Drones are everywhere today, and people enjoy aerial shooting footage of events that were once deemed impossible. Whether you are a beginner or experienced pilot in flying UAVs and filming with a drone, the editing process takes the lion’s share in turning your aerial footage into art. And with that many steps involved, how does one make their videos unique from all the others? To know this, let’s read the blogs!
Organize Your Footage
First, the clips must be organized before they can be edited for production. This is quite a trivial measure, but it will eliminate the need for the artists to look for files while editing their work.
- Sort by Scenes: It is more efficient to sort the clips in location or scene views, particularly if you require those particular shots.
- Check for Stability: One problem with drones is that their cameras can be shaky. Cluster the set of clips that require stabilization.
- Backup Footage: For raw files, always ensure that you have multiple copies of the footage to avoid scenarios in which files are deleted.
Stabilize Your Video
Shakes and jitters caused by wind, turbulence, or anything in between are unavoidable in drone videos. However, stabilization is one of the most essential parts of the editing process for a perfect output.
Manual Stabilization
All editing applications, including Adobe Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro, offer the manual stabilization feature. There are interesting tools called the Warp Stabilizer effect in Premiere and optical flow stabilization in Final Cut Pro.
AI-powered Stabilization with Rav.AI
Rav.AI offers easy-to-use AI video stabilization for your beloved clips. This software uses AI to study your video footage clips, reducing even the minimal tremors in the ones you use to capture aerial view shots. The AI can also accurately correct simple and complex stabilization problems on the go.
Color Grading and Correction
The most impressive of the shots captured by drones is the view of the landscape and the sky. But that may mean your footage needs some color correction to stand out.
Correct Exposure
Shooting at short and long ranges or nighttime footage frequently makes drones look underexposed or overexposed. You must find a fair image exposure setting to balance the pixel work.
White Balance Adjustments
Make sure your video has a natural color. Most light sources cast some colors that may affect the photos, so try to calibrate to eliminate such casts.
Color Grading
For the desired movie look, perform a color grading. Apply a quick color profile using LUTS (Look-Up Tables), or drag the image in the sliders for shadows, mid-tones, and highlights.
AI-Assisted Color Correction with Rav.AI
The color grading process for video may be made less cumbersome with the help of the AI-based color correction tool offered by Rav.AI. If you’re using your drone to capture landscapes or cityscapes, then with very little intervention, you can upgrade your video with the help of Rav.AI.
Sound Editing and Audio Enhancement
Wind Noise Reduction: One must know that Drone videos often contain wind noise. Minimize this by using noise-reduction filters.
Background Music
When selecting music, it is best to download license-free music that fits your video’s theme. Correctly choosing a musical composition enhances the execution of a visual piece.
Voiceover or Narration
If your video has a script, especially dialogue, you should voice-over it and edit the video to match the dialogue.
Audio Enhancements with AI
Rav.AI uses artificial intelligence to create audio tools capable of filtering noise and maintaining the actual tone of the sound. This feature increases the audio sharpness on its own, making it quite useful, especially for those wishing to improve their drone video audio.
Cutting and Trimming Your Footage
The next step is fine-tuning your video by removing unwanted sections and unnecessary shot lengths and structuring the flow correctly.
Identify Key Moments
Look for the most interesting and exciting scenes and crucial episodes in which the main idea is presented. Instead of focusing on the density of visuals and moments, it’s essential to stick with those as emotional as they are provocative.
Transitions and Flow
Easing transitions between clips in the video will make it seem that they are not from different sources. Use crossfades, whip pans, or any other creative transition you may desire.
AI-powered Editing with Rav.AI
With Rav.AI, users can easily edit drone videos through features that will automatically select the best scenes to capture. This kind of shot can sort out the clips swiftly and present the most active or visually rich portions of footage to you – don’t waste time cutting in between.
Apply Visual Effects (Optional)
Applying some effects is always helpful when making drone films, but excessive use can smother the viewer.
- Slow Motion and Time-lapse: Slow motion adds more emphasis to some scenes. Time-lapse shooting is also helpful in illustrating the workings of batteries or changes in a city’s view.
- Motion Tracking: Motion tracking must be used when displaying text or graphics that need to follow the perspective of the video.
- Creative Filters: Some extra creative filters for a cinematic or a stylistic effect. The only thing is, do not overdose with edits. Make sure to do them economically.
Add Titles and Text Overlays
Regarding drones, the title helps give context to your content. It could be a travel vlog, a real estate video, a promotional video, or something else.
- Titles and Credits: Due to the aerial background, titles should be placed on posters and written in clear, easily readable fonts.
- Text Animations: Different dynamic text animations with kinetic typography look more professional.
- AI-enhanced Titles with Rav.AI: Using AI, Rav beat helps to make the task of overlaying text much easier with suggested layouts. It can make text placement adjustments over its positioning and size depending on the shot composition and hence ‘masking’ some of the vital shot contents.
Export And Share
Lastly, after editing your video to the best of your ability, you can export it in the preferred format. The export settings will depend on the platform on which the video will be uploaded, such as YouTube, Vimeo, or social media.
- Resolution and Frame Rate: Use your footage’s highest-quality resolution for export. The norm for drone shots is 4 K. Select the correct frame rate for a smooth video presentation.
- File Compression: Zip the file to save the time it takes to upload the video without losing quality.
Final Thoughts
Drone video may be raw, but don’t fret: With a few soft skills and complex tools, anyone can transform aerial footage into an engaging video. Completing this Drone video editing checklist will help make the process smooth and your video stable, enjoyable, and effective.
Rav.AI can be combined with the platform to make editing even more straightforward. Technology like stabilization, color correction, or audio boosting can help editors save time. Thus, by automating the work with AI, one has more time to create and less time to worry about how to achieve it.
Rav.AI offers all the intelligent features you need to enhance your drone videography, whether you are a hobbyist or a commercial drone user. Happy editing!
