Blender is not only an amazing opensource program for creating high-quality 3D art content but also a great video editor. I've put together my notes and created this practical guide on how to use Blender just for video editing purposes. This covers the essential functionalities that would let you produce a well-edited video.

If you haven't installed it yet, go to Blender's download page to download and install it for free.

I arranged the topics in logical order in accordance with Blender's video editing workflow. You can use the table of contents below to jump to a specific topic then press the 'Home' key to go back on top of the page.

  • Setup The Workspace
    • Navigating The Workspace
  • Video Settings
    • Set The Video Resolution
    • Render Frames & Frame Rate
    • Video's Export Settings
  • Importing Videos
    • Adding Videos
    • Identifying The Strips
  • How To Cut The Video Strips
  • How To Move The Video Strips
  • Use Meta Strips
  • Adding Transitions To The Strip
  • Changing The Speed Of A Strip
  • How To Rotate, Scale and Translate The Video Strip
  • How To Add Text
  • How To Add An Image
  • How To Rotate, Scale and Translate The Image
  • Rendering The Video
  • Additional Resources

Setup The Workspace

If you're only using Blender 2.8+ for video editing purposes, first, switch to Blender's video editing workspace by clicking on the plus '+' button right after the last tab and select Video Editing>Video Editing.

Alternatively, you can go to File>New>Video Editing.

This now sets Blender's workspace for video editing.

Navigating the workspace is fairly simple. To move along the Sequencer, click and drag the middle mouse button.

To zoom in and out the Sequencer relative to the timeline, scroll up and down the middle mouse button.

To zoom in and out the Sequencer relative to the channel, hold Ctrl while click + dragging the middle mouse button up and down.

Video Settings

Now that Blender is now set to its video editing workspace, the next thing we need to do is to set up the settings for the final output of our video. These settings can be found in the 'Output Properties' tab.

Set The Video Resolution

Under the Dimensions rollout, we can set the final resolution of the video to be rendered by setting the Resolution X, Y, %, Aspect X, and Y.

The Frame Rate is usually set to 24 fps or 30 fps but I would usually just match whatever the raw video's frame rate is.

We would ideally just leave the % to 100 as we want the Resolution X and Y values we placed to be as is. For Youtube videos, The resolution is usually set to either Resolution X: 1920 px; Y: 1080 or Resolution X: 1280 px; Y: 720. Leave the Aspect X, Y to 1.

Render Frames & Frame Rate

Set the Frame Start and End to define the range of frames to be rendered. These are represented by 2 black vertical lines on the opposing sides of the timeline.

Hovering over & sliding these values will let you see these 2 vertical lines adjust in real-time.

Set The Video's Export settings

Go to Output section of the Dimension tab to define the export settings of the video.

To set where the final video file is to be exported, click the browse button to browse the folder. Once the folder is selected, click Accept. This will now place the final video to that folder.

The File Format section is divided into 2 categories: Image and Movie. File formats under the Image category will export the movie into a set of frame by frame images.

  • Since I usually intend to export a video for Youtube, I would only want to export just one movie file so I would be on the Movie category and pick the FFmpeg video.
  • Under the Video roll out, I'd leave the Video Codec to H.264 and Output Quality to Perceptually lossless.
  • Under the Audio roll out, I'd set the Audio Codec to AAC.

Importing Videos

To import videos in Blender, type in, or paste the path to the folder's location where videos to be edited are located. Press the 'Enter' to display the contents of that folder.

Adding Videos

To add videos to the timeline, one of the ways to do it is by going to the File Browser and clicking, and dragging on the video files to the Sequencer.

Another way is by going to the Add>Movie menu. When the file browser shows up, browse the location of the videos to be edited and click the 'Add Movie Strip' button.

Identifying The Strips

As soon as a video file is dragged to the Sequencer, they will appear as a pair of strips. The blue strip at the top is the video clip and the green strip at the bottom is the audio clip.

How To Cut The Video Strips

The next thing we want to do as soon as the strips are placed on the Sequencer is to cut it. To cut the strip, place the scrubbing tool to a specific point in the strip. Depending on which strip you want to cut, select either the video or audio strip or box select to select both.

With the strip or strips now selected, press 'k' to cut the strip or go to Strip>Split.

How To Move The Video Strips

Select a strip and press 'g' to start moving it around. Alternatively, you can also use click+drag on the strip.

When the arrow turns into a cross, the strip can now be moved around.

Once the strips are cut, you can click and drag the strip to move to a desired location in the Sequencer. To make sure there are no gaps in between strips, drag a strip's endpoint to another strip's endpoint to snap them in place.

Moving the a strip's end to another strip's end highlights the strip indicating the gap in between is closed.

Use Meta Strips

It's highly recommended to use the Meta Strips feature in editing videos. It simply takes 2 or more strips in the Sequencer and combines it as one strip or what Blender calls it, a Meta Strip.

This is highly useful especially when video clips start to pile up in the Sequencer and become harder to manage. To create a Meta Strip, select 2 or more video strip and press 'ctrl+g' or go to Strip>Make Meta Strip.

Once a strip becomes a Meta Strip, the split, move, & other strip functionalities will work the same way as with a regular strip.

The Meta Strip creation can be reversed by selecting that Meta Strip and pressing 'ctrl+alt+g' or by going to Strip>UnMeta Strip. This action puts all the strips involved within the Meta Strip to their previous locations.

Adding Transitions To The Strip

Cutting the videos using the previous method produces abrupt, hard cut transitions between strips. If we want to add a soft fade in and fade out between transitions, Blender has more than one way of doing this.

To add transitions, move one strip on top of the other strip. Make sure the first strip's end frames slightly overlaps the second strip's beginning frames

Select the bottom strip first, then select the second strip on top of it.

With the two strips now selected, go to Add>Transition>Cross. You can also try the other available transitions such as the Gamma Cross and Wipe.

Drag either video strip left and right to adjust the duration of the cross fade transition.

Changing The Speed Of A Strip

To change the speed of a strip, select that strip.

With that strip selected, go to Add>Effect Strip>Speed Control.

With the Speed Control now added, you may now click and drag the ends of the clip to adjust its speed.

How To Rotate, Scale and Translate The Video Strip

To rotate, scale, and translate the video strip, select that video strip.

With the video strip now selected, go to Add>Effect Strip>Transform.

A Transform Strip is placed on top of the video strip.

With the Effect Strip selected, go to the Strip tab to access its properties. From there you will find the control sliders for the Rotate, Scale and Translations.

How To Add Text

To add text on a video, first, place the scrubbing tool where you want the text to appear along the timeline. Then, go to Add>Text.

The text's essential properties such as its size, color, opacity, and placement can be adjusted via its properties tab.

How To Add An Image

To add an image on a video, first, place the scrubbing tool where the image is intended to appear along the timeline.

Then go to, Add>Image/Sequence.

Browse where the location of the image is and select it. With the image now selected, press the 'Add Image Strip' button.

An Image strip now appears where the scrubber is. If you don't see it right away, try to zoom out as it may have landed on another channel.

You can also drag the image from the File Browser window the same way when click-dragging the videos to the Sequencer.

How To Rotate, Scale and Translate The Image

We add rotations, scale, and, translations to an image using the same process as when applying transformations to the video.

Rendering The Video

The video settings and frames that will get rendered are determined by the settings you set in the Dimensions and Output rollout.

To render the video go to Render>Render Animation or press 'Ctrl+F12'

Additional Resources

For additional helpful resources, I highly recommend this 'Getting Started with Blender for video editing' from Christopher Lum Youtube channel where you can find other video editing features for Blender.