MC Tech Solutions

Tag: davinci resolve

  • Editing drone footage with DaVinci Resolve

    Great drone footage is half flying and half editing. Here’s the workflow I’d recommend for turning raw clips from the DJI Spark and Mavic Pro into something worth watching, using free software.

    1. Shoot for the edit

    The editing starts before you take off:

    • Pick a frame rate and stick to it. 25 fps matches Irish and European TV standards. Higher frame rates give you smooth slow motion.
    • Use ND filters in bright light. The “180° rule” says your shutter speed should be about double your frame rate (1/50 s at 25 fps) for natural motion blur. On a sunny day, the only way to get there is an ND filter.
    • Use D-Log on the Mavic Pro. It records a flat, low-contrast image that keeps more detail in skies and shadows. The Spark doesn’t have D-Log, so lower the sharpness and contrast a little in its normal profile instead.
    • Fly slowly and smoothly. Gentle stick movements and long, steady passes edit far better than quick jerky ones. Litchi waypoint missions are brilliant for perfectly repeatable moves.
    • Record a few seconds before and after each move, so you have room to cut.

    2. Organise your clips

    Copy everything off the card straight away into folders by date and location, for example 2026-10-30 Coast. Back it up before you delete anything from the card.

    3. Edit in DaVinci Resolve

    DaVinci Resolve is free and professional-grade. My workflow:

    1. Create a project with the timeline set to your frame rate and resolution.
    2. Generate optimised media (proxies) if your PC struggles with the Mavic’s 4K clips. Resolve edits the lightweight copies and uses the originals for the final export.
    3. Rough cut: drop clips on the timeline, trim each to its best few seconds, and arrange them to tell a story: establish the location, move closer, then finish on a reveal.
    4. Stabilise sparingly. Both drones have mechanical gimbals, so footage is usually steady already. If you do stabilise a clip, keep it light, because heavy stabilisation warps the image.

    4. Colour

    • Correct first: fix exposure and white balance so every clip looks natural and they match each other.
    • D-Log footage needs a conversion. Apply DJI’s D-Log to Rec.709 LUT (or a colour space transform in Resolve) to bring back normal contrast and colour, then adjust from there.
    • Then grade: add a consistent look across the whole video, but go easy on saturation. Irish greens get radioactive very quickly.

    5. Music and export

    • Use music you’re allowed to use: royalty-free libraries, or YouTube’s audio library if you’re uploading there.
    • Cut on the beat. It makes even simple footage feel deliberate.
    • Export at the same resolution and frame rate you shot in. For YouTube, Resolve’s built-in YouTube preset is a good start.

    Keep it short

    The most common mistake with drone videos is length. Two minutes of your best shots beats ten minutes of everything. Be ruthless in the rough cut.