30 Exporting your Final Edit#

Press f12 (On a Mac you have to hold the fn key to access the f12 key) to Render a test frame.

We will use a resolution of 1920x1080 at 100% for our final exports.

Please Note: The author's frame rate is 29.97. This is NOT our frame rate. We will be using 24 frames per second.

The author pronounces ffMPEG by spelling out all of the letters. It's normally pronounce ffm-PEG (where you pronounce the word peg).

Use the Quicktime container unless you know what you're doing.

Use the MP3 audio codec.

Choose a destination and a name for your final export.

Render->Render Animation...

Congratulations! You've exported a video from Blender.