GoPro Video Editing Tips – The Definitive Guide In 2023

So you got your first GoPro and recorded a ton of footage from your vacation sitting on your hard drive or your phone collecting dust? Now WHAT? What if you could correct your composition or exposure? , make the colours more saturated, select only the best parts of your video etc. In other words, you can make your videos look better and more cinematic.

 In this article, I will show you how to quickly edit your GoPro footage and colour-correct it so you can create some basic edits easily and get a solid foundation if you want to learn more.

Which Editing Software Should I Choose?

There is plenty of editing software offering primary and more advanced functions, such as Davinci Resolve, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro and many other lesser-known companies.

So which one should you choose? Honestly, you can’t go wrong with any of them as they all let you cut, import, colour correct, stabilise your footage, export it, etc. It’s a matter of which editing software offers the easiest learning curve, which has a more appealing layout, whether a free or paid version etc.

I use a programme called Davinci Resolve, which is professional software, and I use it all the time to make my content for youtube.

In this guide, I am going to explain how to use it. The best part about Davinci Resolve software is that it’s for FREE, crazy. However, a free version has some limitations, like a lack of GPU acceleration, noise reduction, lens correction and other more advanced options. However, you can edit and render your entire project without watermarks.

Assuming you won’t ever need those options and are ok with slower render speeds, it’s free. You can download it directly from the Black Magic Design website, be sure to select the Free version.

Creating a New Project in Davinci Resolve

Once Davinci Resolve has been downloaded and installed on your computer, you need to create a new Project when you start it up. As you see, I already have a few different Projects created, and I can switch between them here.

You can select a project by double-clicking on it or hitting the open button in the lower right corner. Since you probably don’t have a project, please click on the “New Project” button.

Now let’s give it a name and click on create; after a few seconds, our new project file will be created within Davinci Resolve, and we can import our video files, edit them, etc. But before we do any of that, look at the bottom of the picture below.

A bit small, right? Let’s enlarge it, so it’s easier to see

Notice that a couple of icons here represent a completely different section of the programme designed for a specific task. For example “Media” page is designed to import all the necessary files into your projects that you want to work with, while the “Edit” page should be used for trimming your clips, adding transitions, titles or some music etc.

The “Fusion” page also helps create visual effects and motion graphics, while “Color” is all about colour correcting, adjusting exposure, correcting white balance, etc. Lastly, the “Fairlight” page is focused on audio, so you can use it to remove background noise and make your voice sound better. There is also a “Deliver” page to export your files once you finish editing your video project.

Frames Per Second (FPS) for Your Video Project

Before we even begin importing our video files to our project, we must always select which FPS we want to use on our timeline. This setting cannot be changed later during the editing process, so please double-check it every time you start a new project. If, for example, most of your clips were shot at 29.97 fps (30 fps), then you should set your entire project to 29.97 fps.

Here is how to change your project settings. In the lower right corner of Davinci Resolve software, there should be a small cog wheel icon called “Project settings” please click on that.

A new window should pop out with all the basic project settings, but we are interested in only two positions: “Timeline frame rate” and “Playback frame rate”. Please select the same value as most of your video clips, probably 23.97 fps or 29.97 fps.

Once you have selected the proper FPS, click on the “save” icon to accept the changes. The window should automatically close, and we are ready to import our first video file.

How to import Video Files

Do you still remember the “Media” page that I mentioned above? If you are not there already, please click on that icon.

From here, it’s time to import the video and audio files we want to use. Take a closer look at the upper left corner and select the destination where you store your files, for example, D:\GoPro\videos etc. once you find your file destination, please click and hold on that file with a left mouse button and drag it to your Media Pool slightly below.

A notification might indicate that the clip has a different Frame rate than your project setting. Please don’t accept the changes and click on the “don’t change” button. 

In this example, I am trying to import a high frame rate video, which is 119 fps, because I want to show you how to make a slow motion later in the tutorial. However, if you, for example, select the “change” button, then your entire Project Setting would switch to a different frame rate which we don’t want. You only want to select the “change” option if you want to work with the same frame rate on your entire project.

