Handling all the footage.

[kona]

After a typical outing I end up with 5-10 clips that are a minute or so long, of which perhaps 10 seconds are good. I would like to trim them efficiently while importing to my MacBook Pro, because otherwise I can quickly end up with large amounts of wasted space on my SSD or external drive.

How do you handle this stage, before importing to iMovie or alternatives? Or do you dump all your footage straight from the SD into the movie editor?

 

[Qoncussion]

I've been shooting for over a decade. Footage builds up very quickly, I agree. My computer currently has 14TB of total storage. A little less than half of that is dedicated to backups. So, not only do I store all of the footage that I shoot, I store it twice, by backing it up. After a project grows old, I RAR archive it to an external drive. When the archive drive fills up, I pull it, mark it, and store it. Essentially, I still have every professional or hobby shoot that I have performed during the past decade, with the exception of a few throw-away projects that just didn't need to be kept. So, long story, long... Buy hard drives!

 

[SeaComms]

I just dump it all in. No time to edit it twice!

Personally I use a new folder for each with the date and location, dump all the files in, edit and save a final version. If or when it starts running low on space I will just delete the original files.

 

[kona]

I just dump it all in. No time to edit it twice!

Personally I use a new folder for each with the date and location, dump all the files in, edit and save a final version. If or when it starts running low on space I will just delete the original files.

Thanks, and by "dumping it all in" you mean into iMovie?

 

[SeaComms]

Sorry, I simply copy the card to a new folder on the laptop first then open it with the editor (I am using Shotcut on a Windows based machine)

 

[ASUAviator]

I use QuickTime to cut the clips i want while they're still on the sd card and re save them. Once I have them all cleaned up I save them to iMovie

 

[JustinVV]

Currently I am only keeping the final product. I take a lot of video and I would need TB a month to keep up. But I might start working out a work flow to keep it all.

BTW, I keep all the the raw ground based video and very photo. Just the drone I only keep the edited version. Im just not sure I need hours of takes off, landings and commuting to the subject.

 

[dwallersv]

The best answer is the one that takes the most work and discipline, but pays dividends many many many times over.

There's all sorts of software, both paid and free, for organizing and cataloging video clips and stills. Taking the time to enter media into a DB with title, description, thumbnails, etc. will make accessing and using your footage in the future much, much easier.

 

[bpendleton]

I just found this free software:

Releases · mifi/lossless-cut · GitHub

That said, I have a Pixel, and currently upload everything to Google Photos in full quality. The above tool will be useful for things I plan to actually edit and archive locally.

 

[kona]

I just found this free software:

Releases · mifi/lossless-cut · GitHub

That said, I have a Pixel, and currently upload everything to Google Photos in full quality. The above tool will be useful for things I plan to actually edit and archive locally.

Don't you think it's sad that Google Photos doesn't allow you to edit and play the videos in 4k? I don't understand why they can't do that.

How do you transfer the videos to your Pixel before uploading?

 

[bpendleton]

So far, I haven't found anything that'll edit 4k on the phone. I assume that has something to do with why. My Pixel actually thinks it can't show them once I copy them over, but it can, as long as I'm careful. It actually does better playing them "from the cloud" once the upload is done and I remove the local copy.

The copy-over technique is to stick the microSD into a reader, and plug it in. In the Pixel's case, that means I have a USB-A micro SD reader (the one I normally use came with a slightly-more-expensive package for the microSD, seemed worth it: Amazon.com: Lexar Professional 1000x microSDHC 32GB UHS-II/U3 (Up to 150MB/s Read) W/USB 3.0 Reader Flash Memory Card LSDMI32GCBNL1000R: Computers & Accessories) and a USB-C - to USB-A adapter (the one in my go-bag came with the Pixel, actually). Once plugged in, I get a notification that lets me browse the files, I just dive into the DCIM directory, select all, and "Move to" a directory on the Pixel's main memory. Usually takes a few hours on fast wifi for the upload to finish, though. I don't think the uploads are run at high priority.

 

[eroomomni]

I’ve kept files of the footage of all of my flights going back to my flying with the Slow Stick and on to DJIF550, Phantoms and now Mavic. All these files are kept on an external HD in folders. Each time I go out to fly, I store the files in a folder for that day. The folders are numbered by date and a brief explanation of location and possibly notable occasion. Example “170504 Majave Desert high wind”. If you begin the folder number by date like that you it will keep all folders in order by day. Has worked great for me for 10 years.