Video editing services

[Iwf]

Though I enjoy flying and taking video’s when it comes to editing I’m hopeless, having not the skill or imagination to produce the sort of videos other post hereabouts.

I wonder if anyone knows of individuals willing to a take a few hours of footage and produce a semi professional finished product. All the professionals charge through the nose, but for some enterprising individuals there’s some $€£ to be had.

In these days of the cloud location is irrelevant and I for one would be happy to pay. With some simply rules around copyright we could work out how a derive would work.

Regards

 

[FoxhallGH]

There are some video editing products out there that are low-cost or free, and have extensive Internet 'how-to' articles and videos. I use a product called 'Filmora' (Wondershare) which has got me into editing videos. It's probably nowhere near the capability of Adobe products - but - It has allowed me to get the hang of what's possible - and it's part of the fun! Getting the video from the flight is just the start ... [OFFICIAL] Wondershare Filmora - Easy, Trendy and Quality Video Editor

 

[2nckayakers]

What are you looking to do with your video? Is it just for Youtube, your personal watching pleasure, or are you using it in something commercially? When you say "hours" of video, how many are you really talking about? I usually charge $100 US an hour for video editing and photo restoration services. I don't consider myself an A-List editor, but I do well enough to piece a story together and present something that people would watch. A-list editors are going to get double what I charge so it depends on what you really want the finished product for as to what it is going to cost.

Also, you need to remember that hours of video doesn't equal hours of finished product. Sometimes I only get 5 minutes out of hours of video. Case in point I am working on a short video for a non profit and I drove to a specific filming location 4 times to film and got about 6 hours of raw material, but the whole sequence I shot only produced 3 minutes of finished product. I know that sounds crazy but sometimes you do a retake of a scene a dozen times or more. I shot the sequence using 4 cameras and at the location I had to set up 6 times to get every angle. I also shot a lot of B-Roll with my Mavic. So it really depends on what you want in the end as to how much it is going to cost.

If it is just for you to watch, or share with friends, honestly you can do it yourself for free if you take your time and watch some tutorials.

 

[Former Member]

Though I enjoy flying and taking video’s when it comes to editing I’m hopeless, having not the skill or imagination to produce the sort of videos other post hereabouts.

I wonder if anyone knows of individuals willing to a take a few hours of footage and produce a semi professional finished product. All the professionals charge through the nose, but for some enterprising individuals there’s some $€£ to be had.

In these days of the cloud location is irrelevant and I for one would be happy to pay. With some simply rules around copyright we could work out how a derive would work.

Regards

This is a great question. So many of us are good pilots but lack good editing skills. I have the same question. Anyone good at editing and video production and does it for a living here?

 

[2nckayakers]

I don't do it for a living, I have just learned a lot over the past 20 years. I have done it semi professionally, but not for production companies or anything like that. I has more or less been a hobby that I have been able to make a little money at.

 

[Former Member]

I don't do it for a living, I have just learned a lot over the past 20 years. I have done it semi professionally, but not for production companies or anything like that. I has more or less been a hobby that I have been able to make a little money at.

Just for dummies like me, can you share how a person would go about getting you his/her footage, and then having you go produce it?

Let's say I contact you and tell you I have all these hours of wonderful flying footage, and that I would like you to make a video out of it. Can you tell me what the process would be?

Also, realistically, you mentioned that sometimes you have to go through hours of footage just to get a good 3 minute video. Does your fee include having to sort through all that footage?

My best friend is a cameraman for the news, and he is extremely selective about what he shoots so he doesnt have to edit it later.

This is a great thread.

 

[AMann]

As a teacher, I’d say contact a local high school that has a media program. They may not have a drone available and perhaps you can arrange for an equitable exchange of experience with them. Seeing how a drone works and editing aerial videos from it would be a great student project and learning experience for the both of you.

As mentioned before, there are a lot of entry level video editing programs that do a good job of it, and at least in the US, there are ofren low cost video editing classes provided through the extended education program at your local junior college.

 

[Shawn King]

Also, realistically, you mentioned that sometimes you have to go through hours of footage just to get a good 3 minute video.

Not "sometimes". *Every* time. If you're working for someone else and they've shot the video, you have no idea where the "good bits" are so you have to watch *ALL OF IT*. You'd hate to edit the video and have them come back and say, "but what about this shot....?"

My best friend is a cameraman for the news, and he is extremely selective about what he shoots so he doesnt have to edit it later.

I'm a video and photo editor and this is key. Don't just go out and shoot "everything pretty". Pros have a "shot list" or a storyboard in mind before they ever leave the house/office. You shoot to the board or the list. That way, you get a lot less chaff and more wheat.

