Blender, the well known 3D application, has a Video Sequencer Editor (VSE) that allows for some video editing. It ain’t easy and intuitive using it, but it’s there. For those who can’t find any other free HD-capable editor for their system, it might prove to be a good solution. I am a newbie in Blender usage, but by spending quite a few hours experimenting and reading the manual/tutorials online, I got a good grasp of how its basics work, so I thought I share that knowledge. You will need a modern PC, 1 GB of RAM, 1280×1024 monitor resolution or more, and a 3-button mouse with a wheel.

Preparation (needs to be done only once)

Install the latest stable version of Blender. Download the right pre-compiled package of plugins for your architecture and unzip these files somewhere easily accessible (e.g. either the Blender folder, or your user folder, or your video folder).

Load Blender maximized. On the top of the application notice the first drop-down menu and in there select “SR:4 - Sequence”. This will put your Blender layout in a video editing layout. Grab the edge of that whole menu (the gray menu strip across the top of your Blender window) at the point where the cursor becomes a double-arrow and push it down. A secret window compartment will show up. Click “View & Controls” and change the “Select with:” from “right mouse” to “left mouse”. Close back that compartment.

On the bottom of Blender click “Do Sequence”. Then hit the very last button on the bottom right that reads “HD” (that is, if your footage is HD, modify to use the appropriate resolution for your footage if you don’t use full HD). For “frs/sec” select 30 for NTSC or 25 for PAL or 24 for film. On the “Game framing settings” select “stretch” and “pageflip”, and change the 800×600 resolution listed there to the one of your monitor (for example, I personally use a 1680×1050 monitor and that’s what I put there).

On the menu bar above, click “Playback” and make sure that “set frames/sec” is the same as the frame rate you set earlier. On that menu also select “Sequencer Windows”. On the right side of that menu change the “End:” number to 9999 and then click to select the “playback and sync with audio…” volume icon on the far right.

On the menu bar above that, click “Add”, “Movie and Audio HD”, and navigate to the folder that you usually store your video. From the main menu on the top menu bar select “Save default settings”. Now say “Cancel” to the “open movie” dialog. Re-save the “default settings”. What we did here was to force Blender to “remember” your movie folder for future usage. Blender saves a “.B.blend” file for these user settings under a hidden folder called “.blender”, so if you ever upgrade your OS or move ot another PC, you can just move that file over and Blender will re-remember your settings.

Click for a larger view

The Video Sequence Editor

Click again “Add” and “Movie and Audio HD”, and load a video clip. In Blender’s terminology the clips/events in the timeline are called “strips” and the audio/video tracks are called “channels”. By default, Blender imports audio and video separately, so if you want to move both at the same time so you don’t lose sync, you must SHIFT+click both of them and then press “G” on your keyboard. Now both strips are movable in the timeline at the same time. To delete a strip, select it and press “X”. To cut the strip at the current timeline cursor press “K”. You can “Undo” an action with CNTRL+Z. For more operations click the “Strip” menu below the timeline.

If your footage is interlaced (has jaggies) and you want to edit in progressive mode, select the video strip with the mouse, and press “N”. A properties window will open, where you can click “FilterY”. On the same little properties window you will also find the “reverse” option if you want to playback the video backwards. If you don’t want to do that for each and every clip in your timeline, edit in interlaced mode, and export in a progressive format at the end (if this is supported by the exporting codec).

Right-click anywhere in the gray background to move the “timeline cursor” — the change will reflect in the top-right window which is the “video preview” window. If you can’t view the whole video picture in the preview window, simply use your mouse wheel to make the preview fit the window. The wheel of the mouse is an important tool on Blender. For example, click the gray timeline that has your strips in it and move the mouse wheel. Then click the mouse wheel and move the mouse. Or press CNTRL+click-wheel-button to see what that does in the timeline. So next time you don’t know how to do things as there are no menu items for everything, try the mouse buttons and wheel, with CNTRL, SHFT and ALT buttons. Blender is very shortcut oriented.