Once we click the “don’t change” button, our video file should be successfully transferred to Media Pool. Let’s go to the “Edit” page, where we can make basic adjustments to our video.

How to Edit Your Video – Some Basics

In this part of the tutorial, we will focus on all the basic editing skills you will need, like creating proxy files, trimming your clip, stabilising it or adjusting your horizon level etc., so let’s not waste any time.

Once we are on the “Edit” page, we must add our video file to the timeline to finally work with it.  Please go to the upper left corner and click on the “Media Pool” button; it is a place where we can quickly access all the files that we have previously imported into “Media Page”.

Pro Tip: Whenever you click on the “Media Pool” button, you can either hide this area if you don’t need it or extend it any time you have to add something new to your timeline. This way, you have more “working” space.

Please click and drag the video file over the timeline area and drop it there. Now it’s a perfect moment to preview the video and select only the best moments of it.

Press the space bar on your keyboard to start and stop the playback.  Depending on your computer and video resolution, the video playback can be choppy, but there is a way to go around that problem. Please return to your “Project Settings” in the lower right corner (cog wheel).

Once you are in the „Project Settings”, notice many different sections on the left side of this window; make sure you are on the “Master Settings” section. From there, scroll down until you see “Optimized Media and Render Cache”.

It is here where we set the quality of our proxy files. I choose half or quarter-quality for most of my edits; the lower quality you choose, the more pixelated your video appears, but it will be easier to edit, and the playback gonna be much smoother.

Once we render our files into a final video, all proxy files are replaced with original files, so don’t worry about the pixilation; no quality will be lost. Please also make sure that you change “Optimized Media Format” and “Render Cache Format” to either DNxHR HQ or DNxSHR SQ for reduced file size.

Once you set it up, go to the video file that doesn’t play smoothly, click on it with the right mouse button and select the option “Generate Optimized Media”. The file will be rendered into a smaller quality file, it can take a while before it finishes processing.

Now you don’t need a powerful computer to be able to edit 4k or 5k. So let’s go back to trimming that video file. Please hit on the space bar to play the video or use the marker on your timeline. It’s a small red arrow with a line indicating where you are on your timeline.

You can move it with your left mouse button to find a specific moment in your edit. Play through your video until you find the best part of it, and we will delete the rest.

If you feel your timeline is too tiny, please click on the plus or minus icon in the middle right part of the screen or hold the left alt keyboard and scroll up or down with your mouse wheel to zoom in or zoom out on your timeline.  

Select a razor tool in the tool menu or hit the “B” button on your keyboard. The razor tool allows making the precise cut in a video or audio file so we can delete a part of it.

Pro Tip: Alternatively, you can select a specific moment within the clip and hit shift + [ or ] on your keyboard. This will not only cut but also delete the portion of the video before or after the bracket. Using the left bracket will delete everything from the left side of your marker, etc.

Now let’s play through the video and delete the portion at the end if it’s not suitable due to camera shake, lousy camera movement etc., so we leave only the best part of it. Once again, use either a “Razor” tool or a bracketing technique.

Once we trimmed our video file and removed its unnecessary parts, let’s look at the “Inspector” tool, where we can zoom in on our footage and pan the camera angle correcting our composition.  Please find the “Transform” section and notice we got two settings here “Zoom” and “Position”.

As the name suggests, the “Zoom” function lets you zoom in or out on your footage; the better the quality of your video, the more you can zoom in without pixilation. On the other hand, the “Position” function lets you move the camera frame either to the left or to the right. It should be used with the Zoom function whenever you want to adjust your composition.  

Slightly lower, there is a “Rotation Angle” setting which lets you correct your horizon; if it’s a bit tilted, you can fix it here by rotating the whole camera angle. Please be aware that it creates black bars on the edges, so I highly recommend you zoom in on your footage to hide them.

