How to Edit Drone Footage - A Beginner's Guide - The Basics

Hey guys, quick question for you. How many of you have a whole bunch of drone footage sitting on some micro SD card somewhere or maybe on a folder on your hard drive and you haven't looked at it since the day you recorded it? And what's even worse, you're probably the only one that's ever seen it. Well, I'm guessing there's a lot of you. And so the reason for me doing this video is to try to encourage those of you who might be a little bit intimidated by video editing because there's really no reason to be intimidated because if someone like me can learn how to do it, you guys can certainly do it as well. And so what I wanna do with this video, I wanna give you guys some very basic beginner editing techniques that you can take some of that raw footage and make some cuts to it and make it go to the beat of the music and then share it with your family and friends and your contacts, something that you can be proud of and something that you're gonna actually show people because what fun is it to fly and get a bunch of aerial footage and then not show it to anybody? And so that's what I hope to do with this video. Now, this video is not for those of you who already know how to edit because you're gonna watch this and go, duh, but for those of you that are just kind of hanging on and wish you knew how to do this, this is the first step. I hope to make this a series. So if you guys do like this, if you do appreciate it, let me know down in the comments and I'll make some more videos just like this, but we'll work on some more advanced type of things. And so let's get into it and get that footage off your hard drive and out into the public. So today I'm gonna be using Adobe Premiere Pro CC. That's the program that I use that does cost money. I pay a monthly fee. It's about $20 per month. So if you're not ready to pay that yet, they do have a 30-day free trial and I'll put a link for that in the description if you wanna check it out. But if you're not ready to do that yet, if you don't wanna spend $20 a month and you wanna get something that's very similar, probably the closest one is HitFilm Express. HitFilm Express is a free program and it's actually pretty powerful for being a free program. And the layout and the process that you go through when you use it is a lot like Adobe Premiere Pro CC. So if you wanna get started and you're not using any kind of other editing program other than your DJI Go 4 app, then I do recommend getting HitFilm Express. I'm gonna put some tutorials down in the description, some basic tutorials for that program and we're gonna show you that today. But a lot of stuff I'm gonna show you today, you can do that in HitFilm Express. So let's hop on the computer and show you guys a really quick, easy way to edit some drone footage and share it with your friends and family. All right guys, so first of all, just a little reminder to click on that subscribe button if you're not already subscribed. Also that little gray notification bell so you don't miss any of my future videos. So the footage that I'm gonna use today is from a trip that my family and I took this summer to Medora, North Dakota. Beautiful place, kind of a little country Western town and we had a really good time and also had some fun with my drone. But anyway, I already imported this video into a folder right here on my desktop and I already named each of these four clips. And so what we're gonna do is we're gonna take these four clips and we're gonna cut them up, we're gonna take out some of the best parts of these and then we're gonna sync it to some music and make just maybe like a 60 second video. And so the first thing that we're gonna do is we're gonna open up Adobe Premiere Pro CC and once we get in there, we're gonna click on new project and then we're gonna give it a name. I'm gonna call this one Medora edit and that's gonna bring up our main screen and this is a little bit intimidating. This is where people get like, you know, overwhelmed but like, what is all of this? What does all of this mean? But now I'm not gonna go into too much detail here on what each of these panels do. I'll kind of show you as we go through this process but each of them serves a different purpose and you'll understand it more as we get through this here. So the first thing that we need to do is we need to import that video into Adobe Premiere Pro or whatever video editing program that you're using. And so I'm gonna navigate here to the desktop, right here to the folder where I've already placed these four videos and I'm gonna highlight all of them and import them into Adobe Premiere. Now they're gonna go in this panel right here. This is the project bin. Just about every video editing program has a project bin. This is where you're gonna pull all of your raw footage from all of your audio, all of your titles, you know, all the things like that is gonna be in this project bin right here. Now, we're not gonna make this one too complicated. Like I said, we're just gonna use these four clips and then we're gonna have a audio clip and that's it for this one. But as you start to do more advanced editing, you're gonna have a lot more in this project bin. Next thing I'm gonna double check and make sure of the format of this video. I did shoot this video in 4K at 30 frames per