Now, try to open a second movie strip. Place it in the Blender timeline above or below the first one. Unlike on other editors, I don’t recommend placing clips next to each other because they don’t “snap” together (at least not without using weird shortcuts). So place the new strips towards the end of the previous strips, but on different tracks/channels. The strips that are towards the bottom have priority in rendering if they overlap.

If you don’t want to do the mistake of un-syncing audio and video by mistake, you can select both strips with SHFT, click the “Strip” menu and select “Make meta strip”. This will force Blender to see your audio and video strips as a single entity. If you want later on to make more editing in it, select that meta strip, then “Strip” and then you select “Enter/Exit meta strip”. This will put you in a new virtual timeline where only that meta strip’s strips will be visible and editable. You can then press again the “Enter/Exit meta strip” to exit to the regular timeline where all your strips and meta-strips live happily together.

If you want to do slow-motion of fast-motion, select the little arrow on the sides of each strip and drag it left or right. A “ghostly” strip is left behind to show you how big the strip was originally, in case you ever want to put it back to its normal playback mode. Finally, if you want to select lots of strips at once, click “Select” menu, “Border select” and then drag the mouse around how many strips you want selected.

For background music in addition to another audio track (e.g. narration), use the iPO curve editor (explained below) to change the volume of each strip. This way you can blend two different audio tracks. As for other audio options, go to the panel at the bottom and click the last toolbar icon, the one that has the tooltip of “Sound block buttons”.

Save your video project regularly, as Blender doesn’t ask if you want to save it if you press “quit”. It also crashes sometimes with HD files, so better safe than sorry.

The Effect plugins and the Ipo Curve Editor

The way you add a video plugin/effect on Blender is this. Select the video you want, and then press “Add”, “Effect” and then the one you want. If you choose “Plugin” from that menu you can navigate to the place you saved the plugins your downloaded at the very beginning of this article. Each effect will show up as a new strip on top or below your video strip. Some effect strips need to be above and some above the main video strip in order to work — experiment with each. You can also select these effect strips and press “N” to bring up their properties window, if they have one.

If you want to do a transition effect you place the second video strip on a channel/track atop the first video strip, but not aligned. Only about 1-2 seconds of each clip should be vertically aligned. Then, you select an Effect again and you place it in the middle track of the videos strips. If you start moving one of the video strips, you will see that the effect strip will become bigger/smaller too, as the effect strip is the binding force between the two video strips now.

As noted above, some effects have their properties panel by pressing “N”. However, some of them can be controlled via the Ipo Curve Editor, at the top left of Blender. The black rectangle border represents the currently selected strip in the timeline. So, select an effect strip or an audio strip and then press CNTRL+right-mouse-click somewhere in the iPo editor. Do this again some more at different points. This will create a waveform effect that will make the audio strip’s volume fluctuate throughout the timeline, or make the effect’s strength weaken. Think of it as keyframe editing for effects.

The playback Timeline and Extended Editing

Below the editing timeline there is smaller one. This controls the playback of the video and creates new markers. Make sure the “End:” value on that menu has the same number in it as the last frame of the whole Blender timeline. Otherwise, when you try to play back your timeline, or even when you export, Blender will stop at that specified frame and won’t render/playback the whole timeline.

Now, as to how to add things like text and graphics, you need to load your GIMP, create the text as transparent PNGs (at the video project size), and then import those to Blender. If you want animation, rotation, split screens, scrolling credits etc, then you will have to sit and learn the rest of Blender — the 3D part of Blender. It won’t be easy, but at least you would know that your text and effects can’t be matched by After Effects or any other commercial video editor (text tutorials here and here). When you do create the 3D scene with Blender in one of its other modes (the non-video editing mode), you bring it into the timeline by pressing “Add” and then “Scene”.

Exporting with Blender

The exporting is done by the two last blocks of buttons on the bottom of Blender. From the drop down codec menu select FFmpeg. When you do that, two new tabs appear, “Video” and “Audio”. In there, you can select what codecs you want. For example, for h.264, select Quicktime Format, H264 Codec, and a bitrate that is suitable for the resolution of your video (e.g. 3 mbps for widescreen DV, 5 mbps for 720p, 10 mbps for 1080p, etc). On the Audio tab select AAC when you export as Quicktime h.264 and click the “multiplex” button if/when it’s offered (otherwise audio is ignored in the exporting process).

