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Using Blender to Edit Videos

If any of you want to edit together multiple clips for your final video or add audio to footage (e.g., add a voiceover after the face), or if you are just curious about video editing in general, we thought it would be good to point you to some free video editing options.

Surprisingly, based on a bit of Google research, it seems like the best cross-platform open source video editor right now is probably Blender. www.blender.org

Blender is primarily 3D graphics software, but it has a functioning video editor inside it as well. To create e video editing project, just go to: File->New->Video Editing

You can navigate to the folder with your footage in the source view (the one with file icons in it) and drag the footage onto the timeline.

Video will show up as blue, and audio as a more greenish color (at least that's what it looks like on my computer).

From there, you can find lots of tutorials online that go through how to edit video in Blender. E.g.: This one

Here are some common operations you might want:

  • Cutting/Clipping to footage: move the playhead to where you want to cut your footage, and press 'k'
  • Deleting footage: The Del button, or right click->Delete
  • Change amount of video to play before looping: in the scene panel, under dimensions, you will see Frame Start and Frame End. Make Frame End larger.
  • Changing the Speed of Footage: This tutorial is pretty good