I splits the video into more manageble segments. Jim Clark

You said it about right. It detects changes in the "scenery" of a single clip.

It doesn't really break the clip into a bunch of separate clips, but it kinda tags the scenes so that you can insert them directly into the timeline by themselves rather than the entire clip itself. I hope that makes some sense.

Just experiment with it and see what you think.

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What would you use scene detection for? An example where it would be useful might help me understand it.

Thanks.

If it works like it has for me in other software, scene detection works in two ways. In "captured" video where you likely have one large AVI or MPEG file it detects the change that occurs when you stopped and started the camcorder while videotaping, definite sharp differences in scene material cause the software to "divide" it into different "scenes".

It can also work based on time code where it senses the place where one "scene" was "stopped" and the next "started".

Panning may or may not trigger scene detection.

As someone has already pointed out, it helps in the editing process by breaking your material up so you can "drag n drop" onto the timeline what you need and where you need it a lot easier.

With AVCHD, each time you start and stop the camcorder a separate file is created so scene detection would not be necessary for most of us.

Hope this helps.

Thanks, it makes more sense to me now that you mention tape. I hadn't thought about tape-based camcorders. I can see how scene detection would be useful for them. Since I have a hard disk camcorder, I probably won't use scene detection unless I have a very long clip.