Before I go out on a shoot (haven't flown a drone yet) I've already got either a written down shot list or at least an idea in my head of the kinds of images I want to have at the end of the shoot.

Hope that helps.

 

[2nckayakers]

To answer your question Rob, yes you would charge by the hour for the whole project, not just for the finished product. Like Shawn said, you don't know where the good bits are if you don't look at everything to find them. Even when you are the person that shot the footage you still look at everything because you don't remember what you shot until you get back in and look at it.

Here in lies the problem, most of us Drone guys are not professional photographers or cinematographers, we are just guys and girls out flying drones, having fun, and running video of everything we see and thinking it is the greatest footage in the world. Truth of the matter is our video is not that great to anyone but us. Not saying everything we take is horrible, but the fact is that most of it is and we have to take a lot bad stuff to find the small nuggets of good stuff.

The second problem we have is most of us are trying to learn from professionals and it just isn't working out real well. Reason why? Because professionals (for the most part) assume that we should all learn to do things exactly the way they do them. But why should we unless we aspire to be professionals ourselves? I like the pictures I take, my kids like my pictures, my wife likes my pictures, heck I haven't had anyone tell me that any of the pictures I have taken are bad. Does it mean I am a great photographer? No not really, it just means I take several hundred shots of each subject, pick the best ones that I can tweak to make better, and never let the others see the light of day. It is the world of digital photography and it is fun. I enjoy the way I take photographs and video because I don't spend the majority of my time trying to figure out what settings, what ISO, what fStop, what shutter speed or trying to make sure every composition adheres to the rule of thirds. I just snap away as many shots as I can and tweak the settings here or there after previewing so I don't spend all my time worrying about whether it is all good or not. I want to spend the majority of my time seeing things around me with my own two eyes rather than from behind a piece of glass. The photos I take are just to remind me of what I really saw because you can never EVER capture a moment on film or digitally that represents exactly what you saw or what you felt in the moment. I used to think you had to photograph things a certain way. I learned photography from professionals in the days of film, when we only had 24 or 36 exposures on a roll to get it right, and you could only fix minor exposure issues in the darkroom. I have never called myself a professional photographer, but I have taken a lot of photos and video over the years, put it all together in photo montages, or in short videos and made a few thousand dollars off of them as a hobby. I actually have made better money editing other people's photos and video, although I still consider myself an amateur and even though I have gotten paid, I would never call myself a professional.

But it is a new day and unless you aspire to be a professional photographer, videographer or cinematographer, then why worry about all the details, just fly where you want (within the law and rules set forth), how you want, and make sure the record button is on the whole time. The footage you get is only to remind you of the experience, or for you to share with family and friends. Watching videos made by professionals, trying to teach you how to get better footage or how to storyboard your video or how to make shot lists, is great, it gives you ideas on how you can improve. But for the most part you will sit there watching 15 or 30 minutes of a video on YouTube and walk away with more questions than answers. You also will spend a lot of time flying, trying to get that perfect shot, and not experience the fun you have in just flying.

As far as editing your footage? You can do it! Anyone can. As long as you don't think "we" as drone pilots and amateur photographers are going to take our mostly bad, but sometimes decent video and turn it into a cinematic viral video on youtube. And by the same token we can't expect to hand our hours of video over to a professional or semi professional editor and expect them to turn it into a hollywood production. The only way to do that is to spend a lot of time learning every aspect of photography and videography and taking the best footage we possibly can in camera. But if all you want is something decent to share with family and friends then you most definitely can piece together something decent of any footage you take and smile from ear to ear when you share it someone else.

I have had a few people pushing me to start a vlog and share some things with them and I just couldn't figure out what I really wanted to do or how I wanted to do it, but I think this thread has given me some good ideas and maybe in the next month or so I can start piecing some things together and posting. It definitely won't turn me into an overnight YouTube sensation, but maybe it will help some of you that just want to piece some things together for your own enjoyment, and not have to sift through a ton of technical jargon that you won't really ever use. to be continued.....

 

[Former Member]

To answer your question Rob, yes you would charge by the hour for the whole project, not just for the finished product. Like Shawn said, you don't know where the good bits are if you don't look at everything to find them. Even when you are the person that shot the footage you still look at everything because you don't remember what you shot until you get back in and look at it.

Here in lies the problem, most of us Drone guys are not professional photographers or cinematographers, we are just guys and girls out flying drones, having fun, and running video of everything we see and thinking it is the greatest footage in the world. Truth of the matter is our video is not that great to anyone but us. Not saying everything we take is horrible, but the fact is that most of it is and we have to take a lot bad stuff to find the small nuggets of good stuff.

