

If you do not have a middle-mouse button (or yours, like mine, is difficult to use), you can also hold Ctrl+Shift+Left-mouse button (LMB) and drag. To pan around in any panel except the Time Ruler, hold down the middle-mouse button (MMB) and drag in any direction (though the Control Panel will only go up-and-down). The Time Ruler controls the in- and out-points of the composite, the current displayed frame, the working time range, and has the typical playback controls you might already be familiar with in other video software. The Control Panel displays the settings for Tools that are selected in the Flow View. The Flow View is where the Tools used to build the composite are represented visually in a flow-chart-like representation. They are independent and can show different images and have different zoom levels, but they are time-locked to one another, so they'll always show the same frame.

The Viewers are where you will display your footage. In Fusion 7 and earlier it also has buttons for Load, Save, Undo, Redo, Copy, Cut, Paste, and Delete. The Toolbar has a handful of layout buttons and shortcuts for a variety of commonly-used tools. The Menus work just like most other software. The above image shows the divisions between the major work areas. For now, we'll just look at it in very broad strokes. We'll go into more detail about the Interface in Chapter 3. For more thorough details on the software and its tools, please consult the Manual and the Tool Reference documents, which are probably the most valuable contributions Blackmagic has made to Fusion so far! The Interface, Briefly Where Fusion differs greatly from Nuke and After Effects, I will make note of it. This lesson covers importing footage into Fusion, converting it to linear color, viewing and playing it, and exporting it back out in the file format of your choice. As I am sure you know that already, I won't continue to insult your intelligence by pointing it out every three paragraphs.

For the first couple of lessons I was using Fusion 7, though, so some of the screenshots will look a little different from your interface, regardless of which version you are using.Ī note for Mac users: As is typical with most software, the Windows Control key is Mac's Command key.

I will do my best to highlight them as they come up throughout this series. There are some slight differences in the interface between Fusion 8 and previous versions. These articles are mostly based on Fusion 8.2 build 2 running on Windows 7 with an nVidia GPU.