Another exciting tool in the “Inspector” menu is removing the fish eye distortion of your GoPro in here. If you go to the “Lens Correction” section, you can quickly analyse your video for the amount of distortion or fine-tune it yourself using a slider. It’s not a perfect tool, and sometimes it may look a bit weird on the edges, but it’s there if you want to try it.

All right, we created proxies, trimmed our video file, and know how to zoom in and adjust the camera angle or even fix the lens distortion, so what know? The answer is colour correction.

How to Color Correct GoPro Videos

The beauty of Davinci Resolve is that all the critical elements for editing or colour correcting are found on a different page, so it doesn’t get too overwhelming when you open up the software. The moment you change the page, it might feel like you opened up new software to some degree, but it quickly becomes something natural. If you are ready to colour-correct your video, then all the tools you need can be found on the “Color” page at the bottom of your screen.

Let’s click on the colour page and see what we can do to our footage. Please don’t get discouraged. It is easier than it looks  I tried to highlight all the most essential elements of this page so it’s easier for you to get started. Please refer to the picture below whenever you feel confused about where to find sth, but I will try my best, so it’s easy for you to follow along.

There are many options to choose from but believe me, once you start using these tools, it quickly becomes second nature.  In the upper left corner, we have our Preview window, where you can playback our footage and even make a loop of a particular clip.

Slightly below, you can find all the video clips from your timeline; thanks to it, you can quickly find the correct video file you want to colour grade. On the right side of our Preview, we got a Node; think of it as an editing layer where you apply your changes to the clip and create as many nodes as you like. We will use them to add our contrast, saturation, sharpness etc.

Now let’s focus on our colour-correcting tools for a moment. On the right side of the screen, in the lower corner, we have Waveforms; here, you can find all the essential information regarding your video. You can analyse how dark your shadows are or how bright the highlights are, inspect your colours, and correct the white balance.

It’s a potent tool and is more accurate than relying on your eyes; remember that every computer screen can display colours or contrast differently. When you use a waveform, you make sure that your footage looks precisely how you want it to look.

In the lower middle part of the screen, we have Curves, Windows, Tracker and Sharpening tools. These are quite helpful tools to adjust individual colour, create a mask if you want to, for example, create a vignette or brighten up a person’s face, track an object, so it stays consistent throughout the frame, etc. Lastly, you can find a sharpening tool to further fine-tune your footage.

Next to it, on the left side, we have Color wheels; think of it as a place where you can adjust Shadows, Midtones and Highlights. Plus, you can add some colour cast to your video to give it a more artistic look, but it’s way too advanced for this tutorial, so I won’t focus on that here.

Slightly below, we got a few small number values where we can adjust contrast, saturation, change the white balance, etc.  Though it’s not all that Davinci Resolve has to offer here, I guess it’s everything you should know now.  All right, it’s time to create a new node and make some changes here.

To create a new node, please hit Alt + S button on your keyboard; you can also click with your right mouse button on this area and click “add node”. Once you have created it, click on the new node with a right mouse button and select “Node label” to give it a name. Let’s call it “contrast”.

At this point, I want you to look at the waveforms in the lower right part of the screen. It is possible to enlarge it if you click on expand icon.

When looking at the waveforms, it’s essential to realise that everything that touches the upper part of its line 1023 and beyond will be Pure White. There will be no information in it, it’s just white burnout colour. Pay close attention that the intense sun represents the brightest part of the waveform.

On the other hand, the lowest line, 0 and everything below it represents Pure Black. All the trees and the girl’s black hair stand for whatever is dark in this scene. Notice that the waveform doesn’t touch the 0 lines yet, so we got some space to make our footage a bit darker, and perhaps we can increase the scene’s brightness.

The sun is burnout anyway, so let’s give it a try. Don’t close the waveforms just yet. Keep them as a point of reference when you change your contrast. Now please concentrate on the lower left corner of the screen, The Color wheels.

Notice that under every one of these colourful wheels, a slider can be used to either increase the brightness level or lower it. You can either click and hold it with a left mouse button and move it to the left side to darken it or to the right side to brighten it up.

