Cheap editing applications for beginner drone videographers (YDQA EP 44)
John: Another episode of your drone questions answered I’m John Tia with the drone launch Academy here to answer your drone questions and today’s question is a pretty good one it is what are the best or what are the recommended editing software when it comes to drone footage today I have with me, Kendall Marquardt, and he is a Certified Golf Course. Superintendent is a founder owner of Precision Drone Mapping services and a drone videographer Kendall thanks for joining me today.
Kendall: Thanks John.
John: So before we get into the meat of this question I’d love to give you an opportunity to introduce yourself and talk about what you do with drones and what kind of work you do.
Kendall: So I’ve been a photographer all my life got into video when it came out and you know use those interest when I was out in the golf course so I like using Photography work with whatever I’m doing I’ve basically been a photographer since I could hold the camera I got interested in drone work during the pandemic when I was looking for something further because the business I was working on as a piano technician nothing was happening so being a photographer I saw real estate good idea at the time, so what did you have to do?
What was the best equipment to have her skill set to have was flying drones doing 360 virtual tours so I decided yeah that sounds great so I got into it and took my 107 prep course through Drone Launch Academy. Thank you very much. Passed the first time and went out and I made some artistic videos which were fun. I made a couple videos, one real estate and another promo video for church which were paid jobs so it did pay and then it kind of went from there.
I got into Mapping and that kind of thing and so I decided to couple that with my experience in golf course management and just see where that took me so that’s where I’m at right now.
John: Very cool, very cool. You shared some footage that you’ve taken in the past with me before we started this interview and pulled some of it up right now and you’ve mentioned your church job I believe that was the Fulton church beautiful footage there and then moving over to the Zen of the golf course. I mean it’s, we’re watching this and it’s beautiful fog rolling into the trees in the sun coming up. It's beautiful footage I gotta say so I just compliment you on that.
Kendall: Church one was actually the first video I shot with the drone. I was really taken aback with the way it came out so you don’t have to practice a long time to get something good just follow your instincts.
John: Nice I like that advice let’s get into the meat of the question and that’s the best software for editing your drone footage. Can you share which software you use?
Kendall: I got started video editing, actually doing sermons for Fulton church software they were using was KdenLive, which is an open source product so that’s what I just started working with and having to line up the audio track with the handicam video footage was quite a skill building process. Shall we say. I used KdenLive for quite a while, including doing like daily videos at a Bible camp, shooting images and editing them in power sessions 400 images and videos for the next days production it is not without it it’s glitches and things, but it worked pretty well along with that in the open source room. I also use open shot GL, Which is very similar. They’re all nonlinear video editing programs, but a simpler interface is not quite as busy because some of those interfaces like in da Vinci resolve there’s a lot of stuff going on and way more than I would ever use. So I use those two and then as I got more involved in the apple ecosystem I just started using iMovie because it was really simple really easy and really fast for me personally, I did download da Vinci resolve took a look at it a little bit and thought Yeah that’s too much for me to deal with right now what I was doing so I’ve stuck with iMovie all of these software you know YouTube is full of how to and tips and tricks and things like that to kind of cut your learning curve. I’ve gotten really great results using iMovie. I don't see paying Apple to do Final Cut Pro at least at this point in time there’s less expensive and simpler ways to do things.
John: Well can it be fair to say you were not doing much video editing before you started doing the drone work? Is that correct?
Kendall: No no I had I started editing doing the sermon videos and 2015. I have experienced it was mostly just trial and error. What doesn’t work and was able to carry that forward because doing the church in the Bible camp videos I mean those were power sessions and I had to learn, not only you know doing the image manipulation, and all that kind of thing, but getting the darn tech to work as we well know.
John: Absolutely so I mean you say this open source did you have to pay any money or do anything specific to acquire these software or you kind of just download straight to your device?
Kendall: Right straight to my device trying to keep costs down KdenLive an open GL are both free and you know iMovie comes with an apple product if you using an apple product and it can be on your phone on your tablet or anything I run linux systems so those video editing, and all kinds of stuff is available usually in the repositories of whatever distribution you’re using, but, no cost, no cost.
John: That’s good and that’s perfect for somebody who’s just trying to get into the space and really just get some experience under the belt and to learn from there as you have as if it was a video editor to another. Are you the kind of editor who sits down at your computer whether it's a PC, desktop, laptop at your desk and move the footage over or are you the kind of person who likes to edit on the go and and sometimes might edit on a phone or tablet?
