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My knowledge for doing fade-in/fade-out transforms in Blender's Video Sequence Editor is based on the answer to the following question:

https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/2104/6335

What is described is a multi-step process which struck me as rather cumbersome for a simple transformation such as a fade-out to black (add a color strip, add a cross-effect, etc). Is this how power-users do this activity in Blender? Or do they use a plug-in that I may not be aware of? Or, is it just the case that Blender is really not used for such simple transforms and instead, some other tool (such as After Effects) is used?

Blender is plenty powerful in other tasks, and I am not knocking Blender's overall capabilities. Rather, I would like to know the usage in real-world workflows for this specific, rather rudimentary task. (Even in Microsoft's brain-dead Movie Maker, what is involved is more straightforward.)

(I am reminded of the various attachments you can get for KitchenAid. Yes, it is possible to juice with a KitchenAid, but why? It is not what is was built for in the first place.)

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    $\begingroup$ I would recommend compiling the render frames into video clips, and compiling them in a video editing software if at all possible. $\endgroup$
    – J Sargent
    Jan 25, 2015 at 1:58
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    $\begingroup$ While developers like contributing to blender, all the interest is on the flashy 3D and animation features, the VSE has had very little changed over the years. $\endgroup$
    – sambler
    Jan 25, 2015 at 4:40
  • $\begingroup$ @NoviceInDisguise What you have suggested is what I was thinking of. Use Blender for 3D, animation, compositing; then generate segments of video and splice them in, say, AE. Would this be an actual workflow in the real-world? $\endgroup$
    – Sabuncu
    Jan 25, 2015 at 10:07

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The vse is quite powerful but you need to realise that it is media agnostic. That is any track can accommodate any media. Because audio can be next to or above video you cannot easily add an effect at an edit point. And because there are effectively infinite vertical tracks you need to tell blender which media strips need to be used for an effect.

That is why you must first select the strips to effect then add an effect. If you want to fade from many mixed clips to black for example you would simply key frame the opacity of the top most in coming black strip.

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    $\begingroup$ Could you please expand on your final sentence? (i.e. "...you would simply key frame the opacity of the top most in coming black strip") Specifically, I will be happy with a simpler method for fading one video strip. $\endgroup$
    – Sabuncu
    Jan 25, 2015 at 10:04
  • $\begingroup$ All I am suggesting is that you simply animate the opacity value of the next strip (in this case I suggested a black color effect strip), so that it fades from 0% to 100% and replaces the strips below it. $\endgroup$
    – 3pointedit
    Jan 25, 2015 at 12:54

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