Alternatively, you can use a mouse wheel which is a bit more precise than the first method. Please go to the Lift wheel responsible for the darkest parts of our video and try to slightly lower it down but don’t go below the 0 lines on our waveforms. Now go to the Gamma wheel responsible for mid-tones and bring them slightly down; the idea is that you still want to see something in the darker parts of the image; if it is too dark to see anything, it means you have crushed your shadows.

Now let’s brighten the sky a little bit and notice that the sun is already overexposed. It has no details, but it’s pretty standard, so no worries. Please go to the colour wheels window again and increase the slider under the Gain colour wheel. After you do that, you may want to see how you like the final image; at this step, I added a little more shade in the mid-tones to give it a more romantic/ dramatic look.

Now that looks good, the image is no longer washed out we got some pretty solid shadows and a beautiful bright sky in here. If you notice, on the waveforms, I didn’t increase the highlights too much, just a little bit, cause I didn’t want to completely blow out the sky; the sun is ok as it makes the scene look better.

Sometimes when you lower the midtones, it’s good practice to control your shadows because they can get too dark. In that case, lift it by a tad. I didn’t do it cause I like the darker tone of the image. It will be easier to compare how it looks before and after if you hit ctrl + D on your keyboard.

Don’t you think that something is still missing here? Well, how about if we add some colour to it cause it doesn’t look too colourful. The video was recorded in GoPro Flat colour, which doesn’t automatically add contrast or too much saturation.

It looks flatter than GoPro Color, but it’s so much easier to edit, and you will never find yourself in a situation when your video is too dark or too colourful. Adding saturation in Davinci Resolve is easy; please create a new Node using your keyboard’s Ctrl + S button. Let’s give it a name, for example, „Saturation” this way, it is easier to check what each Node is responsible for whenever you need to make changes.

Once you have done that, please go to the lower left corner below the Color wheels. There are a few options to easily adjust contrast, saturation, white balance and a couple of other settings. If you don’t see the “Saturation” setting here, ensure you are on the first page.

Please click and hold the saturation value with your left mouse button and slowly drag it to the right side to make the scene more colourful. In a way, it works just like a slider. If you drag it to the left, you will decrease the saturation.

It’s a matter of preference and personal taste in how many colours you like; some prefer a more colourful look, while others would rather desaturate their videos. On new GoPro cameras, I typically set my saturation up to 60.00, mostly around 55, but it all depends on which GoPro camera you use, the lighting, the weather etc., so there isn’t a perfect value.

However, if you want to learn more about how much saturation is too much, please go to the waveforms graph once again and tick a small arrow icon next to it from there, choose Vectorscope.

A vectorscope is another handy tool which shows you what specific colours are visible in your footage. Notice that in our example below, there are 2-3 dominant colours like yellow, orange and blue, maybe a little bit of red, but you can hardly see any green or magenta in it etc.

That’s exactly what’s represented on the Vectorscope Graph. I intentionally highlighted the edges here with blue, so it’s easier for you to see where the borderline is. The borderline can help you estimate how far you increase the strength of a particular colour before it looks oversaturated.

Remember that every monitor displays colours differently, so what might look good on your PC might not necessarily look good on another one, which is why it is such an excellent tool.  

 I will intentionally increase the saturation levels of this video to the extremes to show you how it affects the vectorscope now and how you can use it to your advantage.

As you can see above, the video is oversaturated, and you can see it with your naked eye but notice what happened to the vectorscope now. It represents all the colours in the scene, remember?

Orange, yellow and blue. A vectorscope is helpful because, in Davinci Resolve, you can increase or decrease the individual colours of your video! So if you want to make the sky blue or decrease some unwanted colours, you can do that . Here is how…  

Please go to the lower middle part of the screen where curves are, and make sure you click on the third dot, which will take you to the “Hue vs Saturation” panel.

While looking at the “Hue vs Saturation” panel a way, it also represents the colours of our scene. Once again, it’s primarily dominated by red, orange, yellow and blue there is hardly any other colours in the scene. In the lower left part of this panel are a couple of colourful dots …. let’s click on the red colour, which is the strongest. Using the red colour here will be the easiest way to show how this tool works.

