Program preferences for video editing

[Alex 007]

I am using Adobe Premiere Elements. It is a much cheaper version of Premiere Pro and the only difference is that it does not have as many features (Effects etc). However it has the same processing speed and more features than I will ever use or want. Like all Adobe products, is that once you have figured it out and are used to it, it works very smoothly. I think i paid $75 for it about 3 years ago.

 

[68OutOfTown]

In the Colour page set separate nodes for 1. Exposure (do the Lift, Gain, Gamma); 2. W/B (use the Eyedropper then sort out Temp and Tint); 3. Saturation (sort out contrast, shadows, highlights, mid tones, and saturation). If you’re using a LUT, add another node to apply it (rarely very useful, imho, and most people totally misunderstand them).

The shortcut is to then grab a Still from a hero frame in a clip you’ve graded (choose a frame where the majority of colours etc are present) and then apply that grade to subsequent clips from the same colour family (ie usually taken from the same location). This will also paste all the nodes from the first clip. You’ll still need to adjust each clip.

Then pull up pairs of clips and do the Colour Matching in the Split window. You’ll need to go back and forth to get them matched and may end up picking a new hero frame and grabbing a new still to use as the grade.

thanks for sharing. Grabbing a still works best for me with some additional adjustment of the RGB curves

I used the grab still method in below clip to match the MA2 shots with the ones from the BMPCC 4K

 

[jlatas]

Well., maybe I do something wrong when I look to the comments from jlatas and EricJT.
I have an MacPro 5.1 with 16Gb memory, 3.46Ghz 6-core intel Xeon, video Radeon RX580 8Gb, SSD Samsung 970Pro 1Tb (NVMExpress)
PCI express with WDC 1TB again with FCX no problem, unfortunately it is not possible to look back what kind of parameters I have used with DaVinci.

My last comment about this, just as an FYI...I just did an experiment and rendered 2 videos...both using H.265...and here are the render times:

33 minute video 4k24fps rendered in 10 minutes 58 seconds
36 minute video 4k60fps renderd in 14 minutes 17 seconds

My PC specs are similar to yours:
Ryzen 3700X 8-core, 3.6GHz base clock
32GB Ram
nVidia GTX 1060 6GB
Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVMe

 

[Patrickgood]

Give me some time please, I'll give it a try again.
10-14 minutes is something different then 24 hours.....ha, ha.
But you was talking about the encoder set on the graphic card, is that possible? And how? Through DaVinci?

 

[zeusfl]

My vote is for Adobe Premiere Pro.

 

[mschaffer66]

I use Premiere and I don't know why, but 4k60 really gives my new laptop fits. Even lower resolutions with proxies makes it quite unhappy if you try to visualize the transitions and effects.

My laptop is no slouch by the way... 10th gen I9, 32gb ram, and a 2070 super.

 

[jlatas]

Give me some time please, I'll give it a try again.
10-14 minutes is something different then 24 hours.....ha, ha.
But you was talking about the encoder set on the graphic card, is that possible? And how? Through DaVinci?

Yes...in Resolve's Render page settings as shown here

 

[jlatas]

Give me some time please, I'll give it a try again.
10-14 minutes is something different then 24 hours.....ha, ha.
But you was talking about the encoder set on the graphic card, is that possible? And how? Through DaVinci?

It just dawned on me that perhaps the free edition of Resolve doesnt offer hardware GPU encoding, so in that case , rendering would be much slower...I am not sure however, if it would be on the order of 24 hours.

Can someone else give us some render times in Resolve16 free edition???

 

[Micktss]

Am I the only one using Cyberlink PowerDirector seems pretty good to me!!

 

[fxsales1959]

I use davinci resolve 16. Its free and totally awesome. It has some crazy color grading features but they are pretty confusing. It is a powerful program and is really a great one to get if you don't want to spend money on something like premier pro. You should try it out and see if you like it. Hope this helps.


Happy Flying,
--Noah

I love this post, if it's still alive. I am a VERY old school editor who cut this teeth on Avid Media composers, then Pinnacle Studio.. back then we "digitized"from tape with specific inpoints and out points avoiding a lot of un-necessry trimming on the time line.of course now everytying is file based. I would love to find a platform where i could simply drag a couple clips to a time line and add some dissolves and maybe a title then then save for output. at this time it's just for Sh#ts and giggles, so i don't need extensive keyframing or PIP or dymanic ramping for that matter. Most important to me is media management where i can put clips in a "bin/container" for access to the timeline. back then i had a second monitor where i could keep my media for use. now, with a laptop the program gets congested with too much on the screen.Yup, I'm that old
I i don't edit for commercial purposes (yet) so frugality is important. I also need to better control my record button when flying to cut down on un-necessry clips. I've edited hunderd of videos from my underwateer video days, and could knock out a video in short order.
any pointers appreciated.

 

[nhgill960]

Hey guys,

In resolve, render times are fast, ish. For a 2 minute 30 second video in 2.7k, It rendered it in about 3 minutes or less on the deliver page. When watching video while editing, you need to right click all of your clips and turn render to on, and then in the playback drop down menu, change it from auto to user. This will take a minute to load, but then you can view your clips with no delay while editing. After it is finished, you will see a blue bar at the top of your timeline. If you are looking for something really simple to edit your clips with, download them to your phone and use iMovie. After you finish editing them together, just save the finished product and delete the individual clips off your phone. You will still have them on your SD card. iMovie is pretty decent for an app, so give it a try. Hope this helps.

--Noah

 

[Tomcat16]

I've tried to use DaVinci Resolve a few times, but I keep going back to VSDC because I find it easier to use. That could be just because I'm too lazy to apply myself to learning Resolve.

