Hi,

So i had my first go with my Mavic Air today and what an amazing little machine!

now i know the drone saves a small file to my phone that i can edit on the DJI GO4 app, but are they lower quality than the ones on my SD card?

I have just installed all the footage to my pc from the card and wondered what im best to try edit them on?

im totally new to flying the DJI and editing footage, i have been flying an FPV racing drone for a while, however purchased my DJI to get some lovely pictures and videos.

thank you for your help and i hope its not a silly question

Ben

Ben,
Glad to see you are ready for the next step with Drones. Editing the video.
I have 3 different video editors and all work great.

The best for me is DaVinci Resolve and is free off the net. It is very professional and with all the YouTube tutorials on it is a synch to use.

I also use Gimp which is not easy to grasp.
The last one I use came with the computer and is Cyber Power Direct. People friendly to use.

Another one I downloaded but haven't used in Filmora Video Editor that was recommend here on the Forum

Looking forward to seeing some videos from you.

1 more video editor that's free to add to everything that B1houdini suggested is Hitfilm express 2017. It works great for me. I will say that editing 4K needs a powerful processor and at least an 8 gig video card.

Hey no silly questions here, we all started somewhere and you'll see after some time on the boards here that you'll have better familiarity with the Mavic Air. The SD card footage that gets recorded directly from your Mavic Air will be the best and highest quality footage. For example, if you record in 4K it will be saved onto the SD card in this format, what gets stored on your smart device is a more compressed lower resolution video file normally around 720p. I hope this helps.

Assuming you have a Windows computer, then you have Windows Movie Maker. This can produce 4K video (search online to see how). It's perfect for producing short videos from your drone. You will need to transfer the video from your drone (either internal storage or your SD card) to your PC by connecting it with the USB cable. Then drag and drop the files into Movie Maker, edit, upload to Youtube, and bam: 4K Video on Youtube from your DJI drone.
Move Maker is not so good for more complex videos. Great bang for the buck (free), but if you want more control, you'll want another tool.

Depending on what I am doing I usually use Adobe Premiere Pro for videos but will sometimes use Cyberlink Power Director, I use Adobe Lightroom or Adobe Photoshop for stills.  For panorama's I usually use Autopano Giga because DJI Media maker tends to crop way to much and Microsoft ICE is a hit or miss as far as stitching correctly.  

+1 for Davinci
+1 for needing a powerful PC

Be sure to check system requirements for each software and beware that if editing software is impossible to load or "choppy" when it does, then it is time to invest in a new PC or an upgrade at the very least.
Most of us here that edit video have learned that along the way... another option is to lower the recording resolution to 2.7k or even 1080/720p. The lower the resolution the less resources needed to render.

Oh and welcome and congrats on the new flying camera!

Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe Lightroom
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe After Effects

I’m a bit bias because these are the apps I learned on but they are very powerful apps and can basically do whatever your mind can come up with.

Welcome to the forum. All good suggestions above

Thanks for the help guys, been out with it again today and it’s just so smooth!

If anyone had any good YouTube videos to watch regarding the imagery side of it, like ISO etc that would be helpful. I’m really keen to learn the correct settings and what they all mean

Once again thank you for the help

Congratulations for your Mavic Air and welcome to this forum. If you take a bit of time to browse through the forum threads you'll find quite a number of very good tutorial videos on the camera settings. And over time you'll identify yourself the best settings for what you want to achieve.

The Adobe software is great and powerful stuff.  However, it comes with a hefty price tag (look at their Creative Cloud for monthly pricing options that aren't such a hit as buying the software retail/boxed).

Another good video editing program, albeit maybe not as powerful as PP, but still pretty darn good, is Vegas Movie Studio (or Vegas Pro for more high-end work).  Movie Studio should be able to do most, if not all, of what you'll need done and is at or around the $100 price point.  Vegas Pro is around $400.  After using both, plus trying to use Avid for some other work for a time, to me the Vegas software seemed the most intuitive (your mileage may vary, though).

You want to try somethign interesting, Adobe has a new product out called Adobe Rush some good content on it is located here but the bottom line is its really nice and you can import them into Premier and works with your Mobile device and full OS for editing.  Very worth looking at.

If your computer is slow. You can always use proxies (4k video reduced to 1080 0r 720) then link them up again when finished editing. Leave the computer running all night if necessary to render the finished output.