The second problem we have is most of us are trying to learn from professionals and it just isn't working out real well. Reason why? Because professionals (for the most part) assume that we should all learn to do things exactly the way they do them. But why should we unless we aspire to be professionals ourselves? I like the pictures I take, my kids like my pictures, my wife likes my pictures, heck I haven't had anyone tell me that any of the pictures I have taken are bad. Does it mean I am a great photographer? No not really, it just means I take several hundred shots of each subject, pick the best ones that I can tweak to make better, and never let the others see the light of day. It is the world of digital photography and it is fun. I enjoy the way I take photographs and video because I don't spend the majority of my time trying to figure out what settings, what ISO, what fStop, what shutter speed or trying to make sure every composition adheres to the rule of thirds. I just snap away as many shots as I can and tweak the settings here or there after previewing so I don't spend all my time worrying about whether it is all good or not. I want to spend the majority of my time seeing things around me with my own two eyes rather than from behind a piece of glass. The photos I take are just to remind me of what I really saw because you can never EVER capture a moment on film or digitally that represents exactly what you saw or what you felt in the moment. I used to think you had to photograph things a certain way. I learned photography from professionals in the days of film, when we only had 24 or 36 exposures on a roll to get it right, and you could only fix minor exposure issues in the darkroom. I have never called myself a professional photographer, but I have taken a lot of photos and video over the years, put it all together in photo montages, or in short videos and made a few thousand dollars off of them as a hobby. I actually have made better money editing other people's photos and video, although I still consider myself an amateur and even though I have gotten paid, I would never call myself a professional.

But it is a new day and unless you aspire to be a professional photographer, videographer or cinematographer, then why worry about all the details, just fly where you want (within the law and rules set forth), how you want, and make sure the record button is on the whole time. The footage you get is only to remind you of the experience, or for you to share with family and friends. Watching videos made by professionals, trying to teach you how to get better footage or how to storyboard your video or how to make shot lists, is great, it gives you ideas on how you can improve. But for the most part you will sit there watching 15 or 30 minutes of a video on YouTube and walk away with more questions than answers. You also will spend a lot of time flying, trying to get that perfect shot, and not experience the fun you have in just flying.

As far as editing your footage? You can do it! Anyone can. As long as you don't think "we" as drone pilots and amateur photographers are going to take our mostly bad, but sometimes decent video and turn it into a cinematic viral video on youtube. And by the same token we can't expect to hand our hours of video over to a professional or semi professional editor and expect them to turn it into a hollywood production. The only way to do that is to spend a lot of time learning every aspect of photography and videography and taking the best footage we possibly can in camera. But if all you want is something decent to share with family and friends then you most definitely can piece together something decent of any footage you take and smile from ear to ear when you share it someone else.

I have had a few people pushing me to start a vlog and share some things with them and I just couldn't figure out what I really wanted to do or how I wanted to do it, but I think this thread has given me some good ideas and maybe in the next month or so I can start piecing some things together and posting. It definitely won't turn me into an overnight YouTube sensation, but maybe it will help some of you that just want to piece some things together for your own enjoyment, and not have to sift through a ton of technical jargon that you won't really ever use. to be continued.....

Great reply.

If someone gave you a bunch of footage do you at least fast forward through it or do you look at it in real time?

I don't have an artistic bone in my body and I admire you guys that do.

 

[2nckayakers]

Great reply.

If someone gave you a bunch of footage do you at least fast forward through it or do you look at it in real time?

I don't have an artistic bone in my body and I admire you guys that do.

Well we are on a simmilar footing my friend because you have talents that I can't begin to imagine. You can breath life back into dead birds!

 

[Iwf]

I’m with the others here, just wanting to turn my holiday footage into some to share with family and friends, but not having the skills to edit. $100 an hour is a bit steep for me. $100 for a finished video was more what i was thinking, but its someone who wants to generate a bit of extra $ rather than professional service. No criticism of anyone intended. Perhaps I should take up editing as a sideline myself !

Brilliant post though. Can’t wait to see create that vlog.

 

[Kilrah]

Between downloading your footage, watching all of it, discussing with you via mail or phone to get a feeling of what you want (typically the client, potentially also the person who shot the video if not the same person would normally sit in person with the video editor to advise about interesting shots and the mood/style they would like for the final product and comment on rough cuts to confirm it's going in the right direction before the work is finalized), potentially finding music, editing the whole thing, exporting and providing the result to you it's realistically pretty much going to take a whole day to whoever would do it.

Would you do that on someone else's footage (that likely doesn't "mean anything" to you) for $100? Knowing that if found here that person will likely already hours of their own footage (that means more to them) that they haven't taken time to edit yet...

