Need help to edit my travel videos

[src2206]

Hello friends and fellow enthusiasts

I have been shooting travel videos with my phone with an HD set. While recording, I give the voiceover myself.

I have never done much video editing myself. I used to upload my short videos on YouTube and used the built-in editor to do some basic changes. Presently, that facility is not available anymore in YT Studio.

I need to do the following things:

1. Stabilization.

2. Colour and contrast correction (global)

3. Sound enhancement including noise removal, amplification etc.

4. A little trimming (sometimes). I generally shoot short videos.

5. Voiceover (if required).

6. Slow motion (on a part of the video)

Could someone with experience please guide me to a free software/ free web platform where I may perform these and it does not have a steep learning curve?

Please understand, I do these purely as a non-commercial venture and I have a full-time job. Hence I am unable to devote a lot of time, even if I wished to.

Thank you.

[TreeTops]

I can't respond because of this part of your request: "does not have a steep learning curve"

[krykmoon]

There are two main issues, here..

First: every powerful software needs an amount of time and a lot of practice to be learned and proficiently used.

Two: some of the things you want to do are a huge world themselves and require a lot of knowledge; colour correction and sound enhancement, for example. I mean.. it's quite easy to move sliders and change things or applying filters (once you got how the software works) : but REALLY improving and enhancing stuff require some experience and expertise.. Stabilization too is something that requires time to be learned..

Trimming footage is quite an easy thing to achieve with the right software (there are some awesome and free editing applications, such as Da Vinci Resolve but even KdenLive is decent, nowadays).. and applying a voiceover is a straightforward task too.

Applying a (nice) slow motion is more complex, instead, since it's not simply slowing down the video (especially if shot at a "normal" frame rate). Those amazing slow-motions we see in movies and documentaries are shot with amazing cameras at very HUGE frame rates (that's why when slowed down the video remains so smooth and sharp).

Since you don't have many time to invest in video editing.. I suggest you to focus on cut/edit the footage in a nice way at first (it's a very important aspect of a good video) .. then try to learn and get the hang of the rest, a bit at a time.

[src2206]

There are two main issues, here..

First: every powerful software needs an amount of time and a lot of practice to be learned and proficiently used.

Two: some of the things you want to do are a huge world themselves and require a lot of knowledge; colour correction and sound enhancement, for example. I mean.. it's quite easy to move sliders and change things or applying filters (once you got how the software works) : but REALLY improving and enhancing stuff require some experience and expertise.. Stabilization too is something that requires time to be learned..

Trimming footage is quite an easy thing to achieve with the right software (there are some awesome and free editing applications, such as Da Vinci Resolve but even KdenLive is decent, nowadays).. and applying a voiceover is a straightforward task too.

Applying a (nice) slow motion is more complex, instead, since it's not simply slowing down the video (especially if shot at a "normal" frame rate). Those amazing slow-motions we see in movies and documentaries are shot with amazing cameras at very HUGE frame rates (that's why when slowed down the video remains so smooth and sharp).

Since you don't have many time to invest in video editing.. I suggest you to focus on cut/edit the footage in a nice way at first (it's a very important aspect of a good video) .. then try to learn and get the hang of the rest, a bit at a time.

Thank you for your kind suggestion.

I have downloaded and installed Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve and found few good tutorials too on YT. I hope to learn to use it for my intended purpose.

Regarding 'slow motion', I understand your point. Does it mean that it is always better to use the highest possible frame rate available while shooting a video? My phone offers 1080P 30FPS/ 60 FPS and 4K/30FPS. Could you please point me to some resources which would help me to understand these nuances better?

Thank you again.

[krykmoon]

Regarding 'slow motion', I understand your point. Does it mean that it is always better to use the highest possible frame rate available while shooting a video? My phone offers 1080P 30FPS/ 60 FPS and 4K/30FPS. Could you please point me to some resources which would help me to understand these nuances better?

Ideally to obtain a nice slow-motion it is better to shoot the clip at the highest frame rate possible.

It's simple to understand why: if you shoot a video at, for example, 60fps.. then you can slow it down to 30fps to have a nice, smooth, perfect slow-motion at half the speed of the original video.

If you shoot it at 120 fps (in the film industry they use cameras that can shoot at hundreds of frames per second) you can also have a perfect slow-mo smooth as silk at 30fps (1/4 of the original speed) or at 60pfs (at half of the original speed)

If the video is originally shot a 30fps.. you don't even have enough frames to get a nice and natural slow-mo (since you can't slow down the video to 15fps)

But in practice is not so easy.. unless you already know, before shooting, what part exactly you want to slow-down and so you shoot ONLY that part at a multiple of the final-edit frame rate and the rest at the desired final frame rate (and I don't think it's your case). BTW.. this is exactly what they do in movies and tv series.

If you shoot ALL your footage at the highest frame rate possible (60fps in your case) then you have to cut half of the frames from the parts of the footage that should remain at the "normal" speed and not being slowed down.. and this may produce some artifacts on very fast moving parts of the original (60fps) clip.

Another available option is using filters to "fake" the slow-motion: they usually create new frames in-between the existing ones by interpolating the existing ones .. but (as you may imagine) the result would be VERY different and A LOT less smooth and natural.

[Alwyn]

I would shoot normally, slow the footage down (or speed it up) in your video editing program and see how it looks. My slowdowns to 1/4 speed look ok (given I'm not making a movie for The Oscars).

It's easy to experiment.

And beware phone frame rates. It might say 29.97 or 30, but a lot of phones use variable framerate to save storage space. I did a test on my Galaxy S21 today for another project. I have it set to HD 30FPS but it recorded Variable, going from 23FPS to 43FPS. In "variable", it went from 4FPS to 90FPS! Do some tests to see what looks OK to you.

You may also find the colour correction tools in your video-editor will also do the job.

[Cornucopia]

Couple things to think about:

Shooting at a different framerate also modifies the exposure, so for example if you normally shoot at 30FPS and then decide to shoot at 60FPS, your exposure is going to be half what it would be at 30FPS. This must be compensated for - otherwise, you would have an image 1/2 as bright. Since raw shutter speed is kind of locked to framerate, your other options are ISO (aka sensitivity) adjustment or iris (aka aperture) adjustment. This not surprisingly is why phones are particularly variable with their framerate, as they only have a small ability to adjust sensitivity, and they cannot adjust their aperture (AFAIK, there are NO phonecam lenses with adjustable aperture). The only other option is to shine more light on the scene.

Alwyn said a lot of phone use variable framerate - more like ALMOST ALL phones. And again, nothing to do with storage space, just exposure limitations. They could be designed more like DSLRs so they can be manually overridden in this respect (allowing you to decide how to compensate). But they aren't.

30FPS->10 or 15FPS will look STUTTERY. Most people can see the difference. There is a reason Hollywood chose 24FPS (w/ 48Hz refresh), ~18-20FPS (w/ 36-40Hz refresh) was the bare minimum for avoiding major flicker. In fact, many people can notice it all the way up to 60FPS and beyond. Smooth slomo REQUIRES shooting at multiples of the normal framerate.

Scott

[src2206]

Thank you so much @krykmoon, @Alwyn and @Cornucopia

Scott, it's good to find a familiar name. At the time I was pretty active on this forum, there were quite a few valuable interactions between us and I used to go through your comments on different threads so carefully.



I am planning to take a course on DaVinci Resolve. Sadly, I have to stick to free courses. I have been through one or two and those were good starting point but I am looking for a more comprehensive one. Could members here please suggest some? There is a 'Tutorial' page available on the official 'Blackmagic' website, but I am not sure whether that would be suitable for me or not.