Now What?

We are standing here at the edge of the cliff with our quad safely back on terra whatever, now what? Time to make a movie. That's what!

I am a Windows 8.1 user with a nice laptop. I use Adobe Lightroom for still images and Corel Video Studio Pro X7 for editing. Not sure that this is the best setup but it seems to work for me.

The first challenge in editing the raw file is GoPro. Many video editing software apps simply cannot keep up with the amount of data the GoPro places in a file. That said, you can use GoPro’s free software though I find it pretty worthless and non-intuitive.  BTW, my GoPro Hero 4Black is even more problematic in regards to file structure. And, use the fastest SD card available.

As this blog will most likely stay live forever, I’ll not get into settings and such on the GP4. Except to say, experiment with your camera before you go to Nepal to capture the renaissance of humanity. There are trade-offs in these settings including frames per second which dictate how much slow motion you can achieve when that lion attacks that white rhino on the Serengeti.   

Another challenge for your finished movie is that the camera captures excellent sound and that sound is the buzzing of four motors with 9” props. The sound has to be taken out of the raw file. But what to insert into your epic documentary? Well, music seems to be the medium of choice by most 'creators' but it does not have to be the only option.

There are a number of free sound effects websites for cool add-ins. Also, try recording in areas where you might want to use just the audio portion of the file. Or, record your own narrative and then merge all of this into your movie. Here is one site that I use http://www.freesound.org/browse/

Checkout my video were I removed the Phantom rotor noise and inserted not only music but also occasional pounding surf. (The goal for this movie is a meditation piece or a ‘screen saver’ for home ambience.)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YP_xc0rbl6w