Action Cam Workflow: Editing & Hosting

[tricepilot]

Here's a thread where you can post your tips and questions about using your camera, editing all that cool footage you are capturing, and posting it up to be enjoyed.

Workflow is the process of getting through this process: Camera - Editor - Host Site

Cameras:

GoPro
Contour
Drift
Sports-Vue
etc.

Editing Platform:

IMovie
Final Cut
Sony Vegas
Reel Director
etc.

Hosting Site:

YouTube
Vimeo
etc.

The theory behind this thread is simple: A lot of us are buying these cameras and relatively few of us are really using them.

Hopefully by making workflow simpler and easier to understand, we'll all get more use out of these cool devices.

 

[tricepilot]

GoPro to Vimeo

Nice tutorial on how to easily upload your GoPro footage to Vimeo.

Especially cool tip on trimming using Quicktime before using an editor. Never thought of that one before.

 

[tim_cannon]

Gopro -

• It's hard to tell if you are filming or not while on the go.
• I wear it on the helmet and look in my mirrors to see the blinking light. I have considered carrying a small mirror to make this easier.
• I keep a mental note of shots that I might like to clip, and write them in a notebook when I stop.
• Find a way to clean the lens often, tell me if you ever find a way that always works.

Editing -

• I do most of my editing with Quicktime Pro. It's pretty easy to trim and save as several times to get all of the clips you want. I think you can also delete sections out of the file, but I have not been too successful with that yet.
• After I get all of the clips, I open the first one and save as [FinalName]. Then open the second, Select all (ctrl-a), Copy (ctrl-c) and Paste (ctrl-v) it into the end of the [FinalName] file (make sure to move the playead to the end of [FinalName]). Save [FinalName]. Repeat until all of the clips have been inserted.
• If needed, add a sound track.

Upload to YouTube

Before I settled on this workflow, I spent countless hours trying to wrap my head around the different codecs and editing software. I used trial versions of several editors and bought a subscription for AVS Video. This adds a lot of cool tools to add things to your video, but I found that I wasn't using them very often. If I were publishing to different formats I think it would be beneficial for me to use another editor. Since my output is YouTube, I just Edit, Save and Upload. The user manual is here: http://images.apple.com/quicktime/pdf/QuickTime7_User_Guide.pdf

The GoPro is the coolest toy I have bought in a long time. However, I had no idea how much time it would take to build a video from the raw footage. I have found that if I take a video that results in ~10 usable clips it takes between 1 and 2 hours to have my video ready for uploading to YouTube.

My channel on YouTube is: Tcannonbeer