Hello YouTube, Mikeycal here.
And this is video number 18 in my series on utilizing blender as a video editor.
Now, in the previous video, I showed you guys how you could optimally configure your output
video for YouTube.
And, in today's video, we're going to be doing something that is probably the most complicated
part of doing video editing.
And that is, using keyframes.
And, I just want to let you guys know that this is one of those things that...
It seems really complicated, when you don't anything about it and your just trying to
figure it out.
But, once you have put it into context, and you have utilized keyframes for just one purpose,
suddenly, it becomes really obvious how this works.
So, let's get started.
Now the first thing that I want to do is...
I want to change my layout a little bit.
Let's go up to this little triangular set of lines here.
Do you see them?
Now, if you actually cover your mouse cursor over that, you'll get a cross-hair.
And what that cross-hair means is...
We can now click our left mouse button and drag to the left.
And it will make a replica of the window that we actually dragged from.
So you can see, if we let go of our left mouse button, we now have 2 properties windows.
Let me show you guys first, just in case you accidentally made to many windows, and you
want to delete them.
You can simply delete one of these windows by going back up to the triangular shaped
lines, getting the cross-hair, clicking your left mouse button, and dragging to the right.
And you'll notice that there's this arrow here.
And that means, take up this space.
Let's let go, and it returned it to just one property window.
But let's bring that back.
So, let's click our left mouse button, pull over.
OK.
Now, I want each of these to be...
I want this one to be a dope sheet editor and this one to be a graph editor.
Let's first actually pull this to the right.
I'm going to click on my left mouse button - pull it to the right.
It's going to take up this space.
There we go...
And we'll even this out too.
About there.
About half way.
And we got to go up to here.
This little drop down.
And, we're going to make this one the Dope Sheet Editor.
So click on Dope Sheet with your left mouse button.
And now we have a Dope Sheet.
And click up here to get... and select Graph Editor.
And there we go...
We now have our Dope Sheet Editor over here and our Graph Editor over here.
Now what I always like to do is...
Always zoom out as much as possible.
So, hover your mouse over the Dope Sheet time line area and hit your Home button.
And hover over the Graph right here and hit your Home button.
And hover over the Timeline down here and hit your Home button.
And if you haven't already, hit you Home button here...
I actually like to be able to see my frame range.
So I actually do scroll down.
Just so I can see that...
only for the Sequencer.
So what exactly are Keyframes?
Well, Blender allows us to designate a starting and a ending Keyframe for a specific property
of each of our strips.
So that we can automatically transition from a starting property value to an ending property
value.
Simply by inserting a value for the starting point and a value for the ending point.
And Blender automatically knows that we are trying to transition.
So it automatically gives us the values of all the inbetween frames.
So, an example of this would be fading out our audio.
What we would do to fade your audio out.
Would be...
We would select a frame where we would want to start our audio fade.
We would set it to full volume.
Which it is set to by default.
And we would insert a Keyframe there.
Then we would go to the end of our video, at the last frame.
And we would set the last frame to a volume setting of 0.
And we would insert an ending Keyframe there.
Now Blender will see that we have a Keyframe range and that there are inbetweens.
And it will automatically create a decreasing volume setting for each of the inbetween frames.
So that it will smoothly go from full volume to 0 volume.
Creating a perfect audio fade out.
So, let me actually show you guys that process specifically.
That's the best way to learn - just to show you.
So I'm going to just select a starting frame, that we're going to start our audio fade out.
And, I'm going to go and right click on our audio strip.
Because that is the strip that we're going to be inserting a Keyframe into one of the
properties.
So we only need to select the audio strip.
Now let's go over to our properties, on the right for the audio strip.
And we're going to go to the volume.
Right here you can see that it's set to 1.
1 means 100% volume.
They speak in 0 - 1 instead of 0 -100.
So, just get used to that...
So, our starting volume should be full volume.
So it should be 1.
So all I'm going to do is hover my mouse cursor over the volume property, and I'm going to
press the "i" button on my keyboard.
And the "i" button means Insert Keyframe.
And you'll notice that, as soon as I did that, the volume actually turned yellow and it also
placed a Keyframe up here in our Dope Sheet.
And it placed a Keyframe on our Graph.
Showing that the value is equal to 1.
Because, as you can see, the way the Graph Editor works is...
The "X" value is our frame range over time - as we go forward in our movie.
And the "Y" value is exactly that...
It represents a property value.
So, you can see that it actually placed the Keyframe at the 11,139 frame of our video.
And it placed it with a value of 1.
Which is full volume.
And if you actually click this little drop down right here, you can actually see that
it actually shows that we have a volume Keyframe inserted.
Now you can also see the volume Keyframe in the Dope Sheet by clicking on this little
triangle right here and expanding.
And it shows the volume Keyframe right there.
But I actually like to keep this one collapsed because you'll see when it's actually expanded,
that we actually see the same exact Keyframe 4 times and I just want to see it once.