There are other exporting options too, e.g. the lossless Huffyuv AVI codec, XViD etc. Remember, some of these codecs are not de-interlacing automatically, and so some of your exports might end up being full of jaggies if you haven’t de-interlaced the strips one by one in the timeline as I mentioned above.

So, when you have selected your exported settings, go to the block of buttons on the left of the exporting options, make sure “Do Sequence” is selected, and then press “ANIM”. This will encode the video and export it in the /tmp/ folder somewhere (unless you put it to save it elsewhere in the block of buttons on the bottom left of Blender).

The future

The new version of Blender, v2.46, is coming soon and there is some rework of the FFmpeg support, there is Proxy support if your PC is not fast enough for HD editing (this uses small video copies to edit while the final export will use the high resolution versions of your video), while the strip’s “properties” dialog that we were bringing up above by pressing “N”, will now be as part of the bottom half of the Blender window, after you press that new movie icon in the toolbar (you’ll know when you see it ;). There is also snapping between strips if you select a strip, press “G” and then keep pressing CNTRL to snap it to another element in the timeline. More info here.

I would like to see a global de-interlace button in the export settings just so we don’t have to de-interlace manually each clip in the timeline, faster M2T and MTS/M2TS editing support (M2T editing is currently very slow compared to other editors on the same PC), a mouse context menu that list basic operations for the timeline strips and the iPo curve editor, and ability to change the transparency of a video strip by using the iPo curve editor. Then, we are talking business.

Additional reading: Blender’s VSE manual, and another tutorial.

As you know, I help my fellow videographers by writing exporting tutorials for Vimeo/PS3/XBoX360. These are extremely popular, so I keep doing them. Today, I thought: “why don’t I download the trial of Canopus Edius Neo in order to create a tutorial for this fine editor too?”

And so I did. I filled up their long form in order to get access to their trial versions. I had to give up my privacy by filling up my home address (which I later removed because of what is transcribed below). But I did so, in order to serve my readers. And I downloaded and installed it (I told it to not install .NET and DirectX as I am always up to date with such updates through the official channel). I got baffled that it KILLED both my Firefox and Outlook Express while it was installing itself, long before it would ask me if I want to reboot the computer or not. I was in the middle of a 350 MB download when Canopus’ installer brutally killed my Firefox and the download (which was not resumable). But I thought, ok, whatever, I will give it the benefit of the doubt.

So, I used Edius for about 20 minutes, just enough to figure it out and create the tutorial. I even thought it looked cool as it recognized my dual screen setup automatically and arranged itself on it. In fact, I found it so cool-looking, that I even snapped a picture of it.

At some point, I wanted to see if the frame rate of the test.wmv file that I created via Edius was correct, so I load Vegas Platinum 8.0d (while Edius was also loaded). KABOOM. Neither Vegas Platinum or Pro would now load! The error message I would get during load is: “Failed to initialize the common language runtime engine. Please install the .NET Framework (download is available from Windows Update).” and then “Error 0×8013150a (message missing)”.

I have installed a number of things on my XP machine and NOTHING ever broke Vegas. But Edius did! In fact, it has completely messed up my .NET installation! Even after removing Edius from my machine, .NET was broken and Vegas would still not load!

I thought I should just re-install .NET, right? Well, not so fast. I download the .NET 3.5 redistributable, but it fails:
[04/19/08,18:12:39] Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0SP1 x86: [2] Error code 1603 for this component means “Fatal error during installation.”
[04/19/08,18:12:39] Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0SP1 x86: [2] Setup Failed on component Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0SP1 x86
[04/19/08,18:12:39] WapUI: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0SP1 x86 is not installed.

So, I go to download v3.0-SP1 which supposedly includes all previous versions. This time I get:
[04/19/08,18:19:15] Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0a: [2] Error: Installation failed for component Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0a. MSI returned error code 1603
[04/19/08,18:19:19] WapUI: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0a is not installed.

