I´m new to Blender and very interested in using it as my primary video editing software, but have been reluctant to switch from Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 because it has some features I couldn´t find in Blender yet. I have 2 questions related to that subject and a third one, more specific:
Do you guys know of any forum, website or the like that focuses exclusively on video editing in Blender?
Do you guys know what the best location would be to find googd tutorials about video editing in Blender? The ones I have found on Youtube are very limited and a lot of times not very comprehensive, lacking for example a clear step-by-step process including the foundations of the software.
Is it possible to edit and render native .vob video files in Blender?
I don’t mean to discourage you from using Blender, but I don’t think the Blender VSE is at the same level as Adobe Premiere. You will be taking a step backwards in video editing. Most people use Blender VSE because they do not have Adobe products. But there is still a lot you can do with Blender’s VSE.
I’m not sure about importing VOB files (mpg2 aren’t they?), lots of media needs to be transcoded before use in Blender. But the main issue there is with the heavy inter frame compression, meaning that Blender finds it hard to perform an edit on a given frame, as the given frame doesn’t exist until you play it back in real time. To overcome this you can produce proxies and timecode reference files to play back better.
Apart from the Open Movies produced by the Blender Foundation, I don’t know of any proffesionals editing with Blender. The VSE tool, while poweful, is not the most straightforward to use. There are many UI issues that other NLEs take for granted. As with all things Blender, there is another way, the Blender way.
There are some good addons (or scripts) available to ease the transition into cutting with the VSE but they don’t make up for a simple editing logic. For example there are no video or audio tracks, media just goes anywhere. You have to retrospectively organise it. Media is not stored with meta data (death nell these days), and tends to be singal use only. That is you have to reload a clip each time you want to use aniother part etc.
So I guess it all depends on what you want to use it for?
If you’re coming from Premiere, you’re more oriented on footage manipulation. For me, Blender is usefull to mix 3d scenes and 2d content, what is more positionning it on the way of After effects. Although Blender is currently oriented to become a “AIO-pipeline” software, Movie clip and Images management are more or less accessories, basicaly used for Sequences Editing purposes (of pre-rendrered scenes) and Textures. Neither it offers direct camera input + all the things pointed by 3pointedit…
Although Blender is a fantastic tool always becoming better, Cinerella seems to be more appropriate as an open source alternative to Première. I can’t be sure it covers all your needs but I allready know it’s able to import VOB files.
I edit VOB files directly inside blender all the time. In fact I’ve used several other pieces of professional software that can’t handle them as well as blender does, so I always cut out of them and head over to blender when I have a vob file.
Ok, not sure why you would want to switch from premier CS6 to Blender if you legally own Premiere, but… There is pretty much nothing you can do in premiere that you can not do in the blender VSE and some freeware tools. The difference is workflow and time to production.
My advice would be to use premiere for the final product and most editing. When you need to get into some serious compositing or 3d work, then maybe visit the vse and see if that workflow does it a little better.
In my opinion, the VSE is not a viable replacement for Premier CS6. It is a viable tool to use in addition to Premiere.
I have Premiere Pro at work but sometimes I use Windows Movie Maker and Blender instead.
There is no button like “rewind the tape and capture all the video on that DV tape” in Premiere. But there is in Windows Movie Maker.
It takes many-many steps in Premiere to do that simple thing. Premiere even stops rewinding when I switch to another application wich is stupid.
Premiere does not recognize image sequence if the number changes in the middle of filename. Blender does recognize such image sequences. An example of file name “cameraname_framename_date”.
Why does one edit a VOB file? It is a DVD-Video only format that supports multiple video streams, multiple audio streams and image based subitle streams.
I ask because I can recommend many professional tools. Both - opensource and commercial.
I can’ speak for the original poster, but as an actor, putting together demo reels means cutting my scenes out of (usually) a bunch of DVDs and assembling them.
Videopad? Demoware, but ok for stringing together clips. But hardly pro. What kind of feature set do you relly want? As many apps have strengths and weaknesses.
