Sidebar

The sidebar of the Preview can be toggled with the menu: View ‣ Sidebar or with the shortcut N.

Video Sequence Editor with two sidebars: Preview and Sequencer. shows the sidebar of the Preview, but also the sidebar of the sequencer. In the Preview sidebar, the View tab is active and all panels are expanded. Safe Areas are enabled and an Annotation is added.

Video Sequence Editor with two sidebars: Preview and Sequencer.

Tool

Reference

Editor: Video Sequencer
View Type: Preview
Panel: Sidebar ‣ Tool tab

Displays information about the active tool.

View

View Settings

Reference

Editor: Video Sequencer
View Type: Preview
Panel: Sidebar ‣ View tab ‣ View Settings

Proxy Render Size

Size to display proxies at in the preview region. Using a smaller preview size will increase speed.

No Display: Disables the preview.
Scene Size: Matches proxy size to the final render resolution.
25%, 50%, 75%, 100%: Proxies are sized to be the selected percent of the original input.

Use Proxies: Use optimized files for faster scrubbing when available. Proxies limit the visual accuracy of the preview by reducing the preview resolution and using compressed copies of the input.

Prefetch Frames: Automatically fill the cache with frames after the current frame in the background. Use this to achieve a more consistent playback speed. This feature currently doesn’t support rendering Scene strips.

Channel

Selects the channel to show in the preview.

Channel 0 is the compositing result of all strips. Channel 1 is the current frame’s image from the strip in channel 1 only (channel 1 is at the bottom of the stack). The display of these modes is either the composite (channel 0) or the frame from the strip (channels 1 through n).

Show Overexposed: Shows overexposed (bright white) areas using a zebra pattern. The threshold can be adjust with the slider.

2D Cursor

Reference

Editor: Video Sequencer
View Type: Preview
Panel: Sidebar ‣ View tab ‣ 2D Cursor

The 2D cursor is the white-red circle with a cross-hair that is shown in the main region. It can be used by setting the Pivot Point to 2D Cursor to transform all strips in relation to the location of the 2D cursor.

The visibility of the 2D cursor can be controlled with the 2D Cursor overlay option.

Location X, Y

The location of the 2D cursor relative to the center of the main region. The edge of the image will be 0.5 away, so (0.5, 0.5) will be the top right corner.

The 2D cursor’s location can also be set with Cursor tool or by Shift-RMB.

Frame Overlay

Reference

Editor: Video Sequencer
View Type: Preview
Panel: Sidebar ‣ View tab ‣ Frame Overlay

Option to enable the overlay. It can be used for comparing the current frame to a reference frame.

Set Overlay Region: Selects the rectangular bounds for the overlay region. This area can be defined by pressing O key over the preview.

Frame Offset: The slider controls the offset of the reference frame relative to current frame.

Overlay Type

It describes the way the reference frame should be displayed.

Rectangle: Which means the rectangle area of reference frame will be displayed on top of current frame.
Reference: Only the reference frame is displayed in the preview region.
Current: Only the current frame is displayed in the preview region.

Tip

It is possible to have several Sequence Editors opened and they can use different overlay types. So it is possible to have current and reference frames displayed in different editor spaces.

Overlay Lock: It’s still possible to lock the reference frame to its current position.

Safe Areas

Reference

Editor: Video Sequencer
View Type: Preview
Panel: Sidebar ‣ View tab ‣ Safe Areas

Shows guides used to position elements to ensure that the most important parts of the video can be seen across all screens.

Scene Strip Display

Reference

Editor: Video Sequencer
View Type: Preview
Panel: Sidebar ‣ View tab ‣ Scene Strip Display

It allows you to control how the images of Scene Strips are displayed in the preview.

Shading: Method for rendering the viewport. See the 3D Viewport’s view3d-viewport-shading options.

Override Scene Settings: Use the Workbench render settings from the sequencer scene, not the Workbench render settings from the source scene. This option is only available, if Solid shading is activate.

Annotations

Reference

Editor: Video Sequencer
View Type: Preview
Panel: Sidebar ‣ View tab ‣ Annotations

Allows you to use Annotations in the Sequencer.

Metadata

Reference

Editor: Video Sequencer
View Type: Preview
Panel: Sidebar ‣ Metadata tab

Lists information that has been encoded in the currently displayed movie or image strip; note that this is the strip under the playhead, not the active (selected) strip. Note, this metadata is readonly and cannot be edited in Blender. Metadata can include the filename, the date created, the camera model etc. The metadata from saved from a Blender render is also displayed in the appropriate fields (camera, time, etc…; see Rendered Output for a full list. Some other graphic program also store some metadata, however, only the text stored in the header field “Comments” can be read

Some of this metadata can also be made visible in the Preview with the Metadata overlay.

Tip

To edit a files metadata you can use an external program such as exiftool. For example, the command to change the “Comments” field is:

exiftool --comments="My new comment" name-of-file.png

Note

The metadata will only be displayed for the image/ movie strip and not from strips processed by any effect strip. For example, adding an effect strip (eg. Glow) will hide the metadata from view. Of course, the metadata isn’t removed from the file. Hiding the effect strip will display it again.