Hello all . I'm as new to flying as I am video editing. Just got back from our countrys national park . Amazing footage capture. How do I present nearly two hours of footage in 2 - 3 mins. How do ye guys edit ? Thanks for the advice in advance
Editing Skills - Help!
- Thread starter Mazdaman323lx
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Rainsong
Member
You'll get a ton of answers here. You will need some kind of editing software. Most people here like DaVinci resolve. I thought it was a bit overkill and steeper learning curve for my needs and I ended up switching to ShotCut and it does what I need so far. Both are free downloads and both have a plethora of YouTube tutorials to get you started. There are other free softwares but I think it's best to pick one and learn it. Good luck! I have ancestors form Cork!
Kyle76
Well-Known Member
I choose the music first and then edit to the beat. I edit in LumaFusion or sometimes iMovie on my iPad. That's a lot of footage to edit down from. Good luck!
Also really spend some time picking which shots you like the most and which are the best. Don’t make them too long, 5-15 seconds.
A typical professional shoot uses around 30% of what is recorded. To create short video clips, try and tell a short story starting with an establishing shot.
Pick your best shots, anything less than 100% save for another day.
Use just cuts and dissolves between shots and simply white text for titles.
You’ll soon see why what you see on TV and films/movies works. It’s always kept simple so it doesn’t distract from the video content.
Brought up on Premiere Pro and Avid MediaComposer but using Davinci Resolve these days.
Pick your best shots, anything less than 100% save for another day.
Use just cuts and dissolves between shots and simply white text for titles.
You’ll soon see why what you see on TV and films/movies works. It’s always kept simple so it doesn’t distract from the video content.
Brought up on Premiere Pro and Avid MediaComposer but using Davinci Resolve these days.
Thanks for that . I'm using openshot myself , have premiere pro but you'd want serious time on your hands to learn that piece of software.
Rainsong
Member
Hi again- I believe we have communicated before. Although many people on this forum use the free or low cost Da Vinci Resolve software , I was determined to learn Adobe Premiere Pro. Lots of pros and cons to this software including cost and learning curve, but I felt that the quality was worth the learning curve. There are a lot of free Premiere courses on YouTube. I purchased the Adobe Photography offer and called Adobe to negotiate a deal and they have offered me a special annual price for the entire creative cloud for the 2nd year in a row!!! I purchased a Premiere Pro Video course from Creative Live by Abba Shapiro. It takes about a week of viewing but I thought it was a good course. See the attachment. www.creativelive.com
The best advise I can give you is to be severely restrictive in your choice of material. Limit your clips to the very best footage, and try to keep each clip to no more than 3-6 seconds unless absolutely necessary to tell the story. Arrange the clips in a chronological order rather than randomly. Trip to keep the entire film to less than 3-4 minutes unless you really want to archive a separate movie for your own library and memories. Most viewers will tune out, no matter what, after 3 minutes. I can definitely prove that statistically from my weekly Vimeo reports. Almost nobody finishes! In editing your drone clips, edit out all flight adjustments, yaws, corrections, etc. They are very distracting. The "rising up" reveal shots can only be done once, or at least, not overdone. Make simple transitions like cross/fades. Make simple white titles.
In the Abba Shapiro Creative Live tutorial he instructs you to make "ASSET" folders. I make a folder for drone video, Osmo video, DSLR timelapse video, a "stills" folder, and a Music assets folder.
I could go on and on. But you've got the idea.
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I disagree with the opinion that Resolve outputs inferior video than Premiere. Resolve, the free version, encodes exactly the same quality output as the most expensive version. The differences are not in the output produced.
Getting good output, with any NLE is mostly a function of user expertise. They are all complex, andtheir interfaces are different. You need to understand how each controls exposure, saturation, and color controls for light areas , medium areas, and dark areas. In addition, you need to understand bit depth, and capture, working, and output CODECs.
With this knowledge, you can make meaningful comparisons between software packages.