As I said before, you can manipulate individual colours here, saturate it to the point it’s warm and colourful or decrease it, giving it a washed-out, more fantastic look. You have so much control over your video here. I will click and drag on the “Red” dot icon to show you how it affects the video now. 

What just happened?  The red is completely gone from the video; all left is yellow, blue and maybe a bit of orange. It looks almost like a black-and-white scene; all it took was just one click! I will click and drag the yellow dot up to show you the following example.

Notice that the sun, the sand and a yellow dress are more colourful now, and the scene returns to life. It’s no longer desaturated as before, “Hue vs Sat” is a potent tool, but if I told you that you could make it better? You see, hue vs saturation affects the entire colour within the scene, but what if you want to concentrate on just one element, say, a T-shirt or a dress, and leave all the other similar colours untouched?

Yes, you still can do that too! It might be a bit advanced, but if you want to get creative, please give it a go! Otherwise, you may want to return to this part in the future. What you need is a masking tool. Please create a new node, go to the “Window” option and from there, select a circle mask.

The masking tool lets you select a specific area and only affects what’s either inside or outside, it can be used for many tasks, such as creating vignetting around the corners etc Circle mask has two areas outer ring and an inner ring.

The outer ring stretches the gradient area where the effect is not so clearly visible yet makes the transition smooth, so the effect slowly comes into the giant white circle where the effect is at 100% strength. I hope that makes sense.

Once you position your mask on top of your subject/ object, please go to the “Qualifier” tool, where you must select a “Picker” tool. That feature allows you to click on the individual colour you want to manipulate, but we need to ensure that we select the entire spectrum. 

Please click on the colour you want within the “mask”. Not much has happened, yes? But notice that a few options appeared at the very bottom part of the screen.

As we selected the colour, we only selected a sample of it, but you need to provide some more information for Davinci on how much area you want to affect. In the qualifier window, you can increase the range of colour in the “Hue” panel. My colour ranges from yellow to green.

 In the “Saturation” panel, I selected darker colours of yellow, which was enough to select the full dress; if I selected more, I could affect the background like sand or skin etc., which I tried to avoid.

  As for “Luminance”, you can select all shades of the brightness of that colour. In this case, I used the entire spectrum, both the darkest parts and brightest.

I think it will be so much easier for you to do if you use the “Highlight” tool. Once you click on that, most of your scene is suddenly greyed out, leaving only what’s inside your mask.

Once you do that, please go to the “Qualifier” tool and adjust “Hue”, “Saturation”, and “Luminance” until you manage to isolate the colour. Please play the video back and forth to confirm you only affect that particular colour and there are no artefacts. It should look something like this, it’s not always possible to select precisely 100%, but it should work.

 As you see, I selected an almost entire yellow dress; the missing areas are the hat, body parts and blue trousers, which I didn’t want to affect. Now the easiest way to demonstrate it is to remove that yellow dress from the scene, so I will desaturate its colour and unclick the “Highlight” tool and here are the results.

The yellow dress is no longer yellow  there are still some small parts that weren’t affected by the qualifier; this was as much as I could select without affecting the background and body parts. As I said, it’s not always a perfect tool, it works best when you select a colour that stands out from others. In my case, in that mask, I had lots of similar colours, such as orange, yellow, and red, so it was a bit hard.

I always colour-correct my footage in a specific order, the one I showed you in this article, so I begin with adjusting my contrast, increasing saturation, selecting proper white balance and adding some sharpness.

GoPro footage usually has a perfect “auto” white balance, which works great. I won’t be focusing on this too much, but if for some reason you feel like your footage is a bit too yellowish/ greenish or maybe a bit too blue, then please go to the lower left corner of your screen just below the colour wheels panel, and go to the second page.

When your video is either too warm or too cool, it’s usually because there is something wrong with white balance, also known as colour temperature. You can find “Temperature” and “Tint” values on the second page.

