Video Editing?

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Two questions.

1. What's your preferred editing software and why?

2. What software will smooth out some of the jerkiness in a video?

If these are both handled in another thread, I'd be pleased to have the links.

Cheers and thanks :)
 
Erotic Panda said:
What is your definition of this "jerkiness" that you want to "smooth out"?

You haven't even used a Phantom yet so what is the basis for your question?

Software solutions like Prodrenalin, Warp Stabilzer, etc. are poor substitutes when compared to capturing quality video up front.
I went to the DJI training last week. The guy who took our group said that his company uses Adobe Premier to help smooth out the video. And he said (if I recall) they're best flown in attitude mode for filming. In GPS mode it tries to correct too sharply. He demonstrated the difference for us.

I've heard of video editing that helps with other (non-drone) footage in that way too.
 
I use Final Cut Pro X. It has stabilization which can help remove some of the jerkiness you refer to. I would also agree with that instructor, that flying in attitude mode will make for smoother filming, as he said.
 
Khudson7 said:
I use Final Cut Pro X. It has stabilization which can help remove some of the jerkiness you refer to. I would also agree with that instructor, that flying in attitude mode will make for smoother filming, as he said.

True about ATTI mode. As for FC Pro, I edit for a living...love it
 
I've used Premiere since its non-Pro days, switched to Final Cut Pro for a few years, and am now back fully into Premiere Pro CC. The biggest advantage for me from an aerial footage perspective is the ability to import footage straight from the GoPro without transcoding first. There's a minute or two while it indexes the footage, but after that, you can dig straight into previewing real-time and cutting.

Premiere is definitely a higher-end editing tool (as compared to iMovie or Windows Movie Maker), and has a slightly steeper learning curve, but it's a hugely capable piece of software. I make pretty extensive use of After Effects CC for more elaborate manipulations and compositing, and even Photoshop can open and process/manipulate video footage. The point is that if you get the full Creative Cloud Suite, you have an enormously powerful post-production tool in your hands. I haven't used the most recent version of FCP, and it may very well have a lot of the same features, although the other tools in the CC Suite make it a better deal for me.

The Warp Stabilizer VFX plug-in does a pretty amazing job not just stabilizing jerky footage overall, but will smooth out any pans, tilts or other camera movement that you attempted in the shot but didn't get.

I'll agree with Erotic Panda*, there's no real substitute for correctly shot footage. The less you have to do in post production, the better your final product will be. Ideally you'd want the 3-axis gimbal flying in ATTI mode on a GoPro with ProTune turned on for the best results on the back end. In a lot of cases you will need to do more work in post-production to get a good-looking image, though. ProTune looks a lot flatter in color right after you acquire it, but it gives you a lot more leeway when doing color corrections in post, since it's not compressing as much or doing ham-fisted, one-size-fits-all color modifications while recording.

Having said that though, you can get away with quite a lot in post-production these days before it becomes distractingly noticeable. I prefer to shoot in 2K on the GoPro 3+ Black with the goal of outputting to 1080p. This gives a lot more flexibility when doing any optics compensation or stabilizing, and offers the ability to crop the image or slightly change the framing mid-shot.

Stabilization will always result in less useable image area from your original frame size. On a raw stabilized shot, you'll see the frame edge creeping into the shot, and most of the stabilizers will zoom in to compensate and cover this up. This means that you'll lose sharpness, because it's increasing the pixel size. If you shot at 2K (or 4K on the newer GoPro 4 Black), scaling down to 1080p/2K will reverse any sharpness issues (to a point) introduced by the stabilizer and/or optics compensation. Ideally you'd want to tell the stabilizer to not do any zoom/scaling compensations, and avoid the upscale/downscale roundtrip. Just crop the image down to your final resolution after it's been stabilized, but this is something you can play with to see what works for you.

Still, like I said, the better footage you start with, the better your output will be, and there will be some instances where no amount of post-production tweaking will fix a shot, but there's a huge grey area in between that will give you acceptable, if not great, results.


---------
* Add this to the list of phrases I never expected to say/type.
 
traeger23 said:
The biggest advantage for me from an aerial footage perspective is the ability to import footage straight from the GoPro without transcoding first.

The Warp Stabilizer VFX plug-in does a pretty amazing job not just stabilizing jerky footage overall, but will smooth out any pans, tilts or other camera movement that you attempted in the shot but didn't get.

