Confused between Clip Editor and Sequence Editor

I would like to make some clips which combine different shots using masks.

Example of the kind of thing I am trying to do:

This requires precise timing of the frames to match the motion of each clip and it also uses masking (of the kind used in https://mango.blender.org/production/masking-in-blender/ ) to overlay the shots together.

My problem is that I’m not sure on the workflow or even the different roles of the Video Sequence Editor and the Movie Clip Editor.
On one hand, I want to use mainly the Video Sequence Editor so that I can align the footage and get the timing right. On the other hand, it appears that only the Movie Clip Editor allows me to use the masks feature. The two don’t seem to work together and I’m confused about the workflow.

Can someone please shed some light on the process?

Hey Lancer!

In this case (the video you supplied) i would use node editor to combine the two shots a far as i can see you should get away with “one” mask.

So make the masks in clip editor and use them in node editor.

I would just do this with nodes, using file-input nodes (which accept sequences, of course) and a simple mask. Probably wouldn’t do it in the video sequence-editing stage, which in my view would be used to “cut together the finished film.”

Yes, the combining of shots and masks would indeed be through the node editor, as shown in the second video I posted.

But how would you sort out the timing of the shots in order to successfully overlay them? Everything in the original footage was done in one long take, and I was wanting to use the VSE to cut the “good” snippets out from the rest and to overlay them (the strip of the throws with the strip(s) of hitting the target) so that the timing of the events match perfectly.

If I shouldn’t be using the VSE, how else might I efficiently achieve this? (e.g. I don’t think rendering lots of “same length clips” and then reloading them as files would be efficient because it would take lots of time and I may want to tweak the start/end clip timings afterwards)

Hey!

Maybe i would roughly cut the clip in VSE using opacity to gt the rough timing. But then again i would get the footage to image sequence and then load them to node editor. I would set the start and end of footage via node, make the masks in clip editor …

Lets say:

1 node: footage from 20 to 750 (guy throwing pencils over his head)
2 node: footage from 1340 to 1500 (guy throws first pen into the cup)
3 node: footage from 1610 to 1720 (guy throws second pen into the cup)…

This is what i would probably do if i used Blender. But making this in AE or similar should be faster.

Hope i helped.

Take care.