I appreciate the honest comment! Thanks for replying.

 

[Tomcat16]

I love this post, if it's still alive. I am a VERY old school editor who cut this teeth on Avid Media composers, then Pinnacle Studio.. back then we "digitized"from tape with specific inpoints and out points avoiding a lot of un-necessry trimming on the time line.of course now everytying is file based. I would love to find a platform where i could simply drag a couple clips to a time line and add some dissolves and maybe a title then then save for output. at this time it's just for Sh#ts and giggles, so i don't need extensive keyframing or PIP or dymanic ramping for that matter. Most important to me is media management where i can put clips in a "bin/container" for access to the timeline. back then i had a second monitor where i could keep my media for use. now, with a laptop the program gets congested with too much on the screen.Yup, I'm that old
I i don't edit for commercial purposes (yet) so frugality is important. I also need to better control my record button when flying to cut down on un-necessry clips. I've edited hunderd of videos from my underwateer video days, and could knock out a video in short order.
any pointers appreciated.

Those are great comments, I'm not editing for award winning productions. These types of things are very interesting to me.
Thanks for your comments.

 

[fxsales1959]

Hey guys,

In resolve, render times are fast, ish. For a 2 minute 30 second video in 2.7k, It rendered it in about 3 minutes or less on the deliver page. When watching video while editing, you need to right click all of your clips and turn render to on, and then in the playback drop down menu, change it from auto to user. This will take a minute to load, but then you can view your clips with no delay while editing. After it is finished, you will see a blue bar at the top of your timeline. If you are looking for something really simple to edit your clips with, download them to your phone and use iMovie. After you finish editing them together, just save the finished product and delete the individual clips off your phone. You will still have them on your SD card. iMovie is pretty decent for an app, so give it a try. Hope this helps.

--Noah

I'd be interested in knowing more about the process. Ishoot with an pad mini with minimal storage

 

[nhgill960]

I'd be interested in knowing more about the process. Ishoot with an pad mini with minimal storage

So basically, you’ve got to go into DJI fly (I fly a mini so I have no experience with go 4) and while the aircraft is powered up and connected, select the videos you want and click download. This will take a few minutes. Thee is also an app you can use called DJI sync that you can use on any DJI drone but I haven’t used it yet. After that, the videos should be saved to your camera roll. From there go into your editing app such as imovie , and edit them. Once the process is done, save the finished product and deleted the individual clips. Make sure to delete them from recently deleted as well so that you get your storage back. A lot of times, when downloading videos, it can take up over a gigabyte of space, so this way may not be the best if you don’t have much storage. Like I’ve said, Davinci resolve is free, so give it a try if you want.

 

[jlatas]

I'd be interested in knowing more about the process. Ishoot with an pad mini with minimal storage

Are you saying that you edit your videos on the ipad mini as well??? Or just use it to fly? If you are using a computer to edit then the storage on the ipad isnt really so relevant because your files get saved to the drones SD card. I tried to go back and see what drone you are referring to but I'll guess its a MA2 for now.

You can record all the footage you want as its basically fairly easy to cut out the good parts to save into your new final recording...plenty of programs to accomplish this...Resolve16 is free, lots of YouTube tutorials, but there are simpler programs as well.

 

[fxsales1959]

Are you saying that you edit your videos on the ipad mini as well??? Or just use it to fly? If you are using a computer to edit then the storage on the ipad isnt really so relevant because your files get saved to the drones SD card. I tried to go back and see what drone you are referring to but I'll guess its a MA2 for now.

You can record all the footage you want as its basically fairly easy to cut out the good parts to save into your new final recording...plenty of programs to accomplish this...Resolve16 is free, lots of YouTube tutorials, but there are simpler programs as well.

my apologies for not enough details.I'm flying a mavic pro and bought the ipad solely for the purpose of running djiGo4 and flying my drone. the only app on it is dji go4. i hope to use my lenovo laptop to "edit.' AMD ryzden3 3220U with radeon Vega mobile gfx. 8mb ram. (un upgradable) . for now most of my shooting will be for social media such a my jeep club on facebook. just this weeknd i did my first point of interest shot of my jeep. I simply wanted to trim the end of the video out where i went off frame after exiting. the mode. I accomplished this with Windows movie maker. terribly uncomprehensive to an old school editor. eventully my goals are to take my drone when I travel the SE as it is my sales terittory. I will possibly want to take a bunch of shots (lets think Smoky mountains) and put them on a timline with dissolves and pssoibly some royalty free music for a "sceneic video. This weekend I simply connected the drone to my laptop with a usb cable and copied and pasted the media to my drone folder. it was simple nough for now, but i can't imagine trying it with multiple clips. I haven't been brave enough to take the card out of my drone and r3emove the clips that way. I once sold a brand of broadcast mdia recorders where the drive would be corrupt if you removed a media file from the squenc) but that was another life.
sorry to be long winded, but thank you for listening. I am relegated to this laptop for now. I used to build my own monster desktops for editing, but they don't travel well.
thank you all

 

[FabledFew]

I used Premiere Pro for 7 years before switching to Da Vinci Resolve 16 this year. Honestly, Premiere is just not up to modern standards anymore. I am super satisfied with Resolve. The built in effects tools, audio tools and grading tools are just great. No more switching to different programs to do one simple thing. Also, hardware encoding. Hardware encoding.

 

[1471]

Final Cut Pro for me, been using for years without any problems on my 3-4 year old Macbook Pro.

Using proxy media works really well if using an older machine with H265 footage, I'm sure other editing software will have a similar feature. Essentially creates a lower quality version to edit with then used the original footage when exporting.

 

[daverandazzo]

Movavi Video Editor and Wondershare Filmora9