What do people use for editing GoPro footage? Sort of related to that, what’s your workflow?

I have a load of footage from chest and helmet mounted GoPro. Each clip is probably around 2 minutes long and I’d like to take the best sections (10 – 15 second clips) from each and chain them together.

I’ve tried iMovie and Adobe Premiere Elements, but neither seem to be set-up for selecting sub-clips and editing them together. For example, I can import them all, cut the best bits out and have them in the playbar at the bottom. But re-ordering is awkward.

I guess I could edit each clip individually and then import the edited clips.

Should say, I don’t mind paying for a tool… although not the £hundreds for some! Much rather put that in the 1×11 fund. 😉

First world problems and all that, but it seems a shame that I have all this footage that I don’t use.

I use Adobe Premiere Pro.

Workflow is to import all the footage and dump it into the timeline. I watch it through and crop the clips as I go, maybe 2-4 passes depending on how I’m feeling.

I generally like my vids to work in order of the ride but I’ve mixed a few runs together. Just pick up the clips you want to move and drop them elsewhere on the timeline. Sort and shuffle as you go. I don’t bother with the sound as I add a soundtrack so thats one less thing to worry about.

I’ve been using premiere for various things for 7-8 years so it seems fairly natural.

Thanks Mike… will persevere! It’s probably that I’m trying to edit a week’s worth of footage in one go.

i use imovie on the ipad. download files using the gopro app. edit. upload direct to vimeo.

simple and works well.

[video]http://vimeo.com/67476747[/video]

[video]http://vimeo.com/63009967[/video]

As a slight hijack then, I want to cobble a load of family footage together. Just one thing like chronological order would do. Hugely varied from beach to bodyboarding, to climbing, to stargazing to riding. Any ideas?

Tom, I’d probably split it up a bit or import 1 day at a time and work on that then dump the next day down the timeline or on a different line/track. Some things to remember is that due to the modern world attention span is around 3 mins so much more than that is wasted on most people. Maybe doing one day at a time might be better. this is the progression of my editing over a 1 week holiday https://vimeo.com/album/1988585 as it was different most days it fitted better into being split up.

Wrightyson depends what you want to spend/use and how often.

I use GoPro Cineform Studio and its pretty good. Have also tried Sony Vegas and Imovie, depends how much time you have on your hands.

Shameless youtube advertising Youtube Edit

I made that in around half an hour or playing around with Cineform studios, I think theres a good GoPro tutorial vid on youtube to help you out with it.

As a slight hijack then, I want to cobble a load of family footage together. Just one thing like chronological order would do. Hugely varied from beach to bodyboarding, to climbing, to stargazing to riding. Any ideas?

Editing is an art form. You can either just put a piece of nice music of a load of strung-together clips with cross-dissolve transitions, or you can time cuts to the music and use the tempo/melody to create a rhythm in the ‘story’. Or a whole host of other skills/tricks/techniques to produce something interesting and engaging.

Think about what you have to show, why you want to show it, how things relate to other things, and how you can best present how you’d like to feel about the end product.

Don’t knock cross dissolve!!
Also worth pointing out an Edit/Editing is something you do a film/movie etc. is the thing you watch.

Adobe Elements should be fine for video editing. I suggest you watch some tutorials on Youtube of how people edit, although it is difficult to find decent tutorials as there are soo many now.

The first thing I do is watch all the footage, boring at times, but amazing at others when you captured something you didn’t know about. I write down the filenames and times things happen. eg: 1:06 Big Jump, 1:20 Crash, etc

I then leave it a week at least and go back and import the files and split them into the sections I’ve marked, sometimes discarding some of the bits I’ve marked as they weren’t that good.

I then spend way too much time thinking of a good song/tune to go with it (usually a week or so) and try to edit the footage to the music. I still can’t decide on a song for Pila DH from August last year.

Then add effects, don’t overdo the effects, most professional edits don’t have many effects and if they do they are very subtle.

Then colour grade, sharpen, etc.

I would also split it into days, or a couple of days at a time, editing down a weeks worth to 5 minutes is pretty brutal.

Also watch other peoples videos and take note of what they do with the footage, although you might actually think other videos are pretty terrible.. Here’s mine: Milkie’s YouTube Videos I would watch La Thuile and Singletrack Descent in the Alps. The others are 2 years previous on a HT with a not so decent POV cam.

EDIT: Cross Dissolve – Yea I’m with Mike on that it is widely used, it’s my most used effect.

and just to add in there are probably 2 of my better ones
[video]http://vimeo.com/60297980[/video]
[video]http://vimeo.com/63068559[/video]
Mixing up the filming angles etc. Hardest thing I find is finding music with applicable licensing as opposed to something you find in your music collection.

I use Sony Movie Studio (12)

pretty simple to drag and drop video clips, watch them, trim them, make sections slo mo, add some pumping dance music tracks to make it oh so much more exciting….

exporting as AVCHD 1920X1080 – 50i to hard drive.

So I’m running an i5 processor with 4gb of memory on the laptop. Is this enough juice and what’s the best editor for a beginner to use? The actual go pro one?

This got hammered last week, you either need a super computer or that will be fine, I’ve done a few on an i3 laptop with 4gb Ram fine. See how you get on before spending cash on upgrades.

Some people are getting on fine with the Go-pro stuff not really used it much except for doing these
[video]http://vimeo.com/69150710[/video]

My suggestion would be to use Premiere and learn some basic editing techniques – 3 or 4 point editing is a good start. Learn what the other tools such as blade, slip, ripple, insert, overwrite etc do as these will be useful after laying down your footage in the sequence.

Don’t knock cross dissolve!!

I’m not knocking it, it’s a useful tool; but it’s quite commonly used when people don’t know how/when to make a cut. It’s way easier to just smudge across a couple of clips than it is to pick a frame-perfect cut.

Also worth pointing out an Edit/Editing is something you do a film/movie etc. is the thing you watch.

A movie is comprised of edits. The best edits are invisible, in that they don’t distract the viewer from the movie.

By the way, have you seen Hitchcock’s ‘Rope’? It’s has, if I remember correctly, only ten edits in the whole film.

Yep just having a go at people calling their films edits as seems to be fashionable these days.

Be Brutal! Never show your friends unedited footage. They will die.

My pal came back from Hawaii with 200 clips of Whales at about 4 pixels. One of them has made it into her wee film. She is also rubbish at holding the camera still and rule of thirds.

A wee pastiche is a good way to go to learn to tell a story.
[video]http://youtu.be/Nx_C5Ca0LCo[/video]

And a naturally nuts pal takes much of the thinking out of your hands. [video]http://youtu.be/vnEngGV51nw[/video]

These were aimed at a very specific audience so not everyone will get the in jokes but you get the idea. Looking at them now I would trim even more off some bits, but the timing felt right at the time.