second or 29.97. And so we're gonna verify that just to make sure. And then the next thing that we're gonna do is create a new sequence. Basically, you can break your videos into sequences. Sequences are what you use to build your complete project. And so we're just gonna have one sequence for this particular video. But if you make a more complicated video, you could have several different sequences, but we're just gonna have one right here. So I'm gonna create a new sequence and there's a lot of different options here and a lot of other video editing programs have many options. I actually created a custom sequence, which is called 4K, downscale 4K to 1080 because that's what I'm gonna do with this video. I'm gonna export this video as HD, as 1080p. Even though I shot the video in 4K, I'm gonna export it as 1080. And so that's what I'm gonna make this sequence right here. And once we have our sequence, then the next thing that I do, and many people do it differently, but this is how I do it. I find some music that fits the video, that fits kind of the vibe that I'm trying to put forth when I create my video. And there's a lot of different places that you can get music. You know, there's free places and there's paid subscriptions. And, you know, for those of you who are just getting started, I do recommend using the YouTube Creator Studio. And so we're gonna go there now. We're just gonna go ahead, open up YouTube, click on Creator Studio, and then that's gonna pull up the audio files. And they have a pretty large selection here, but to be honest, to find good music on here, you do have to spend some time listening to them because overall the music on here really isn't that great of a quality, but there are some good ones on here. You just have to search for them and you can filter them in different ways. You can filter them by different genres or different moods or whatever. So that'll kind of help narrow your search. It really does depend on kind of the mood or the feeling that you're trying to put forth in your video. Now I use Epidemic Sound, which is an online paid subscription service for audio for songs. But once in a while, I'll go to the Creator Studio here and pick out a short song for maybe a short video like this, like a one minute video. But for the most part, I use Epidemic Sound. It does cost $15 per month, but they have a much larger selection and the quality of music is just a lot better than the Creator Studio. So I have a bunch of songs already downloaded from Epidemic Sound. So I'm gonna go ahead and navigate to that folder. I'm gonna pull in a song that's kind of cinematic. You know, most drone footage, most aerial footage of landscape, you want it to have that cinematic feel. And so I'm just gonna go ahead and import this song right here. Now I'm gonna drag it up into the source panel just to show you guys what it looks like. This is the waveform of the audio. And if you look at this song, you can tell that this is kind of a cinematic song. This is good for a cinematic video because it has a nice build. You know, it starts off, you know, kind of quiet and kind of calm, and then it builds up to something more exciting and a little more loud. And the other thing is it has these little peaks right here where the beat drops, and that's really easy to edit video to. What we're gonna do is we're gonna cut those videos. We're gonna cut up pieces of that raw footage to match the beats of this song. And so that's kind of what you wanna look for if you're trying to make a cinematic video. And so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna cut this song at the beginning right here, and I'm gonna get about a minute of audio, probably a minute, let's say 103, and we're gonna drag that into the timeline. Now, as you can see, when you drag it in the timeline, you can see those little peaks right there. That's what we're gonna edit the video to. So next thing to do is choose the first clip. I'm gonna use this one right here. This is where I first lifted off in Medora. This is a nice little bluff right on the edge of town and kind of rising up. And so that's kind of a good way to start this video, I think. So I'm gonna go ahead and do an in and an out. Now, an in and an out is where you choose where the video starts and where it ends. And so I'm gonna go right here and I'm gonna click on the eye, which makes it an in, and then I'm gonna scroll over and I'm gonna click on the O, which makes it out. And I'm gonna drag that down into the timeline. Now, you can always edit the video after you drag it into the timeline. You know, you can move it around, you can cut it right there, but the source panel up here is a good place to get started. And then you can drag it into your timeline and then edit it more directly to the beat of the music. And so we're gonna move that clip a little bit here just so it's right on that beat. And I think that looks great. Now we're gonna go ahead and choose our second clip and we're gonna use this clip right here. This is kind of a lateral panning movement to the right and then a little bit of spin at the end. And so we're gonna put it in and out and then we're gonna drag that down there. And then again, we're gonna match that up to the beat right there. And then one other thing on this clip that I'd like to do, I don't like that parking lot right there. And