You Will Love These Editing Techniques for Your Drone Video! (CapCut Tutorial)

It’s pretty obvious that one of the most common issues many of you have, is knowing how to edit your Drone Video, not only your drone videos but your videos overall. Not only on my channel, but in many others that I watch and read the comments, so many people get so frustrated because they have all of this footage but just don’t know where to start in making something with it.

I love doing these videos because I know how difficult it is to edit videos. Like, I had to learn from the very beginning six years ago and it’s taken me that long, and I still have a lot to learn. But I also feel like I have a few things that I can teach other people that are starting out like I did six years ago. And I’m so happy to help other people understand even if it’s just how to get started.

Like, if it’s just a few things to kind of motivate you to get started. Now, on my last video about CapCut, many people told me that they want to see more. So here we are; that’s why I’m doing this video. Now, if you haven’t watched that video yet, go ahead and watch it first. I’ll link it right up here and also down in the video description.

And today, what I want to show you are two fun and very useful CapCut editing tips. Now, CapCut is my favorite new video editing program for beginners, and it’s free and super easy to learn. I think it has the fastest learning curve out of all video editing programs right now. Now, I have no affiliation with them at all. I just love the program and how it’s easy for people that are just getting started.

Screen recording and overlay

Now, let’s get back to CapCut. The editing question that I get most often, by far, is, “How do I do this? How do I place a screen recording of my controller view or of myself speaking on top of the actual footage?” Some people call it ‘picture-in-picture’, some call it ‘overlay’, but it’s not very hard to do, whatever you call it.

The first thing that you have to do, if you want to show your flight screen for instance, like your DJI Fly App, then you need to engage your screen recorder, start your screen recording. Almost all phones these days have native screen recorders built in. So if you’re using the RC-N1 controller with your phone, then what you’ll have to do is just use your built-in screen recorder. But, if your phone happens not to have a screen recorder, you can go ahead and go on the Play Store or on the App Store and download a screen recording app and use that.

Before I had a phone that had a screen recorder built in, I used something called AZ Screen Recorder. There’s a lot of them out there, I just like that one. But now, I don’t have to worry about it because all of my controllers have screen recordings.

Like you, if you’re using the DJI RC or the RC Pro, they have a built-in screen recorder, and that’s easy to find. You can just swipe down from the upper right-hand corner, and you’ll see it right here.

Now, to make things easier when you’re editing, you want to make sure that the voice recording is turned on as well. Also, make sure that you have a micro SD card inserted into your controller, otherwise, you’re not going to be able to save your footage.

Well, you will be able to save it on the RC Pro, but you’re going to have to transfer it from the hard drive from your RC Pro onto a Micro SD card. So, you might as well just have a micro SD card in there at all times.

Now, if you’re using your phone, the screen recording will be saved right there in your photos. But here’s a little tip that I do to make it easier to sync the two clips together.

So, what I’ll do is, I’ll start the screen recording and then I’ll start the drone video recording. Then, what I’ll do is I’ll set my C1 button or my function button to flip the camera all the way down to 90 degrees. As it hits the bottom, I’ll say something like “down,” and as it hits the top, I’ll say “up.” That way, when I put them together when I’m editing, it’s a lot easier for me to match them up.

I think that’s pretty important because drone videos, of course, don’t have audio. So if you want to match up what you’re talking about on the screen, you want to get that screen recording matched up with the actual drone recording.

Now, to make this happen in CapCut, you just go ahead and open CapCut. You start a new project, you import your video clips and your screen recordings. Then, what you’re going to do is you’re going to drag your video clip down into your timeline, and then you’re going to drag your screen recording and place it above that main video on the timeline.

Then, go over to the preview window, and you can resize this clip just by dragging the corners. You can also click on it and hold it and move it around and place it wherever you like on the screen. It’s very, very simple, and the process is the same for when you want to have yourself talking on the screen while showing something else behind you.

