Home Video Hobbists

I think Avidemux will work for the OP editing his Drone videos
It's a good place for him to start

One bit of advice ALWAYS save with a new file name, Always save into a different folder than where the original file resides

Never overwrite or delete the source video file

You always want to keep the original source file

As your expertise grows, you may want to revisit your projects and redo them to improve the output, you need to keep the original files untouched

Windows Moviemaker. Mine carried over from a previous version of Windows.

Most commercial DVDs are encrypted and Handbrake can not rip these without an additional component called libdvdcss. Here's a link to an article explaining how to rip a DVD:
https://www.howtogeek.com/102886/how-to-decrypt-dvds-with-hardbrake-so-you-can-rip-them/

Another option for ripping DVDs is DVDShrink. It hasn't been updated in several years. It can not decrypt some of the newer encryption schemes, but it works well for the ones it does support. Available here:
https://www.videohelp.com/software/DVD-Shrink

AviDemux does indeed transcode to other video formats. I was looking under the File menu section and the only option there is Save.

Avidemux allows you to save in many formats (.flv, .mp4, .mlv, .avi, .mpeg, and others) , you can crop out those annoying black bars, change resolutions, crop, edit color, and other options.
It can be slow, if you are doing alot of changes, but that is more on how fast your computer is (bigger, faster cpu is noticably faster on the save),
If you are just 'commercial cutting' and not changing anything else, copy generally is pretty quick (4 gb file in 4 - 5 minutes on a dual core laptop, 2 -3 on newer quad core lappie).
Changing file types can take hours, depends on what you start with and what you are trying to do.
For the prce, you can't go wrong.

Handbrake is excellent for copying DVD to file, but that also can be quite time consuming. 2 hour movie to .mp4 on old single core desktop 5 to 6 hours, 3 - 4 hours on dual core lappie.


Tom

AviDemux works well for doing multiple cuts. It does not do any conversion of the video format therefore it saves your project very quickly. VideoRedo does much the same but it can convert video formats. It's a good choice for processing video from broadcast TV. TV stations broadcast Mpeg2 and left in this format will create very large files. The downside is that it takes a long time to convert the video. If using AviDemux, once your video is edited, you can use a free video conversion program called Handbrake. Since the OP is starting out with Mpeg4, no conversion is needed.

A trial version of VideoRedo is available here:
https://www.videoredo.com/en/Download.htm

Handbrake download:
https://handbrake.fr/

most of my editing is done with "Video Redo"
about $99 unless you catch a special
i record OTA programing then edit out the commercials

i use AviDemux for brightening or resizing rotating etc, also simple cuts or extraction. but not for editing out multiple sections and keeping the rest as one video, never tried to do that with AviDemux

I use Avidemux for simple editing, it is capable of a lot more.
I can handle files over 8 gb.
It is free, and runs on all platforms.

http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/download.html

Tom

I use Movavi for my video editing. It's pretty easy to split and delete sections, but there is definitely a learning curve. There is both the free version, and the paid for version. Cheapest I have seen the paid for version in the USA was $35 on Black Friday I think.