Edit Breakdown

Blender tool to get insight on an edit.

Fullscreen layout with Edit Breakdown in use for Blender Studio's "Charge" film

Features

• Divide a Video Sequencer edit into shots (camera cuts) and scenes (locations/moments).

• Get a visual overview in a grid or grouped by scene.

Grid view for "Sprite Fright"	Group view for "Charge"

• Select a Thumbnail to scrub the edit.
  Needs the Select or Tag Tool active from the Toolbar (T). Uses right-click select.

• Manage scenes in Edit Breakdown - Config on the right-side (N) panel.

  1. Create and name scenes in appearance order.
  2. Assign shots to a scene:
     1. Select the scene in the Config.
     2. In the Timeline, box-select shot color strips.
     3. Click the assign button next to the scenes list in the Config.
  3. Click Sync.

• Manage custom properties for the shots in Config on the right-side (N) panel.

  1. Create properties with a type and predefined values, for example, for casting.

     List of custom properties (Sprite Fright)	Definition of a property with predefined characters

  2. Use the Tag Tool to view/set the value of a property for each shot.

     • Select what to view/set in the Tool Settings toolbar.
     • For True/False properties, left-click each shot to set/unset. Or press 0 and 1.
     • For Number properties, left-click to step through the range, or press the number value.

     Grid view with the Tag Tool active and showing which shots have the character Ellie (Sprite Fright)

  3. Text properties can only be set in Edit Breakdown - Shot on the right-side (N) panel.

  The properties can be used by other tools, with Blender acting as the interface to set them.

• Get basic statistics: duration, number of shots, scenes.

• Export as CSV to make your own statistics and charts in a spreadsheet or integration with task tracker.
  Overview panel with basic stats and CSV button

Usage (WIP)

⚠️ This add-on is currently a prototype and thus usability is sub-optimal and may change.

1. In the Sequencer, add new color strips to represent each shot in the edit.
   1. Mark the color strips for use in the Edit Breakdown in Strip > Add to Edit Breakdown.
   2. Workflow Suggestion: add a single color strip under the edit, add it to the Edit Breakdown, then use K to blade the strip while playing.
2. Open a new Sequencer area in Preview mode
   1. Toggle the Edit Breakdown view on the right side of the header (temporarily called Display Frames).
   2. Enable View > Tool Settings and from the Toolbar (T) select the Tag Tool.
3. Click the Sync button to generate shots and thumbnails.
   Syncing is manual: if the edit or the color strips and EB scenes change, click Sync again.

Prototype? WIP? Is it ok to use?

Yes ☺️ Edit Breakdown is an experiment/exploration of useful visualizations and workflow.
As such, we might decide to change things (e.g. we went back and forth between blading a color strip or adding markers), or some of the functionality may get integrated into Blender core.
It also means that the add-on takes shortcuts to implement things in a quick way just to see if it is a worthy idea.
It overtakes Display Frames and draws the thumbnails on top of a Sequencer Preview which isn't great for performance or bullet-proof for keyboard shortcuts. The Image Editor will show the thumbnail images, meh.

All in all, the add-on is not polished enough to be an official extension, but it is functionally complete and it works well enough. So go ahead and give it a try!

Installation

Note: this add-on is available as an extension, but is not on extensions.blender.org yet.
Work in Progress!

1. Download the latest extension release from GitHub.
2. Drag&drop the ZIP into Blender.

Updating

1. Download and drag&drop a new ZIP into Blender.
   Newer versions can be installed on top without needing to manually uninstall the previous version.

Compatibility

Blender Version	Status
5.0+	Supported
4.2 & 4.5 LTS	Supported
4.1 and older	Unsupported

Development

Edit Breakdown was originally made to support Blender's film productions.
Screenshots feature the short films Sprite Fright and Charge.

This add-on is considered experimental.
Further experimenting may happen if Inês can be convinced that would be a cool thing to do.
The add-on is actively maintained (regardless of how cool that is).

Contributions and feedback are very welcome.