Newbie Photo Editing Software

[CanadaDrone]

LumaFusion on the iPad - I know you said no tablets, but if you can hold an Apple Pencil, then it's a non-issue. One time cost, very cheap, very easy to learn, and powerful enough for most users. Does not require an internet connection to be used either.

 

[Cymruflyer]

OK, I've downloaded and installed the free sample version. Better. The intro samples were silly-simple, in other words, perfect!

I clipped one piece of a flight video, but after that, it became less obvious.

A common use case for me will be to take a video, identify a section that I want, and cut everything on either side of that. But when I went to clip the "remaining" segment, it did some weird thing that I couldn't follow.

Segments A, B, and C on a video. I want to cut A and C, and retain only B. I'm sure it can be done, but it's not obvious how. Still, I haven't even glanced at the instructions yet.

Thanks, I'll poke around with it for a while, and see if I can make it work.



TCS

Adobe won't sell you anything anymore, they just hold you to a monthly ransom, so forget that stuff.

As for your question on how to do the next step, think of things on layers. So, don't stick you video clips end to end on one time line. Use a number of time lines or rows. Start your opener on the topline, then the next segment/video clip you want to show, put that on the next time line or row, below it and butt it up to start where your first one ended. At this point you can also insert a transition change to blend one clip into another, or just choose to leave it like it is which will give you a hard break from one scene to another, which is what is mostly used in editing.

As you move forward with your video, just stack each new clip either below or above the previous one and butt them up end to end. Some editing programmes allow you to use unlimited time lines, or rows, others limit you to a set number. If you have a set number, then just bounce them below and above as you go.

So, think of it as your first film segment is on line one, your second segment is below on line 2 and at that connection point you choose a blending or dissolve transition (for example) or nothing other than a hard cut. Then the 3rd segment you put back up onto line 1 and the 4th segment back down on line 2 and so on. It would sort of look like this on your 2 time lines.... ----_____------_____------_____----- and I hope this makes sense to you. When you add in a transition between the 2 video clips, you would make that transition overlap the end of the first one and overlap the start of the new one, each time you added a transition.

On a line below all your video, which is often a green strip, you would insert your audio, which would run underneath all your video clips. Again, if you added more than one piece of music, it would need to be on 2 individual lines, one above the other, just like with video. You could choose to blend with an overlapping of the two songs or end one and start another with a hard butt up against each other.

One tip in editing, watch your favourite, or any movie but turn the sound off. That way you are not distracted by the music or sound. Just pay attention to how the editor went from one scene to the next and pay attention to how many times the scene was cut from one to another. That will help you in making your movies, as to how long to make each clip, what to show in each clip and how they all flow together to make a whole. It is the same principle in any video system from cheap easy editing to a complicated expensive one. Hope this helped you.

 

[Schweizer 126MH]

I've never been into video editing, but now I've got many hours of drone footage that follow Sturgeon's Law, and I need to thin the herds...

However, I have some constraints:

1) I have chubby, stubby, klutzy fingers. There is no possible way that I can do video editing on either a phone, or a tablet. I need something that will run on my Windows 10 PC, that I can steer using my trackball, and provide input using my full size keyboard. And project onto my 60" "monitor"...

2) I need something that is easy to learn. For me, feature bloat is a bug, not a feature. As long as I can trim, cut, and paste, and learn how to do that quickly and easily, all other features are optional. For comparison, I bought the entry level Corel video SW, and it was an abomination in terms of trying to learn to use it. One problem from my perspective is that the screen is just too friggin' cluttered with stuff I'll probably never use.

3) I don't want to spend as much as I would for a professional drone, but low cost is not high on my list of concerns for the software. I've always thought that Adobe products were seriously overpriced, but if they have a video editing program that's easy to learn and use, I'd be willing to pay a couple of hundred bucks for that. Maybe more.

4) I have a seriously rotten satellite internet connection, so I can't get a program that relies heavily on live internet just to do basic stuff. Updates and stuff like that over the internet are fine, but it has to be entirely stand-alone for normal operations. I've signed up for the SpaceX Starlink system, but they don't have it yet where I live.

I would very much appreciate suggestions for specific SW apps that would meet these basic requirements. It's entirely possible that every single person in this section of the forum knows more about video editing than I do, so I won't be the least bit insulted if you make very basic suggestions.

As long as you don't make them in an insulting manor...

;-)

I anxiously await the judgement of the experts, which I most certainly am not!

Thx,

TCS

iMovie is now available for PC. There is a youtube video on "Learning iMovie in 11 minutes". I was able to do the stuff youre interested after watching the video in about a half hour on my Mac. While I hate anything to do with iOS this software performs great and has a lot of features that are easy to apply. Download it and see if it works fo you.