So, I download 2.0-SP1, as the 2.0a version is NOT available anymore! I have no choice! Again, I get this:
[04/19/08,18:12:35] Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0a: [2] Error: Installation failed for component Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0a. MSI returned error code 1603
[04/19/08,18:23:40] Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0a: [2] Error: Installation failed for component Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0a. MSI returned error code 1603
[04/19/08,18:23:43] WapUI: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0a is not installed.

Now, this felt gruesome and very depressing. It seems that I have lost my main machine, my video editing PC. I am one step away from getting ready to call the product manager of Edius on Monday and asking him for a new PC (not that I expect such a thing, but it gets the point across). My various official .NET installations were very healthy for years now, but Edius took it all away in a single afternoon.

Thankfully, I come across this tool. It’s a third party, dangerous tool. But I have no alternative, I have to try it, as my last resort. It completely removes .NET and then let’s you re-install one by one .NET 2.0-SP1, 3.0-SP1, and 3.5 without dependency hell. Thankfully it worked, and I got my machine back: Vegas now loads.

I will never, ever, install a Canopus application again on my PC. And if anyone from that company is listening: I want my account removed from your computers. I don’t want to ever get a single spam from you in the future.

If you are using Canopus Edius Neo/Pro to edit your HD footage, here’s how to export for Vimeo/PS3/XboX360 in 720p HD.

Nine months ago I wrote a post about the 12th Cylon. In there, I presented my opinion that either Baltar or Cally would be the last Cylon.

Now the writers are showing Baltar on a different light: that of the sidekick one, who’s there to get the plot rolling and be the character that brings together the Cylons and the Humans — for better or worse. Similar to what Locke is for “Lost” pretty much.

Because of that, I think the last Cylon is Cally. The reasons why I believe so are:
1. She had a child with a Cylon, while Helo’s and Boomer’s child (Hera) was supposed to be “the only” child among humans and Cylons that could ever be conceived and that’s why it was “special”. This means her child holds lesser importance than Hera, and this could be an indication that she is a Cylon.
2. Cally could not sleep after the nebula, the same time the other four Cylons were hearing music. She’s also affected, but differently.
3. The writers said that the last Cylon is not included in this promo picture. They also said that Laura, Baltar, Helo, Starbuck, and the two Adamas are not Cylons. This leaves Cally, Dee, Admiral Cain, Romo Lampkin, Gaeta, Billy, Ellen Tigh, Tom Zarek, Kendra Shaw, and maybe Crashdown.

So, if I am not completely off base here, the writers are trying to pull a “Lost”-like WTF, having Cally waking up from the dead (not resurrected on a ship). Her story is more recent and more relevant than resurrecting, let’s say, Billy. Having Dee or Gaeta as Cylons is a bit too much of a boring choice. They would be the definite choices if this was a TV show in the ’80s, where everything was predictable.

We’ll see in the next few weeks.

Madonna’s new album, “Hard Candy”, comes out in a few days. There is a preview of 30 seconds of each of her new songs over at VH-M (not sure how legal this is, but it features previously unreleased pictures and a personal message from Madonna, so I would assume it is an official site).

So, for this album Madonna supposedly went hip-hop. However, with the exception of her first single “4 Minutes”, when listening to these songs, it’s not hip-hop that I am hearing: it’s early ’80s disco/funk. You know, these cheap pop songs of the early ’80s that were the only things that survived the disco era of the ’70s. The kind of music you would hear in clubs in Greece at the time, and would appear in the cheap straight-to-VHS Greek comedies of the time. Now, this doesn’t mean that the album is that bad. In fact, it’s pretty nostalgic and has nice melodies. However, this is like saying that you are going to eat the peanut butter you were forced-fed by your grandmother as a kid, just because you want to remember your childhood and not because you like peanut butter. It’s “liking” for all the wrong reasons. Having said that, I will be buying the record, as I do like Madonna’s sound.