 

[2nckayakers]

Kilrah is right about the time it takes to put something together. The reality is for every 1 minute of finished product you spend about 1 hour of work. That includes going through all the raw material, cutting out all the unusable pieces, doing some rough refining of the usable material, cutting it down a second time to weed out all the duplicate shots, then refining what's left a little further, then doing a final cut down to fit your time frame and when all that is done the real work begins. What remains has to be color graded, edited to fit the timing of your soundtrack and then work on all the transitioning between each sequence. Once you have what you think is your finished product then you have to render it all out and export it into something that can be shared. A typical 4K render and export of a 4 minute video takes my machine about 1 hour to do. Which I wouldn't count that time because I can start it and walk away and do something else while it is running. What that 1 hour to 1 minute does not include is consultation or revisions, searching for the soundtrack, any editing you need to do to the soundtrack, and royalty you have to pay for the soundtrack. So for about 3 minutes of finished out the door video you are looking at a 4 hour job minimum. Professional editors get way more than $100 an hour. I don't call my self a professional editor, for me it is a hobby that I use to make a little extra money on the side. I have done something like a Quick Shot video before that was about 3 to 5 minutes for $100 but when the video came to me it was already edited down to the specific clips the client wanted and all I had to do was put it into the sequence, do a little minor color grading, time it to the soundtrack and then export. Doing that I only had to spend not quite 2 hours working on it.

Now I have been exploring ways to do things by the project and I have thrown out a proposition to someone else that was in this thread and if that comes to pass then maybe I can figure out a way to get something that would be more economical for the average person. It would look something like this; I get the client's raw video, they give me total creative control over the editing, feel, soundtrack and final product. It would get minor tweaks to exposure if needed but not a complete color grading. The raw footage would have to be of a single subject / point of interest or of a series of no more than 3 simmilar subjects. The final product would be around 2 minutes long and the finished out the door price would be about $120 which would include the royalty free music. It would be a down and dirty quick project but something that you could share on your YouTube channel or Facebook or even on your website if you had one.

Here are a few examples of my own so you can see what I am talking about;

This is one of a single subject with no color grading. i took about 45 minutes of raw video and edited it down to a reasonable size. Then I found the soundtrack I wanted and did the final edit to get the timing right. I got all that done in less than an hour and then spent about 20 minutes on titles and final tweaks. It was a real down and dirty. Henderson Fire Tower

This one I had about 2 hours of raw video that was taken on two different days and because of the weather had to be color graded a bit to get them to look a little simmilar. They still don't match but it is decent. It took me about 2 hours to get this one together but then I played with it for a couple of hours more trying to get the color to match a little better. I screwed up though on this one because I used the same soundtrack that I had on a previous video on my channel. Beautiful Bean Footage

This one was not raw footage that I took myself, although it was my story. I was flying the plane, with the PIC in the rear. It was 6 hours of raw video from 3 different cameras. I just did some minor color corrections and removed some of the warp since it was from GoPro cameras. All of the in cockpit footage matches up to the time sequences with the exterior footage. You can really see what I am talking about there if you look close at the 1:00, it switches from starboard camera to tail camera to in cockpit and back to tail all in real time. You get that by laying all three tracks on top of one another when you are editing and then cut holes in them. So you are actually editng all three cameras at the same time. Anyway it took about 3 hours to put this one together. The one thing I couldn't do for anyone else is use a soundtrack like this becasue you can't get the copyright to it. I used it because I don't monetize my channel and it is a track that Youtube allows. Flight of the SNJ


I have two other YouTube channels where I post other types of content, this is just where I have been posting some drone or flying footage for friends to watch. I do all kinds of other stuff besides these types of videos.

 

[Iwf]

As I say I meant no offence. In fact your replies prompted me to down load Filmora , and I spent a few hours cutting and pasting and generally having fun.

I actually think the DJI editor is probably all most of us need. Shame it’s not available on a pc or Mac. I particularly like the feature that puts a curve on a speed increase

Again apologies if I caused any offence.

Great videos, btw.

 

[2nckayakers]

No offence taken. Glad you had fun editing. I enjoy that almost as much as flying. You actually learn what you need to practice flying from editing your footage. That's one of the reasons I want to do a blog for those non professionals who want to learn simple editing and improve their hands on flight skills. Hopefully in the new year I can get that off to a start.

 

[Iwf]

No offence taken. Glad you had fun editing. I enjoy that almost as much as flying. You actually learn what you need to practice flying from editing your footage. That's one of the reasons I want to do a blog for those non professionals who want to learn simple editing and improve their hands on flight skills. Hopefully in the new year I can get that off to a start.

Very much looking forward to the vlog. As a matter of interest which editing tool do you use?

 

[2nckayakers]

I use Adobe Premiere CC but I am probably not going to talk as much about editing tools as much as the process itself.