Perhaps Prylar Bek can chime in on this, as I am just using FCP X as a hobby, but I can do what you said above with FCPX as well. I also use Motion 5 and yes, photoshop as well. I am a mac guy so these tools serve me well.

To each, his own, I guess... ;)
 
If it's job for a hobby, frankly the Apple/Mac simple editing program will work fine. Also I'm trying a ND filter to see if it smooths out the 'jello' Listen, I'm perfectly happy with the PTV+ camera for hobby uses and simple editing. When I shoot for a TV show, I use GP4 and it matches pretty well with my Canon and RED footage. Go simple with the editing. Easy on the special efx!.. Remember..."crap in...crap out" Don't bore your audiences.
 
Firstly and most importantly, be sure to capture the highest-quality stock footage by setting the GoPro to 'ProTune' mode, enabled in the GoPro's settings - this will disable any in-camera post-processing and make sure you get the purest, highest-quality image with the maximum dynamic range back for editing and matching with other footage. This is effectively the GoPro's RAW video mode.

If you have Adobe After Effects, check out the plugin called 'Optics Compensation' - this will let you correct the 'barrel distortion' you get from the GoPro's wide/fisheye mode. After Effects (and Premiere Pro) also have 'Warp Stabiliser', which is one of the easiest to use image stabilisation plugins in the business - if you're using the H3-2D or H3-3D gimbals then just set it to 'Auto' and it should do a great job.
 
For mac users of FCPX there is a free fisheye fixer plugin called alex4d....works great for me. Just google it.
 
Thanks everyone for your detailed replies, especially to Prylar Bek and traeger23.
Much appreciated. (I've bookmarked this thread.)

I'm about to get my first Phantom, probably a V+ first and just focus on shooting good stock. Once I've gained some experience I plan to upgrade - either a Phantom with GoPro or an Inspire 1. The eventual aim is commercial with a S1000+ and a Canon 6D or some such. One step at a time, hey.

Again, thanks all. :)
 
I have Premier, Photoshop, and Aftereffects. Does anyone know of any online tutorials for Premier? Now that I have the capability to take video, I need to learn to edit it
 
Prylar Bek said:
Khudson7 said:
I use Final Cut Pro X. It has stabilization which can help remove some of the jerkiness you refer to. I would also agree with that instructor, that flying in attitude mode will make for smoother filming, as he said.

True about ATTI mode. As for FC Pro, I edit for a living...love it

Absolutely!! ATTI mode is by far the best for filmmaking qualities.. That's just my personal preference when videoing. You will also find windy days more troublesome when flying across the grain.. Good Luck!! As for software I've used Corel and the Gopro software.. There are too grade video editing softwares available but you could buy a new toy for the price of them lol...
 
Erotic Panda said:
rstekeur said:
I have Premier, Photoshop, and Aftereffects. Does anyone know of any online tutorials for Premier? Now that I have the capability to take video, I need to learn to edit it

Just a guess...

http://bit.ly/16mOXsi


It's just amazing the things there teaching in school these days. I'm glad you have so much time to waste. With 17,200,000 Google hits someone might just might be able to recommend one that is worthwhile
 
Erotic Panda said:
rstekeur said:
I'm glad you have so much time to waste. With 17,200,000 Google hits someone might just might be able to recommend one that is worthwhile

Yeah, I "wasted" a few seconds trying to help you by answering the simple question that you posed. A simple question that was answered by a Google search - which you are apparently unable to figure out.

Here's some more "wasted" time answering your latest clarification:

http://bit.ly/1zof1hs
You don't help anyone. All you do in make sarcastic remarks. You must be a very unhappy person
 
Khudson7 said:
For mac users of FCPX there is a free fisheye fixer plugin called alex4d....works great for me. Just google it.


Any suggestions for settings for the vision+?
 
I use GoPro Studio - The newer version has a remove Fisheye effect - but I think this only works for native GoPro files.
Then I convert the clip to Cineform Avi. Again, in GoPro studio I change the exposure saturation, zoom etc.
Now the cool thing - You can view all the changes you made in Media Player without re-encoding/saving as all changes contained in the Cineform Metadata. i.e. you can tweek as often as you want without quality loss (as opposed to re-encoding each time).

Finally I take the Cineform avi into my NLE program - do all the editing etc and a final render back to MP4.
 

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