Based on these previews (that I’ve listened a number of times so far), my favorite songs are “Devil Wouldn’t Recognize You” and “Miles Away”. These two songs are indeed miles away from anything else in the rest of the album. On the second tier, I like “4 Minutes”, “Give It 2 Me” (her second single), and “Dance 2Night”. The rest are pretty yawwwwn…

Speaking of Madonna. I remembered a pretty embarrassing moment from my childhood. It was summer of 1985 (I was 12), and “Like a Virgin” was in its heyday. All girls in my age were infatuated with Madonna’s look and style. My cousin’s uncle arrived from Australia to visit for a few days. As my english were almost non-existent at the time, I went on and asked him: “There is this nice song we hear on the radio. What ‘like a virgin’ means?“. The guy gasped. After taking a big breath, he said that he is not familiar with the word.

It took me another 2 years to find out what the word “virgin” meant. And when I did, my first thought was: “FUCK“. How ironic.

Before asking a basic question about video editing or camera usage on a forum, or via email, first read the fucking manual. If your answer is not there, then google your problem. And if you are getting nowhere, then, and only then, email others or post on a forum. Have respect for other people’s time by doing your homework first.

This is not to say that I don’t enjoy helping people regarding video (actually, this is my primary “job” lately), but when I repeatedly get silly super-basic questions that are covered in the manual, or questions that are SO specific that if you try it by yourself you will find the answer more easily than I would, it’s just disheartening.

I can manage with video editing and encoding techniques and various utilities because I researched and experimented all night long, not because I was born with the knowledge. The least you could do is to at least read the manual.

If you are a late bird like I am, you probably have seen these “Girls Gone Wild” informercials on cable TV. This is a reality soft-erotic DVD where it shows young girls “going wild” and do crazy things. Well, I never really “got” this DVD. What’s the point of it? Why would I wanna watch stupid young women doing stupid things?

But I gave the product the benefit of the doubt, thinking that I might feel differently if there was such a DVD with men, targeting women. So tonight, I saw this other informercial, “Guys Gone Wild”. It involved the same kind of stupidity and unnecessary nudity, but with college guys instead. I hated it just as much.

And this kept me thinking: even a third rate porn movie has more practical value than these (arguably popular) “reality” DVDs. Your IQ must be lower than 50 if you find these DVDs entertaining.

So, the first time we made love. No, not my first time (there is nothing worth blogging about it), but the first time JBQ and I made love: it felt so right. For the first time in my life I didn’t feel guilty, or dirty, or used, for having sex. It felt just right. And I cried.

Thanks to Stefan for the link of the big-time director James Cameron interview at Variety:

“4K doesn’t solve the curse of 24 frames per second.”
“I would vastly prefer to see 2K/48 frames per second as a new display standard, than 4K/24 frames per second. This would mean shooting movies at 48 fps, which the digital cameras can easily accommodate.”
“I’ve run tests on 48 frame per second stereo and it is stunning. The cameras can do it, the projectors can (with a small modification) do it. So why aren’t we doing it, as an industry?”

Cameron answers his own question towards the end of his interview here.

That’s where the copyright law and myself are clashing. There are a few things in life that should simply be either cheap, or free. Education is one of them. Healthcare is another.

I find it disgusting having publishers sue schools. But you say, “most schools are private, commercial entities”. Yes, they are (at least in the US). But this doesn’t mean that you will have to strip students of knowledge, who have already paid a large sum to the school itself anyway and he/she’s out of money already.

The solution is exactly the same as the one I discussed about movies/music a few weeks ago. You have a centralized service where schools can license ANY work for really cheap, or pay a monthly fee, to license part of a work and then distribute that to their students. The distribution allowance should be covered in the student’s tuition.

Anyways, education should not be impacted by the copyright law that much, even if it stresses the Fair Use doctrine. While the Greek schools are not that great compared to the west European ones, at least education is ranging from free to really cheap. And nobody gives a rat’s ass about copyright on books when it comes to education, exactly because it is considered a higher goal for everyone, education is a priority. Many times I have talked with sarcasm and bitterness about modern Greeks’ elitism because of their glorious ancient past, but damn, one good thing that have come out of it is total priority on education. It’s part of the culture. My parents lived on beans so I could go to college. Over here, education is just another form of business, and as such, it’s treated as business. Hence the lawsuits flying left and right and the unrealistic tuition fees.