Video editing software

iMovie is no toy – it is an extremely capable video editor which produces excellent results. The user interface looks deceptively simple to start with – which is of course by design – but there are plenty of advanced features in there.

I terms of output settings, just choose ‘custom’ and you have fine grained control over the video and audio codecs including bitrate for both. It also shows you in real time as you change the settings the estimated file size so you can tweak it to match any limitations set by the service you are uploading to.

Peter wrote:

Regarding 720 or 1080, obviously 1080 has more pixels but for a given bitrate, say 5 megabits/sec, both will contain the same information and if everything else is equal, both files will be the same size (I have tested that actually).

They will contain the same amount of information but not the same information. Depending on the compression, I would expect a 1080 video to look better than a 720 one at the same bitrate.

I have just discovered that Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 12 (a.k.a. MSP12) – the 60 quid product – can do lens correction! It can run the NeblueFX Lens Correction plug-in.

I don’t know if the NewblueFX plug-in came with it (can’t check this without doing a fresh installation) or whether installing the NBFX $99 plug-in kit for Vegas Pro 13 (which is what I did) made the plug-in available to MSP12.

But in any case this is a way cheaper route to a really good and fairly simple to use video editor, for not much money, and you get lens correction which is IMHO a must for action cams.

One can do lens correction in MSP anyway, using the included Sony Distort plug-in, but the rather crude hack works only when flying level. When you turn, you gets lots of distortion. My early flying videos were done with that.

They will contain the same amount of information but not the same information. Depending on the compression, I would expect a 1080 video to look better than a 720 one at the same bitrate.

Hmmm

I had a look at Vegas, it appears to be PC only?

Yes; if I knew you had a Mac I would not have suggested Vegas

Steady on Peter, that almost sounds like how the video turns out has more importance than the experience of the flight

I like to do a decent job if I can. And an external camera works very much better.

But the thing which makes a big difference is if you can just set it up and fly and forget about it totally until after landing. I was asking about this stuff on various action cam forums and all the “residents” tell you to set up all the remote control gear and basically fly the plane while fiddling with it all. That’s no good…

Super video, amaizing scenery!!!

Any change in video editing suggestions since 2016? I have W10.
I need something – the editor I got from GoPro has been upgraded to not do what I want.

I just toss all my videos to youtube, but they are not edited. I’m waiting for an automatic, AI editor to come on the market sometime in the next 20 years or so and do it for me – or perhaps convince one of my kids to do it.

One thing you might find fun is this:

https://goprotelemetryextractor.com

You can do some cool things with this software.

I don’t think anything has changed. The basic features are the basic features. They are actually easy to learn; you will be using about 1% of the feature set of the program. I use Vegas Pro v16 (now it is v19 I think) and use about 1% of that, too. There are earlier versions available, say v12, old stock, still shrink wrapped, for under £100, and they will work perfectly.

It will never be automatic. The 1st thing you do is cut out 95%

Things which can be automated are e.g. “auto levels” (which fixes up the contrast, usually badly), and fashionable effects like the rapid cuts which kids like right now and which just make it look really sh*it

I have used Premier, Final Cut, and DaVinci Resolve, basically since they came into being.
In the early days IMO Premier was the best of them (Avid and Lightworks really only did offline editing packages, you had to go back an reedit in an online studio) . The good thing about Premier is that it worked really well with After Effects which at the time was something that allowed you to do things which used to cost around £5 a minute to do, for next to nothing. It ran on windows NT and I had a dual monitor computer system built at a cost of £20,000. It had dual processors and 6 Seagate hard discs making a grand total of 200GB of storage. There was also a DVD writer so that I could have extra storage space as needed. (Believe me that was as good as it got if you didn’t want to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on equipment, at the time.🤑🤑🤑
As Adam mentioned Da Vinci was developed out of their colour grading system, when transferring from film to video. It was state of the art at the time and probably still is. Most movies and high end TV dramas still use it.
Since then they have developed the editing, effects, sound and output software to make a quite incredible tool, if you know how to use it.
I first started using Da Vinci Resolve 15 and have since moved on to Resolve 17 which I run on a Macbook Pro. What is even more amazing is that my original intention was to use the free version to see how I got on with it and then buy the full version. I have never found a need to buy the full version. The free version upgrades as the software evolves. I have not yet, despite several years and having edited quite a few programmes, managed to get to grips with all that it is capable of. Starting to use it is easy but to get the full benefit you really need a knowledge of post production techniques especially editing. It isn’t really for people who assemble rather than edit.