Blender For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

Working with the Video Sequence Editor

The default Video Editing screen layout in Blender is accessible through the Screens datablock in the header or by pressing Ctrl+← three times from the Default screen layout. The large editor across the middle of the layout is a Video Sequence Editor (VSE) in Sequencer view. In this view, you can add and modify sequences, called strips, in time. The numbers across the bottom of the Sequencer correspond to time in the VSE in seconds. The numbers to the left are labels for each of the tracks, or channels, that the strips live in. The upper left area is a Graph Editor, used in this case for tweaking the influence or timing of individual strips' properties. To the right of the Graph Editor is a VSE in Preview view. When you're editing, the footage under the time cursor appears here. At the bottom is a Timeline, which, at first, may seem odd. However, as when animating, the benefit of having the Timeline around all the time is that you can use the Sequencer to edit a specific portion of your production, while still having the ability to scrub the full piece. The playback controls are also handy to have onscreen.

As with the Animation layout (see Chapter 10), I like to make a few tweaks to the Video Editing layout. When I first start editing in Blender's VSE, I'm usually more concerned with importing image sequences and movie clips than I am with ...