Editing Video Footage

[jimmy156]

Hello all,

I am just playing around with some GoPro footage i shot when i drove over the Applecross pass back in April.

I opened the file in Adobe Premiere Elements, snipped a few bits out, made some "quick" adjustments to the exposure and vibrance and then hit save.

I am saving the file in the recommend setting (MP4 file, HD 720, but selected High video quality instead of medium.)

The thing is, its going to take around 2 hours to render and save the file... I realise my computer is rather out of date for editing HD video (apple macbook, 2.4GHz intel core 2 duo, 4GB RAM) but its only a 13 minute video that i have chopped about a bit.

Is there a way of doing these basic edits without having to then render the "new" video?

Apologies if these are dummy questions, i know my way around Photoshop, but editing video is all new to me

Cheers,
James

[WaferThinHam]

use the GoPro editing software. It's pretty good. IME I've never had to faff around with exposure and stuff in the footage. Can crank up the saturation if you want, but that usually leads to it looking a little weird.

[GetCarter]

If you make adjustments to a vid, it must be rendered to create a 'new' vid. You can preview all the edits, but the final product has to be rendered.

TBH a couple of hours for a 13 minute vid isn't too bad if you have a fairly old computer, I have a very fast new one and to render a 4 minute vid took well over 10 minutes.

[Fordo]

Taking off the exposure and vibrance adjustments, and it'll export much quicker.

By making adjustments, it now has to apply those adjustments, to every single frame, which on an older machine can takes ages. With no adjustments made, theres less to do.

Also - the what settings did you use on the go pro? If you shot in 1080, but are exporting the video in 720, then the computer also has to resize everything, which adds on more time when exporting.

Ideally, for a quick export, try and keep your export settings the same as your footage.

hope that helps!

[jimmy156]

Thanks all,

I have tried using the GoPro editing software, but i didn't really get on with it. I found it really slow to use and the video quality seemed to be poor, but maybe that was just me!

If thats just as long as it takes then fair enough, i will try leaving out the levels/vibrance tweaks, they weren't 100% necessary so i could easily not bother if it makes the rendering quicker!

The video was shot in 720, and outputted in 720; so no issue there.

Maybe i need to buy a new computer

[Fordo]

Could also be worth also sticking the video footage on a faster hard drive. - its not always the processor thats the bottle neck. The computer has to read 25 frames a second, process them, and then write them somewhere. A slow hard drive can sometimes be a bottle neck. Bung the footage on an SSD drive, or a small raid, and export times can fly. Worth a try if you have an SSD?

I've got an ancient MacBook pro i use for work - 2012 model. still does nearly everything i need it to, and i edit a lot of video. I upgraded the hard drive inside to a big SSD, and maxed out the ram. The upgrades transformed it. For small projects i work off the SSD, for bigger stuff I have an external drive, that contains two drives in a raid 0, so i get twice the speed of a regular drive.