So, you’re going to have a recording of yourself – a talking head part – and then you have a recording of your drone footage or maybe some other kind of footage, and you want to put yourself on top of that. It’s the same thing; you just drag that clip of you on top of the other one.

What works best here is you want to use a mask, probably. You don’t want to show your whole background of your talking head, so maybe you just want to show yourself. Now, CapCut has a great feature called Auto Cutout. All you have to do is navigate to this section right here, check on Auto Cutout, and what that does is it removes your background as long as your background is not too cluttered. As long as it’s a uniform background, then it’ll show just you on the screen. It’s kind of like a green screen, but it doesn’t always work.

So what you can do then is just add a mask, and then you can adjust the mask to show whatever part of the talking head that you want. You can make it a circle, you can make it a square, whatever you want, but you can shrink it down so it doesn’t take up so much of your screen. So that’s how you do a picture-in-picture. I know a lot of people were asking about that. I think it’s a really valuable tool, and so that’s how you do it.

Keyframes in CapCut

Now, the next thing that I want to show you is how to use keyframes to add movement to your videos. You can actually use keyframes for a lot of different things, but I think they’re really useful for adding a dynamic feel to the video. It adds a little bit of zooming, and a little bit of reframing. So, take this clip for example it looks okay with a little bit of lateral movement, right? I was just flying the drone in one direction. I wasn’t using the zoom on the gimbal wheel; I wasn’t zooming in the camera or anything, I was just moving sideways.

But, what if I decided later that I wanted to add another direction of movement, like a zoom-in? Because what it does is, it kind of helps draw attention to whatever you want the viewer to pay attention to, and it also adds more interest. And it’s super easy to do.

So, to use keyframes on CapCut, all you have to do is drag your desired video to the timeline, and then you’re going to drag your playhead all the way over to the beginning. Then, you’re going to navigate to “video” over here and then click on “basic.” Under the “scale” setting, click on this little diamond right here, and that’s going to set a keyframe. Then, you’re going to leave that at zero.

Next, you’re going to move your playhead to the end of that video clip, and then you’re going to click on that diamond again. Then, over here on “scale,” you’re going to increase that. But then, move your playhead back to the beginning, hit the play button, and then you can see that it’s not only moving in one direction but it’s also zooming in.

You can also set keyframes for position and rotation, so you can have the video move in several different directions if you want to. You can actually use keyframes for many different things, but maybe that’s another video. If you want to see that, comment down below and let me know what else you can use keyframes for.

The more you play around with keyframes, the easier it becomes, and then you’ll start experimenting with it and trying to do more creative things with it. They are one of the most powerful editing tools.

Transitions

Now, one little bonus tip that I have for you is on transitions. For the most part, simple cuts are great to go from one scene to the other; that’s mostly what I use. I also like “mix”; it’s a very simple one, a very nice transition.

The thing about transitions, you guys, they can be really overdone, and CapCut has so many transition options that sometimes it’s overwhelming. But, for some, transitions work better for certain scenes.

Here’s an example. Okay, there are two clips here where I’m flying the drone backwards. Now, an appropriate transition here would be a quick zoom out from one to the other because it feeds into the next clip. The same works for two clips that are kind of moving forward. So, if you’re flying the drone forward and the next clip shows you flying the drone forward again, you can just pop in a quick zoom in. That’s a nice transition because it makes sense, right?

Also, you can adjust the speed of the transition as well by clicking on one side of it. Then, you can stretch it out to make it go slower or shrink it to make it go quicker.

So, my bonus tip for you guys is: take a look at your video clips and examine how one might move into the other nicely. But as a general rule, straight cuts are going to be the best.

So, what other problems do you encounter when you’re trying to edit your video footage? Maybe it’s color grading, maybe it’s choosing the right music. But whatever it is, let me know and give me some ideas down in the comments. If there’s enough interest, I’ll make more videos like that.

Click on the thumbs up if I was able to help you out at all today. Subscribe for future tutorials like this one. Have a great day everyone, and as always, fly safe and fly smart.