Kendall: I preferred to do it post, image gathering, because the photography, videography whatever it is all about timing just like in the zen of the golf course the timing was right and you had 15 minutes to collect it. But every other thing I’ve done in that realm has been go out and shoot, go out and shoot and then come back and put the puzzle together and see what you come up with. There’s a couple different philosophies of shooting video and a bunch of clips and then putting them together or are you gonna go out and shoot longer Clips like three or five or maybe eight minutes sure, it’s a pain to sort through a long video clip like that but I found that there’s been magical moments that have just popped up that even if I’m doing stop video start video as I’m flying, you never know just never know. The Fulton church video was the same way you know I was shooting clips there and flying around and shooting clips. I didn't have a big storyboard in my mind of what I was gonna do. I just knew that the pastor wanted to get as much of that river and as he could, that’s what I did and I flew through and flew around and I was like wow this is great we came together and then I inserted the music track after I did all of the video the way I wanted to.
My son's new pilot does the opposite, finds the soundtrack and then he makes the videos to fit so we were having a spirited discussion on the way down here but no that’s pretty much the way I do it. I developed a workflow when I was doing the Bible camps because I was coming up with four 400 images videos and still shots a day that I would have edit, and Produce a video for the next day’s group meeting so I found six of them in a row six days of that got me into my workflow of, OK you’ve got all these clips let’s make a folder over here that’s like preproduction and stuff I like goes in there and I look at that folder and say oh yeah this one fits here and one fits there and then start dropping them into the timeline and seeing how they stitch together that’s one reason I’m really like what I’ve been doing with iMovie because that’s a really simple process to shrink clips make everything fit in the way you can drop in text or messages or still shots and some of the video clips it made it really simple I’d like to say I’m the laziest guy I know so I’m trying to find simple ways of doing things.
John: Yeah, well I mean, sometimes it’s time too and like you said you got a project you had to turn around quickly that’s only to your advantage. I’m with you I’m the kind of editor who likes to lay it all on the table not necessarily going in the shot by shots specific, so how something is gonna be stitched together until it’s all laid out there on the table but the neat thing about a lot of the applications that you brought up it gives you the option either or, you can sit at your computer and there’s a computer desktop version of that software and you can you know use your multiple monitors or what have you or if you’re in the cab home or on the train home or something like that you can already start selecting clips and ingesting them and tinkering around with them on your phone or any other mobile device so great suggestion.
Kendall: Yeah, the thing about editing is, say you’ve got a clip that you really like but there’s a little bit of it that was a movement or whatever you can blend that in and use transitions to make even marginal shots look fantastic. But you’re right it’s all about trying different things and finding out what works best for you and what makes the most sense for you.
John: Absolutely what advice do you have for people within the DLA community, our audience, our listeners who want to do what you did, apply drones to not just the work that you’re already doing but make into your own business making into your own enterprise. What advice would you have for those individuals the way I did it was kind of, I don’t know if you wanna say happened but I was just interested in flying drones so I got a drone. I followed the steps and then made it my own. I flew and photographed video, and I just followed what my heart was telling me and the biggest thing is to not be afraid or intimidated by the process other people have done. You can do it if your interest level is there. The process will just work itself out you just wanna say OK did that what’s next? What’s next? What’s next? And following it through I created a vision in my head of how I wanted this drone business to work and realized OK I can see what’s going on in my golf course management background and see how the two can connect. I was taking something I already knew about golf courses and then applying something else that you knew about, drones. It’s a very personal thing.
John: Very cool. And that's valuable. You obviously took all the right steps you got your certifications you found a niche, but also even in some of the conversation we’re having before starting our recording you find little ways to do yourself a favor here and you’re gonna be heading into a conference and you’re even strategically position yourself to meet the right people and talk to the right entities to open more doors for yourself.
Kendall: Yeah exactly once we made the decision to go to the conference, and then I had to select a booth. I thought, I’ll do this one because it’s across from the international community and then, oh, there’s some booths over here and that group is really one of the target audiences I want to hit. That vision I cast that a year ago and I though, wow, this would be the ultimate ESPN highlight go to this conference and then, the stars aligned, the project came together that’s like okay, this is what we need to do and this is gonna give us a launch I’ll have my oldest daughters as social media manager. My other son is a pilot, so the three of us are gonna be there, family business and what can go wrong with that.
The question you have to ask yourself and answer honestly and thoroughly it’s why not and you can apply that wherever in your life why not.
John: I really appreciate that sentiment and I appreciate the advice also congratulations on getting as far as you’ve already gotten and of course lastly, thank you for coming on this podcast and answering this question. I think in this conversation we’ve scraped the surfaces of other topics, and I’d love to have you back on at some point, or maybe things are a little less busy and maybe we can tackle another one of these related topics.
Well thank you Kendall and hey if you’re watching you want to submit your own drone question please do we will find the answer to it you can submit your question why ydqa.io or if you’re part of the drone launch connect community go ahead and type in your question. They will see it and find someone who can Answer it. In the meantime, I’ll see you in the sky.
