New to VSE, some basic questions

I found a good tutorial for and intro the Blender’s VSE, and I opened a VSE in Blender to follow along. There are two things that happened that didn’t seem to match what the tutorial was doing/showing.

  1. My mp4 file had audio and video, so it had two tracks, one for video and one for audio. OK, but the video track was longer (in frames) than the audio, so the audio finished before the video and was out of sync.

2, When the tutorial showed how to trim the clip, on his screen there was a grayish bar above and after the trimmed clip (or below and before if he trimmed the beginning) that showed where the original clip was, even though it would only play the trimmed clip, so you could see where the original clip was before trimming. My track did NOT show that, but it did play the trimmed clip OK. Could it have been an older version? I am using Blender version 2.73a.

I have never used the Blender VSE before, so all settings etc, were absolutely the defaults. If the tutorial had changed any of his settings, then he did not mention that. Any help is appreciated. I will try to find more tutorials to watch and learn, but if I can’t get these simple basics correct, then going further will be more difficult. Thanks.

  1. Make sure that the Blender Project settings are the same as the media (mp4) track. e.g. Blender = 24fps, while mp4 = 30fps
    Just change the project setting and Blender will snap the ends together.

  2. Yes the trimming display has changed recently. Grab a new build from the Blender build bot.

Also check out some of my (advanced) tutorials in the sig below.

Thanks. I got the audio/video sync problem resolved. I did install the latest version (2.74) but I still don’t see the “gray” areas which show where the original video was before clipping. Is that the way it works now?

Hi, goto ‘View’ and check the ‘Show Offsets’ box (Tool Tip: Display strip in/out offsets).

That was it! Thank you. By the way, what do you mean by your “Tool Tip:…etc”?

It’s just the text that’s displayed in the ‘Tool Tip’ when you hover the mouse curser over the check box.
It describes what the button does, so I thought I’d include it in my reply; though it does look confusing the way I did it.

“Tool tip” is an informal name, used among computer jockeys, for the little pop-up boxes that appear when you position the mouse over a control and hold it there. (“What’s This?™”)

OK Tool Tips…I use them sometimes. I just didn’t know what they were called. LOL! Thanks everyone.