Navigating

Header

View Menu

As usual, the View menu controls the editor’s view settings.

Sidebar N: Show or hide the Sidebar.
Tool Settings: Show or hide the settings for the currently selected tool.
Toolbar T: Show or hide the Toolbar.
Adjust Last Operation: See Adjust Last Operation.
Channels: Show or hide the Channel Region.
Preview as Backdrop: Display the current frame in the background.
Frame Selected NumpadPeriod: Zooms the display to show only the selected strips.
Frame All Home: Zooms the display to show all strips.
Go to Current Frame: Centers the horizontal timeline on the current frame.
Zoom Shift-B: Click and drag to draw a rectangle and zoom to this rectangle.

Limit View to Contents: Prevents you from panning higher than the highest used channel.

Refresh All Ctrl-R

Reloads external files, re-renders the 3D Viewport, and refreshes the current frame preview.

This is useful when you modified an external file or made a change in a scene that Blender didn’t detect.

Navigation

Play Animation Spacebar: Start or stop animation playback. This will start playback in all editors.
Go to Current Frame Numpad0: Scrolls the timeline so the current frame is in the center.
Jump to Previous Strip PageDown: Moves the playhead to the nearest strip border (start or end) that’s before the current frame.
Jump to Next Strip PageUp: Moves the playhead to the nearest strip border (start or end) that’s after the current frame.
Jump to Previous Strip (Center) Alt-PageDown: Moves the playhead to the nearest strip center that’s before the current frame.
Jump to Next Strip (Center) Alt-PageUp: Moves the playhead to the nearest strip center that’s after the current frame.

Range

Set Preview Range P

Interactively define the frame range used for preview playback/rendering.

As long as this range is active, playback will be limited to it, letting you repeatedly view a segment of the video without having to manually rewind each time. It also limits the range that gets rendered.

Set Preview Range to Strips

Apply a preview range that encompasses the selected strips.

Clear Preview Range Alt-P

Clears the preview range.

Set Start Frame Ctrl-Home

Set the Start frame of the scene to the current frame.

Set End Frame Ctrl-End

Set the End frame of the scene to the current frame.

Set Frame Range to Strips

Set the Start and End frames of the scene so they encompass the selected strips.

Sync Visible Range

Synchronizes the visible time range with other time-based editors (such as the Timeline and the Graph Editor) that also have this option enabled.

Show Seconds Ctrl-T

Shows seconds instead of frames on the time axis.

Show Markers

Shows the marker region. When disabled, the Marker menu is also hidden and marker operators are not available in this editor.

Show Cache

Show which frames are Cached.

The Developer Extras must be enabled for this menu item to be visible.

Sequence Render Image

Show the current frame preview as a Render Result where you can save it as an image file.

Sequence Render Animation

Save previews of the frames in the scene range (or the preview range, if active) to a video file or a series of image files. See the Output panel for details.

Note

Sequence Render Image and Sequence Render Animation don’t render the final video by default – specifically, they don’t render Scene Strips, instead using the preview’s shading mode (which is initially Solid).

To output a video where the Scene Strips are rendered, use the Render menu in the topbar, or change Sidebar ‣ View ‣ Scene Strip Display ‣ Shading to Rendered. The latter option is only available if the Video Sequencer is in the Preview or Sequencer & Preview mode.

Export Subtitles: Exports Text strips, which can act as subtitles, to a SubRip file (.srt). The exported file contains all Text strips in the video sequence.
Toggle Sequencer/Preview Ctrl-Tab: Switch the editor mode between Sequencer and Preview.

Main View

Adjusting the View

Use these shortcuts to adjust the view:

Pan: MMB
Horizontal scroll: use Ctrl-Wheel, or drag the horizontal scrollbar.
Vertical scroll: use Shift-Wheel, or drag the vertical scrollbar.
Zoom: Wheel
Scale view: Ctrl-MMB and drag left/right (horizontal scale) or up/down (vertical scale). Alternatively, you can drag the circles on the scrollbars with LMB.

Playhead

The Playhead is the blue vertical line with the current frame number at the top. It can be moved in the following ways:

Jump or scrub: click or drag LMB in the scrubbing area at the top of the timeline.
Jump or scrub (alternative): click or drag Shift-RMB anywhere in the timeline. If you start dragging on a strip, that strip will be highlighted and displayed solo in the preview (all other strips are temporarily muted).
Move in single-frame increments: Left, Right, or Alt-Wheel.
Jump to the start or end frame of the scene (or preview range, if active): Shift-Left or Shift-Right.

While dragging with LMB or Shift-RMB, you can additionally hold Ctrl to snap to the start and end points of strips.

If scrubbing (or regular playback) performs poorly, you can speed it up by creating proxies.

Hint

The current frame is synchronized across all editors, so if you move the Playhead in the Timeline editor for example, it will move in the Video Sequence editor as well (and vice versa).