If you adjust the temperature, you will make the footage either cooler or warmer. If it’s still not enough, you may want to add a little bit of tint, it fixes the greens making the video more green or magenta.

Alternatively, if you already have a white colour present in your video, some object that definitely should be white, you may want to use a “White Balance” qualifier and click on the object that should be 100% white.

Sometimes it can do an excellent job, but most of the time, it won’t work so well, and you may want to use it only as a starting point and adjust the rest manually. As mentioned above, GoPro cameras have a perfect “auto” white balance. I usually try to make my footage a bit cooler if I ever fix my white balance.

 The last step of our colour correction journey will be adding some sharpness to the video, and yes, I know you can add some sharpness already in the camera but believe me, it can ruin your entire video once you discover that it looks a bit too sharp.

Remember, you can always add some sharpness to your video, but you cannot take it back. That’s why I always, and I mean… ALWAYS recommend using a “Low” sharpness level. Avoid “High” sharpness at all costs and never use it cause it looks horrible, occasionally, when I record short clips for social media, I may want to use medium, but it still can look bad…. depending on the scene.   

Please create a new node, and give it the name “Sharpness” to keep everything in excellent order. From here, just below it, select the second dot that takes us to the sharpening window. Now let’s go to the “Radius” setting.

 Typically with GoPro videos, the video looks soft when I use “Low” sharpness, so I prefer to give it a crispy sharper look here. Whatever changes you make in “radius” affect all three columns, so lowering the reds will also lower the greens and blues. Ideally, try lowering your sharpness to around 0.46 or 0.45 if you want a sharper look. In most cases, that should look good; if you want a slightly softer look, go with 0.47.

How to Export in Davinci Resolve

It’s time for the final step of our editing journey, which is rendering all your video files from your timeline into a single video.  At this point, you have to decide if you want to render it either in 1080p or 4k.

Rendering in 4k offers much better quality than standard HD, but it takes significantly longer to export and takes more space on a hard drive. If you want to render in 4k, please go to the bottom right corner of the screen and click on the “Project Settings” icon.

 Once you get there, go to “Timeline Resolution” in Master Settings. You will have to find 3840 x 2160 Ultra HD or dial in manually in the field below. On the other hand, if you want to render your video in 1080p, then you don’t need to do anything here, as it’s set to 1080p by default. Make sure you save the changes, and it’s time to go to the “Deliver” page responsible for rendering.

Inside the “Deliver” page, please take a closer look at the values I filled in, as these are supposed to give you the best video quality, especially if you plan to upload your video to Youtube.

 Once you have written everything in the same way as in the picture, please go to the “Audio” section where you can enable if the video should be exported with Audio; otherwise, it will be muted, so make sure you tick that box. Lastly, go to the “File” section.

In this section, you can change the name of your rendered video, specify where it will be located on your hard drive and, most notably, how fast your Render Speed will be. I typically select Maximum render speed where I edit 1080p videos, but when you edit 4k and heavily colour grade your videos, add lots of transitions, remove grain etc.

You may want to reduce that value, especially when Davinci shuts down. In my case, it’s because my computer is not powerful enough and selecting a rendering speed of 2, 5, or 10 sometimes saved my life. Finally, click on the “Add to Render Queue” in the screen’s upper right.

Your render won’t start until you click on that little button above, so you mustn’t skip this step. However, before you click on that button, it is recommended to turn off the music, internet browser and all other software that may slow down your computer and take up unnecessary memory space. Depending on how long your file is and whether you selected 4k or 1080p, this process may take a while, so grab a sandwich or get a cup of coffee.

  There you go. Your first video edit has just been exported. How was it? It’s not that difficult once you get used to it, and everything starts to be more natural; there are many features hidden in Davinci Resolve. I showed you everything you need to successfully import, edit, colour correct, and render from start to finish. I tried to show you everything I know about this software, which is crucial for you.

Thank you for reading through this article; it would make my day to know that it helped you with your first edit. Remember, practice makes perfect  Thank you once again and till we see next time!

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