Drone & aerial video editing best practices and guidelines

With software stabilisation applied clip by clip, and with restraint. Wind and quick stick movements leave small shakes and jolts in aerial footage; a warp stabiliser analyses the motion and smooths it, which can turn a nervous pass into a calm glide. It works by cropping slightly into the frame, so it needs some spare resolution around the subject, and pushed too far it bends straight lines and makes buildings or horizons wobble like jelly.

This guide is about editing aerial footage that the client or their licensed pilot supplies. The flight itself, and the licence it requires, are the pilot's responsibility; the editor works only with the files. The best results come from original files straight from the drone rather than copies downloaded from social media, which are compressed and carry less detail in sky and water. For an example of editing supplied footage, see Homeowners and its case study.

The horizon, the colour and the cut points. A tilted horizon is the first thing viewers notice, so each clip is levelled before anything else, which again uses some of the frame. Aerial footage is often filmed in a flat profile and with the sky much brighter than the ground, so colour correction balances the two and matches the aerials to the ground-level shots in the same video.

Aerial clips work best as openers, transitions and reveals rather than long sequences; a few seconds of a smooth move usually says more than a minute of circling. The editor also looks for problems that should not be published, such as recognisable people on private property or a propeller in the frame. Send the clips with a note of where and when each was filmed and who flew them, so any question about the footage can go to the person responsible for the flight.