Getting good output, with any NLE is mostly a function of user expertise. They are all complex, andtheir interfaces are different. You need to understand how each controls exposure, saturation, and color controls for light areas , medium areas, and dark areas. In addition, you need to understand bit depth, and capture, working, and output CODECs.
With this knowledge, you can make meaningful comparisons between software packages.
Fully in agreement there. Under the hood, many NLE systems use the exact same codec from the same dev house. Avid were one of the true pioneers when they developed the DNx range of codecs, one of the first was for Peter Jackson to view daily’s during Lord of the Ring shoots.
hiflyer201
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Just put it on the timeline and cut it to shreds and add some music. It won't be perfect but it's a start. Use a non destructive editor. It's easy to fall in love with every single frame and we've all seen lots of feature films where that has been the case so you won't be alone. I always think of the film "A river runs through it where the father tells his son, referring to a written essay, That's very good. Now cut it in half. That film, by the way, has scenes of fly fishing that are so beautiful that it had to be just plain painful to edit... And I don't even like fishing..
I don't think I impugned the quality of Da Vinci Resolve, and I hope I did not, if that comment was aimed at my post. I know absolutely nothing about the software, and am not in a position to evaluate it.
Drone Views Media
Well-Known Member
Number 1....watch through your footage, all of it. Make a note of the best clips. Pick the soundtrack before you edit, and clip accordingly. The soundtrack is a really important part of editing.
I just couldn't resist submitting this photo since I am a life long fly fisherman and "A River Runs Through It" by Norman Mc Clean is my most favorite movie which I have watched many times. The fish is a 27 inch cutthroat trout 7 pounds, caught and released in Montana. The scenery there was also painful to edit out.
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THE CYBORG
Well-Known Member
Be ruthless editing out parts.
You can get away with longer video’s if they tell a story.
You can always keep longer versions for personal viewing.
You can get away with longer video’s if they tell a story.
You can always keep longer versions for personal viewing.
YES totally agree and do this also. I try as hard as possible to reduce the time of each clip to a reasonable viewing speed. If it looks funny I restore back to a slower speed.
macfawlty
Well-Known Member
If you’ve got a lot of footage, aim for 3 minutes. Viewers can skip forward if they’re impatient.
Select eventful music with high BPM. Music video cuts are about .5 to 2 seconds. 3 seconds max. Vary composition between cuts (wide/tight, pan/tilt, forward/backwards, up/down). Use parts of the same clip, cut it into pieces and spread out to gradually reveal the scene. Use speed ramping to see more of the clip in less time, but simply speeding up a clip without the ramp looks rushed. Pick an editor you can learn and edit quickly, not because it’s the professional standard. Don’t use a variety of transitions which always looks amateurish. Hard cuts are fine. For color grading, just try to achieve a degree of uniformity.
I currently use DaVinci Resolve Studio, but Adobe Premiere is a more traditional NLE that has been an industry standard for 20 years for good reason. Adobe’s Creative cloud subscription is the best deal in software in the history of software.
Select eventful music with high BPM. Music video cuts are about .5 to 2 seconds. 3 seconds max. Vary composition between cuts (wide/tight, pan/tilt, forward/backwards, up/down). Use parts of the same clip, cut it into pieces and spread out to gradually reveal the scene. Use speed ramping to see more of the clip in less time, but simply speeding up a clip without the ramp looks rushed. Pick an editor you can learn and edit quickly, not because it’s the professional standard. Don’t use a variety of transitions which always looks amateurish. Hard cuts are fine. For color grading, just try to achieve a degree of uniformity.
I currently use DaVinci Resolve Studio, but Adobe Premiere is a more traditional NLE that has been an industry standard for 20 years for good reason. Adobe’s Creative cloud subscription is the best deal in software in the history of software.
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Excellent points macFawlty. Let me recommend that he go to Google or You Tube and insert the search term Speed Ramping and there you will find several excellent videos of how to increase or decrease the speed of a clip in Premiere Pro.
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