Linda and Thierry - thanks! If you try and something doesn't go well, hit me up! I wanna give back to the community that has helped me so much thru the years.
Twickers - I think iMovie is great. It's so direct, simple, and to-the-point. Sometimes we need to get something done quickly...and iMovie is great for that. You can even do "basic" color correction and other post production in it. I'd say iMovie will do well for most all of the drone community. Learning something as flexible and powerful as Davinci Resolve, Adobe Premier Pro or Final Cut Pro takes some dedication. I watched a lot of youtube videos...and nearly gave up because it seemed too complicated, but I did not. Also, trying so many things (and 99% of them were terrible) helped me cut my teeth. I do feel you in thinking it's overwhelming or very daunting to learn the modern editing softwares.
Jerry - That is a GREAT question. There are a lot of people whom wondered if just speeding up 4x from the original speed is all you must do. At first, I also wondered if that's all it is. Nowadays, I can always tell when someone just sped up their video and say it's hyperlapse. It's not. It really just appears everything in the video was all sped up
equally. However, look at the speed the Spark appears to be flying in my video. Looks to be around 25-30 miles per hour (or 50 kilometers per hour). However, notice how FAST the clouds were whizzing by. That's not possible with the drone flying as slow as it was. Also, watch again, and you will notice some cars FLYING down the road...they would appear to be speeding down the road at 200 miles per hour! So, hyperlapse makes my drone appear to be flying somewhat fast....but the clouds appear to be moving
extremely fast. If people were walking around in my video, they'd look like ants frantically streaking around. I like to think of it as....you are moving normal looking speed but everything else is moving 100+ times faster than normal.
One more thing: In my example (the steps above)... you are flying 2.2 mph and taking one photo every 2 seconds. When you are putting all the pictures together to make them 24 frames per second video... you have to remember that 1 second is 24 pictures. The video above is 14 seconds...so, 14 x 24 = 336 pictures. My Spark started taking pictures with the
battery at 96%....I literally sat there and drank my coffee and watched. I let it get down to 20% remaining before I stop the flying and initiated return to home. The Spark was in the air for 11 minutes and 44 seconds of flight to get 336 pictures. Basically, since the Spark doesn't have very good
battery life (the only shortcoming, imho), it took ALL of the
battery to take enough pictures to make 14 seconds of video.
I have far more capable (on paper, at least) drones... but the fun factor isn't going on with those drones compared to Spark. This forum is a perfect example of how I think of Spark pilots: grass roots, friendly, and so encouraging.
Synching a nice beat also helps.
