Unlike the standard GoPro that recorded in .wma, the GoPro HD are encoded in mpeg4 h.264 format. Now although this format has been around for quite some time, a lot of video editors will not import the MP4 format.
Like many others I was unpleasantly surprised by this, and I did not have a clue where to start, so in all cases like this, I got my help from Google.
What I did know, is what I did NOT want.
- To spend a lot of money on a professional video editor
- A massive resource hog running on my computer
- To have to spend 6 years of intensive training to be able to use the editor.
My first break came when I stumbled on the excellent and very helpful Highball Blog and especially the posts about the GoPro HD.
Kudos to Constantin for the excellent very well detailed posts on his site… have a look for yourself www.highballblog.com you’ll be sure to learn something.
After a lot of further research and a lot of trials and errors I have come up with the following method to edit my GoPro HD videos, and the best of all, it is 100% FREE and very Easy.
Now I am not saying that the way I do it is ideal, or better than any other way, all I’m saying is that it gets the job done and it’s free and it’s easy.
Here are the steps and programs I use :
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Step 1 : Converting to Avi
Convert the GoPro HD MP4 to .AVI files using the excellent Free MPEG Streamclip, download at www.squared5.com [ remember Quicktime is needed to run MPEG Streamclip]
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Convert to .AVI
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Experiment with these settings
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Streamclip is now Converting the file to .avi
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Step 2 : Editing the .Avi Video with Windows Movie Maker
Now your video has been converted to .avi, you can add it to Windows Movie Maker to add some titles, comments and credits.
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Create a movie with your now .avi videos
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Publish movie to your computer
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Publish your movie
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Step 3 : Convert back to MP4
Now that your video has been published, you will notice how sharp it looks, however you will also notice the huge size it has become. To be able to publish this video online, we will have to reduce the size, we can do this without losing noticeable quality by converting the video back to MP4 format.
There are probably tons of programs that do this, but I found that the Leawo MP4 Converter did an excellent job, and is lightweight, very easy to use, fast and stable, in fact I was so impressed by the Free version I actually upgraded it, costing me a whopping $19,- giving me a few handy extras.. But the Free version does the job nicely
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Open up Leawo to convert the avi to MP4
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Add video and Edit your prefered settings
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I do not add audio to my videos (yet), I use the Audio Swap option at YouTube, so I set my “Video Quality” to High, and my Audio quality to Low.
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extra editing options available with the Leawo MP4 Converter Pro $19.95
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That’s it, very easy and very cheap, and the end result looks like this
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FREE Software downloads:
Thanks for the tips and explanation. This was a big help to me getting started. Cool video too! Did you shoot it in 720 x 30fps or 720 x 60 fps?
Hi Adam.
Glad the tut. helped you. All my vids are shot in 720 x 30fps
Good Luck
Rip3d
Hey I have a gopro and I can edit in Windows live movie maker no problem without doing this. So what is the point of doing it?
Dude, why are you looking for ( and I quote) “free gopro compatible editing systems for pc”.. just use your windows Live Movie Maker.. Ride Safe..
This is for people who run any kind of editing software that doesn’t allow importing MP4. Usually, PC people with Windows XP which run the old version of Movie Maker.
thank you so much…first one that actually worked.
perfect! thx
Yes!!!!!! Finally!!!! This works perfect! Thank you Thank You Thank You
I tried this with 60 fps video, and when i put it into WMM, it just plays as a black screen…any suggestions?
What compression did you use with MPEG Streamclip.. Sorry, I have never experienced this. Do you mean WMP? I have never heard of WMM
Well, so far I cannot find anything to just cut and mute sections out of a video. Just started looking for a solution and this is the third solution I have looked at that does not give me what I want. Does anyone know of a simple video editor that is easy to cut out sections of video and/or audio? Anyone making videos know that there are sections you just want to take out. So there has to be a simple way to do this.
There are plenty of proggies to completely edit your GoPro ( or any other vids). I would suggest Corel Video Studio, but there are loads more. HOWEVER these softwares cost money, and there is a learning curve.. saying that, it is money well spent if you want to “Mix” some rad videos. Just google “Best Video Editors https://www.google.com/#hl=en&cp=18&gs_id=2y&xhr=t&q=Best+video+editors&tok=w5bTGIzgft8FVzYUAvmbAw&pq=coral+video+editor&pf=p&sclient=psy-ab&source=hp&pbx=1&oq=Best+video+editors&aq=0&aqi=g4&aql=&gs_sm=&gs_upl=&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&fp=adf4c38dda8866f1&biw=1264&bih=635
Good Luck
Rip3d
or you can use cineform studios, which is free on the gopro website. it is optimized for the gopro and works pretty damn well for me. you can edit and convert on it. only thing is if ur computer is crappy like mine, it might get bogged down a little bit when converting 1080p vids.
heres the link
http://gopro.com/support/hd-hero2-firmware-update/
tell me what you think and tips on how use it, cuz i suck at editing
Hey just out of curiosity do you know what the name of this song is? Sounds close to radiohead but not sure..