VSE/Sequencer: hide/change strip labels; show video thumbnails

Strips in the sequencer view of the video sequence editor have labels like “Hvideo 2.044: //…/…/…/…/Documents/Video/Raw Footage/MVI_7427.MOV | 19941”, which as best I can tell is “NAME: PATH | LENGTH_IN_FRAMES”.

Can I change what is displayed as the label on the strip? It’s annoying because it’s overlapping the waveforms for audio files that I’m using for synchronizing multiple cameras. Also, it’s just visual noise I’d like to be rid of. Ideally I’d like to be able to show only the name I’ve assigned it and to sometimes show nothing at all.

Relatedly, is it possible to get thumbnails of the video in the strip? So there might be a shot of frame 1 at the start of the strip, and assuming that at the current zoom that frame ended up being 10 seconds wide, it would be followed by a shot of the frame at 10 seconds, and so on. Actual tiny footage would in many cases be far more enlightening than any label I might give the strip.

Finally, the path shown in the label is in the form “//…/…/…/…/Documents/Video/Raw Footage/MVI_7427.MOV” Which is odd since the video is in the same directory as the .blend file. I think it’s just going up a few directories to immediately redescend into the same directories. Is there a way to remove the seemingly meaningless "…/"s and their paired directories.

Yes i have the same problem. Im amazed its not fixed, when doing voices it simply gets in the way. If there is a way to remove it iwould like to know.

// aren’t they to show relative path?

Thumbnails, don’t exist in Blender VSE at all.

I gather that the path is always on to show you the media filename, this would make version tracking easier, but I agree you should be able to mute the strip name or at least the path. As a hack could you stick the media into a meta strip. Of course this won’t allow you to see the waveform, sorry.

I strongly suggest that you subscribe to the BF_Funboard (functionality board) email list and propose these changes there.
http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-funboard
Due to Gooseberry there is a lot of active development on the VSE at the moment.

3pointEdit: Thanks for the answers and suggestions!

It proves to be a small world: I’m experimenting with video stabilization, and I’ve been watching your video “Blender VSE tutorial: Stabilise and proxies.”

Hmmm, I need to make a new one of those, because:
a/ it’s not a good example of stabilising (no offset function illustrated)
b/ the tracker has changed a lot lately.