What software do people use for editing aerial video?

[Mojave]

Hey Everyone,
I have seen so much great video from inexpensive cameras to cinematography equipment. I am wondering what is the gamut of software people use? I know Adobe has Premier, and Apple has free software with their latest operating system. I also see YouTube videos with text inserted.

What would folks suggest for video editing?

 

[Droider]

That really depends on what OS you re using. I cannot comment on Windowz but on the Mac yup for beginners iMovie is very capable. and for under a hundred quid FCPX serves my purposes. If you are a Pro editor then most now seem to use the CS6 suite of programmes

Dave

 

[DucktileMedia]

I know it sounds rude but if you are asking the question, iMovie is probably the right choice. It has all the abilities to cut/paste transition, minor effects. Really quite powerful despite it's amateurish nature. The truth is that most NLE's do about the same thing. there are minor differences between them. in the end 99% of us just need to rough edit clips and do some fades and transitions. They all do that. Where the pro apps excel is in their export options. If you are uploading to YT or vimeo you will have a preset for those and all will be fine. Again, this is assuming you have a mac. And it's free!

 

[Mojave]

I know it sounds rude but if you are asking the question, iMovie is probably the right choice. It has all the abilities to cut/paste transition, minor effects. Really quite powerful despite it's amateurish nature. The truth is that most NLE's do about the same thing. there are minor differences between them. in the end 99% of us just need to rough edit clips and do some fades and transitions. They all do that. Where the pro apps excel is in their export options. If you are uploading to YT or vimeo you will have a preset for those and all will be fine. Again, this is assuming you have a mac. And it's free!

Yuri - I do not have a mac, I may buy one since Final Cut Pro X is around $300 (thanks Dave). Currently I subscribe to Adobe's cloud services with a yearly subscription to LightRoom and Photoshop (I am mostly a still photographer after all). I could add a Premiere subscription for about $240/year.

What are other options afforded to those of us that want to start out a bit simpler and are comfortable with Windows? Your suggestions are appreciated!

Joey

 

[DucktileMedia]

Doesn't windows come with movie maker? How about Vegas? Also I'm surprised adobe cc is that much for just the one program. I thought you could get the whole suite for $50/month or less.

 

[COMike93yj]

Windows has windows movie maker and it is free. I have seen some people use Sony Vegas Pro but it is very expensive. If you are student you can get it for under $200.

 

[kloner]

Ever since getting premier i can't imagine going back......you really need something with a quality post stab to keep pushing towards perfection. Warp is bar none the best, the color grading is insane, the control of the content is great, works bitchen even handling 4k+ on my mac book pro, like lighting


windows movie maker sucks, at least get the windows live version if you do, it's a little better.

You can get the adobe cloud suite for $49.95 a month for everything.... i do premier, photoshop, light room for $29.95 a month, did it through promos, cloud based so it's always the freshest version out

 

[jfro]

I use Adobe Premier and Sony Vegas Pro. I tend to lean more towards Vegas for many things as it's fast and you can mix formats on a time line plus they have some pretty good audio tools.

There are times, I use both along with AfterEffects. I'm not a cloud person, so I'm using the CS5.5 versions.

On the Mac side, FCP and Premiere are the two I'd consider if I still had my Mac's.

 

[Mojave]

That was very helpful - I have not had occasion to make a movie - but I can see it coming down the line. I have the photoshop/lightroom deal for $9.95/month. Hopefully if I get into video production I can upgrade to premier. I live in vegas but sony vegas pro is a bit pricey for a rank amateur. I am a student of multirotors - I wonder if they would consider that for the discount on vegas! I do like the kiss principle so to keep it simple (stupid) I may go for the windows live newest version.
Thanks a lot!

 

[PeteDee]

If you want an inexpensive video editor with lots of features it is hard to go past Corel Video Studio X6.

Pete

 

[Av8Chuck]

I think putting this more in context of AP, its hard to beat Adobe's Creative Cloud, there are so many good tools in it to help improve your AP. I'm on a MAC and still using FCP7x, I guess if I want to stay with FCP I'll eventually have to switch to FCPX -- not looking forward to it.

One thing I'd point out which sounds much more complicated than it is, but we spend a lot of time tuning and tweaking MR's, Gimbals and camera's to get good aerial video then a lot of people take that video and edit "natively" in their favorite NLE. All of these NLE's step on the image and do some pretty funky math in order to be able to edit H264, Mp4 or motion Jpeg, I'd suggest researching intermediate codecs like ProRes on the Apple or Cineform on the PC and then since your just starting out choose an NLE and workflow that best suits your needs.

For example, I don't care too much for GoPro footage but recently I've been shooting with the Hero3 Black Edition in 2.7K @ 30fps, I use MPEG StreamClip to encode full resolution to ProRes HQ then center cut a 1920x1080 convert the frame rate to 23.976 and then color correct it in DaVinci Resolve. This removes most of the "fisheye" and enables me to match my DSLR footage much better.

Do you need to do this, no, but if you want to charge money for you footage you should. I see so many AP videos with encoding artifacts, the footage isn't interpolated correctly or there's a mis-match in frame rates etc.. You can get away with a lot if all your doing is posting to Youtube but if your charging money for your footage and viewing it on Bluray these problems will be evident.

Doing this adds an encoding step and you need more disk space but renders are generally much faster and quality is much better.

 

[dazzab]

I've recently moved to using Apple gear specifically to video editing. Of course I'm using FCX but I'm not that impressed with it. A friend of mine who works in the software industry highly recommends Media Composer. Is anyone using it or know anything about it?

 

[gmcg]

I've been using Corel Video Studio for years (various versions) , works well and is reasonably priced

Gerald

 

[Carapau]

To me the Adobe Creative Cloud suite is superb as it gives you every tool required not just of AP but also a lot of good tools for running a business such as Acrobat Pro. £38.11 a month it costs for the subscription service (can install it on two computers) which seems pretty fair to me. Prelude, Premiere, After Effects and the rest give you some serious power to your post work if you need it / use it.