I appreciate the complementary remarks on my videos.
Up until a handful of years ago, I too was a video dinosour. Just before I retired from normal (i.e. non-musical) employment, the place was celebrating its centenary. Each office was asked to do a feature about the office on video. Our office called for volunteers. No one did, so I said I'd have a go, knowing nothing about video.
I found someone who knew how to work a camera (I didn't), and got them to accompany me while I found things to take clips of.
I figured out how to upload this onto a PC, and then used Moviemaker to edit and assemble a ten minute video.
From that moment I was hooked. When I retired I treated myself to a reasonable camera, and started experimenting. My main interest has been in music videos, and it was fun and exciting learning more about video techniques.
I've loaded about 30 or so videos to YouTube, of very degrees of success, in the nearly three years I've been retired.
I tried various applications for editing. I started with Moviemaker, which is a damn fine program . . . but it kept crashing on my newer machine. I bought Ulead's VideoStudio 11, which wasn't the best purchase. It's okay for straightforward things, but is clunky and trying more complex things. I then discovered Vegas (someone gave me a copy of an old version), which is, as far as I am concerned, sensational. So I bought Vegas Movie Studio Platinum, which does everything I need. At times I discover some limitations (for example, only four each of audio and video tracks, where the earlier Vegas had unlimited tracks). However, I usually manage to get around this ok. If anyone has used Reaper, then they will immediately be familiar with Vegas, because they are extremely close in how they operate.
I've had a look at Premier, but like other Adobe products, I find it difficult to get my head around it.
I'll just briefly respond to Stevie B.
1 I was always ambivalent about the bow of the RC boat being visible, and I often crop to remove as much as possible. But I've always left a bit there as a point of reference. I would like to try it being absent without resorting to cropping, but the camera position is such that I can't do it with this particular boat. (But I am building another!).
2 I agree that there are scene shifts that are too quick. Sometimes this is because there isn't enough footage. For example, in closing in on the yacht, the RC boat veers away just when you want to get a bit closer. (The reason is because I'm on shore, about 50 yards away, trying to judge its proximity to the yacht, and not doing a good job of it.) So I had to cut away there . . . there wasn't anything else worth looking at. At other times, I was striving for effect, but that effect was diminished by the inexactness of the clips (for example, the boat went under the jetty about three times, and I wanted to get a kind of deja vu thing happening . . . but it didn't quite work).
