Drone footage
Also known as: aerial clips, drone clips
Everything an aircraft recorded during a session, from planned cinematic passes to takeoff, landing and the hovering in between.
Updated
What it means
On the card it is all one thing. Planned moves, repositioning between them, a minute of hovering while the pilot decided what to do, and two takeoffs, stored as files with sequential names.
Only a fraction is usable. In a typical session the keepers are the handful of deliberate moves, while the rest is travel, and sorting the two is the first real editing decision.
What distinguishes it from ground material is scale and smoothness. Aerial footage establishes a place in one shot, which no mounted camera can do. That is why it opens sequences so often.
How it works in practice
Keeping it findable starts on the card. One folder per flight, deleted bailouts, and a note of which pass was the good one, all done before the files move anywhere.
Settings are what make it cut together. Flights shot with a locked shutter and one profile need a single Color correction pass, while a card of mixed settings needs several.
Mixed sessions are normal, so a card of aerials usually arrives alongside a GoPro Hero 13 and a phone. Matching the aerials to the mounted cameras is the work that makes them feel like one film. Doing it on a phone in Adobe Premiere Rush is fine for a few clips and stops being fine for a card.
What to watch out for
Volume is the main problem. Long flight times produce many minutes of near-identical hovering, and Near-duplicate clip filtering is doing most of the work on an unsorted card. Trimming on the card beats trimming later.
Clips also end badly. An aircraft that decided to come home cuts the pass short, and a move still accelerating when the file stops has no out point an editor can use.
Finally, aerials are easy to overuse. A highlight that returns to the sky after every action shot loses its Rhythm editing, because a viewer reads altitude as a pause.
How RawClip handles it
Aerials are analysed together with the mounted camera material, and the planned moves usually score above the repositioning around them. Hovering and takeoffs are filtered out as near duplicates or as dead time, so what reaches the highlight is the flying that was intended.