It's much easier for us to manipulate later.
So, Let's actually insert our ending Keyframe so that Blender can take our starting and
ending Keyframe and automatically create this audio transition for us.
So I'm going to select the last frame in our audio strip by going down to the controls,
down here, and clicking this jump button - that jumps to the last frame in our frame range.
And, when we go over to the volume property, over here, you'll see that it's now green.
And that's Blender's way of telling us that this audio strip's property has previously
had a Keyframe inserted into it.
So, what we want to do now.
Is we want to first set our volume for this Keyframe to 0.
Because this is the ending point.
And we want it to end at no volume.
Now, we hold our cursor over the volume property, and we hit our "i" button on our keyboard
to insert Keyframe.
And you notice that it turned yellow again.
And you can also see that it has a second Keyframe inserted here.
And you can see one over here.
And let's actually make this easier to see.
Let's hold our mouse cursor over the Dope Sheet and hit our Home button.
And let's hold our mouse cursor over the Graph Editor and hit our Home button.
And now look at this curve that it's create for us...
To create a smooth transition.
And, look at how we can see the frame range of this transition.
It starts, approximately, at 11,143 and it ends somewhere around 11,761.
OK.
So, the reason why I like to use the Dope Sheet and the Graph Editor, is because, if
I want to shrink the range of this transition, I can simply do it by right clicking on the
starting point, hitting my "G" button, and then pulling to the right.
And if you look at the Graph at the right, it's actually showing us how it's changing
that curve.
So this is going to actually make the audio fadeout much shorter.
So this is the easiest way to actually really just shrink it over time.
Whatever our transition is...
Now, Let's actually return that...
I'm going to hit "G" again and pull it back.
Now let's talk about how we can manipulate and change the way that our transition happens
by using the Graph Editor.
Now, you'll notice that we actually have our inserted Keyframes in the Graph Editor and
that Blender has created a curve for us that will transition the volume setting from 1
to 0 - down here.
But, you can actually change things on the fly.
We can actually right click on our Inserted Keyframe, and hit our "G" button.
And we can move it around to a different starting point.
Now you'll notice, if you look over at the Dope Sheet, that it's actually dragging it
left and right.
Now the reason I like to use the Dope Sheet for actually changing the frame range is that...
It's just easier.
It kind of limits it to only changing the frame range.
Whereas, in the Graph Editor, It's kind of changing the frame range and the value at
the same time.
And if I want to make sure that it doesn't actually you know...
It sticks to one of my settings.
Like the value setting or the frame range setting.
I can use my constraint buttons.
The "X" or "Y" button.
If I hit my "X" button, it will constrain it to going left and right.
Much like the Dope Sheet works.
And if I hit my "Y" button, it will just change the Value.
Let me hit escape to return it back to what it was...
So that's how you can actually change the settings - just using the Graph Editor.
So now we want to start changing how the transition happens.
And the way that we can actually do that is...
You'll notice when you right click on your Inserted Keyframe, that it has these 2 handles.
And you can right click one of the handles and pull it.
And you can actually change the shape.
And we can place the shape by hitting our left mouse button.
And it's placed.
And that's one way that you can actually alter the transition.
Try different shapes, see how that actually sound - in this case.
Now, this will also work for any other property setting that you change in your video strip.
It will have different kind of effects.
I don't know what you'll like but play around with it on different strips, with different
properties.
But, in this case, this will actually change how quickly the volume goes down.
Now, we can also automatically change the shape to different popular shapes by selecting
both our starting and ending Keyframe.
We can do that by putting a box around it, using our box select.
Hit "B" and draw a box around the 2 Keyframes.
Now that they are both selected, you can see they're both yellow, we can go to the "Key"
menu and we can select "Interpolation Mode."
And just select these different shapes and see what happens.
Now, I'm going to go over to the "Dynamic Effects" and I'm actually going to add a "bounce
effect" and look at how this changes the shape of our curve.
It creates kind of a audio bounce effect.
And I can go back here to the "Key" menu,"Interpolation Mode" and we can try different ones.
"Back", I don't know what that does.
But this is just a great way to automatically change it to common transition shapes - for
our curves.
I can do a "Linear" shape.
And that just does a straight line directly from... as fast as possible.
That pretty much sums up everything I have to say about using the Graph Editor.
And I hope you guys have a better understanding of the differences between using the Dope
Sheet and using the Graph Editor now.
And why they work well together.
And just remember that you can insert Keyframes into different properties.
I could have actually inserted Keyframes into my pitch or my pan and it would have made
changes over time using a curve in a similar way.
And you can also use it on you video strip.
You could add a strip modifier.
Let's say we could add a color balance modifier and I could actually insert a color starting
point and make it change to a different color.
There's all kinds of things that you can do.
I'm going to do more videos that are going to incorporate the things that we've learned
today.
So, I'll see you guys in the next video.