You have the Action Cam Mini, you have the shot, now how do you get from hours of footage to an enjoyable clip? We have a sneaking suspicion that an overwhelming amount of helmet cam footage goes unused. Not because it isn’t interesting, but because it takes a lot of work to edit it down to something that others actually want to watch. Much like GoPro has done with their GoPro Studio, Sony has tried to make the process as easy as possible with their new Action Cam Movie Creator.
The free movie editing software is available for Windows or Mac operating systems and is available for download directly from Sony’s site. When using the creator you have the choice of combining multiple videos into a standard video format, or displaying up to 4 different clips in the same frame along with the track and speed from the GPS data on the camera. We’re still playing with the GPS functions on the camera so we stuck to the traditional video editing side of the program.
There’s plenty more after the break including what may be the best demonstration of the Action Cam Mini’s image stabilization…
Many of you had asked where the video of the Action Cam Mini taped to the arrow was, and with good reason – that sounds awesome. We really wanted to present the movie using the Action Cam Movie Creator, but due to a few kinks it took longer than expected. However, after a reinstall of the program and a few tweaks, the results are above. The first half of the video is with the action Cam Mini taped to the actual shaft of the arrow. While it is quite hard to compensate for the added weight, it is possible to get some cool footage. The second half of the video is to demonstrate the slow-motion capture of the camera.
It has been awhile since I’ve attempted any sizable drop on a big bike, so what better way to dust of the skills than with Mountain Creek Bike Park’s Phantom drop? Using the Action Cam mini on the goggle mount, as well as the AS100V on the chest mount for the second angle of the drop, I was feeling pretty good after stomping the landing (I know it’s not that big, but as I said, it’s been awhile).
This last video turned out to be a great display of the camera’s abilities because of what I did wrong, not right. The Action Park Mountain Coaster is a gravity fed ride where you sit on a sled that travels down a metal track. There are quite a few bumps along the way down and since we were trying to get a lot of people through in a hurry, we didn’t have much time to attach the cameras properly. Using the roll bar mount I attached the Action Cam Mini in a way that I at least knew it wouldn’t fly off, but it turns out it wasn’t nearly tight enough and I had to keep readjusting it with my foot.
That leaves us with a bumpy ride, a loose camera, and it still came out as a passable video. It’s also important to note that this was a good learning experience – meaning I accidentally shot the whole thing in slow-motion. The camera doesn’t revert back to standard filming even if you turn it off and on, and since I had just filmed the archery with slow-motion turned on the Mountain Coaster was in slow motion as well. To compensate most of the video is sped up in editing, with the exception of the first shot facing me (backwards hats were required, not my style). Obviously, a better mount to the Coaster would be ideal, but for the circumstances it’s not bad.
You’ll also notice that this video does not include the Action Cam Credits. That is because this was edited using Windows Movie Maker because of a critical flaw in the Action Cam Movie Creator – it lacks the ability to add music (or we haven’t figured out how yet, which doesn’t speak well for ease of use). When filming in slow-motion with the Action Cam Mini there is no sound, which makes for a pretty boring video. In order to add a sound track I had to edit the video in Movie Maker (or iMovie). I even tried to upload a video with a sound track added to the Movie Creator which ended up removing the sound.
Which brings us to the review of the Action Cam Movie Creator itself. It has the potential to be an easy to use piece of software for creating simple videos out of your footage, but at this point it is lacking in features and functionality that keep it from being useful for all but most basic videos. The Creator is being updated on a regular basis so we’re assuming that in the future many of the features and abilities we’d like to see (like editing hotkeys) will be added to make the process easier. The Action Cam Movie creator does manage to be easy to use if you just want to splice together a few clips without additional sound or editing, but for more involved projects you’ll still want to use your go-to program.
Even though the Movie Creator could use some improvements, that doesn’t take anything away from our review of the camera itself. It still ranks as one of the most user friendly action cameras we’ve used which is important – you have to get the shot before you can edit it.