this is a good reason why you should shoot 4K because if there's something in the video that you don't want, you can crop it out and still have a nice looking high quality video. And so I'm gonna cut out that parking lot simply by zooming in. I'm gonna go to the effects control here and I'm just gonna bump that up to 75 which is gonna zoom in on the image. So as you can see, that gets rid of the parking lot. I think it looks a lot nicer without the parking lot in there. Now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go ahead and speed this up a little bit so this video doesn't get too long but I'm gonna add these other two clips. I'm gonna stretch those out to the end of the song. Now, once we have all of our clips laid on top of our audio and we have the cuts set to the beat, the next thing that we're gonna do is we're gonna color correct these clips. Now there's so many different ways that you can do color correcting. I'm just gonna show you the way that I do it. I'm sure that there's easier ways but this is just how I do it. Now, as you can see, there's only five clips here so I'm gonna actually color correct each individual clip but you can actually correct a whole sequence by using an adjustment layer. That's something that maybe I'll show you in a future video for now. Since we only have five different clips, I'm gonna color correct each of these individually. And so what we're gonna do, we're gonna go ahead and go over to the first clip here and we're gonna click on Lumetri Color and then we're gonna bring up the Lumetri Scopes because this is gonna kinda guide how we edit these clips. When you look at your Lumetri Scopes, what you're looking for here is you wanna make sure that none of these scopes go above that 100 right there or below the zero. And if they do, a little bit is okay but you don't want any massive clipping. That's what, when people say clipping, that's what they mean. It's clipping above 100 or it's going below zero and so we don't want that. So as you can see on this first clip, it's actually pretty narrow right here. We have a lot of room to work with in this clip and so all you do is go over here to your Lumetri Color and you start playing with these sliders right here and really what you're doing is you're just trying to make the image look a little bit better and you can adjust your exposure and your contrast, pull that apart a little bit, your highlights, you can bring those up. It looks like this one needs to go up a little bit but you just go ahead and adjust these sliders until the image looks better and then you're using the Lumetri Scopes to make sure that you're not doing too much. So I think that's about as good as we're gonna get that one. We're gonna move over to the next one here. Now this one has a little more color in it. It's a little more interesting so it's easier to see on the scopes there how everything looks and again, you're just gonna go ahead and play with these sliders and you're gonna make the image look just more appealing. You're gonna bump up the contrast a little bit and maybe the exposure but you're gonna go ahead and do this for each clip. Now like I said, since there's only five clips here, it's actually pretty easy to do but if you have like a 20 minute video and you have several different clips, it's almost impossible to edit each individual clip and so you can use an adjustment layer but like I said, we'll work on that in a future video. If you guys are interested in that, let me know down in the comments. So again, I'm gonna speed this up just so this video doesn't get to be too long. You're just gonna go ahead and edit all of these clips. Now, when you get all of your color correcting done, the next step to do, the final step is to export and so what you're gonna do is go ahead and go up to File and click on Export and then Media and that's gonna pull up your export dialogue right here and make sure this says Entire Sequence and then you're just gonna make sure that everything looks okay. You're gonna go ahead and give it a name. So we're gonna name this one Medora Short and you really don't have to worry about any of this. You do wanna make sure that these two right here, the output and the source are what you want them to be. For instance, if your source is a 4K file, but you're gonna output, you're gonna export it into a 1080p, you wanna make sure that it says that here. As far as the rest of this stuff, again, this is a little more advanced. This is stuff that we can discuss in a future video if you guys are interested, but you're gonna go ahead and just click on Export and this is a short video. It's only like a 60 second video, so it's only gonna take a minute or two to export that and once that is done, then you can go ahead and navigate to that folder wherever you saved it to and go ahead and watch your video, make sure everything is okay and you're ready to go. And so there you have it, my very first video editing tutorial for you guys, for you beginners who are just getting into this. You just wanna get that raw footage and turn it into something really cool. Hopefully I gave you guys something of value today. If I did, go ahead and click on that thumbs up button. Also, once again, be sure to subscribe if you're not. I wanna thank you guys sincerely for watching today and as always, fly safe and fly smart.