How to Begin Editing GoPro Videos on Mac

Use GoPro Quik to create basic clips from your footage

GoPro Quik app on a MacBook Air screen

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by Jack Wallen
Jack Wallen is an award-winning writer for TechRepublic and Linux.com. He’s an avid promoter of open source and the voice of The Android Expert.
Updated June 10, 2019

You have some exciting, interesting, or educational footage on your GoPro. Now it’s time to put that footage together to create a film. What do you do? You could turn to the likes of Final Cut Pro, but that might be overkill for your needs (on top of which, it’s a pricey piece of software). If your needs align with the simple and cheap, GoPro has a piece of free software that makes creating basic videos a breeze.

That software is GoPro Quik. Quik is an app that’s available for macOS, Android, Windows, and iOS. The desktop version of Quik only offers a bare minimum of features (whereas the Android and iOS versions offer quite a few more features). In fact, Quik does most of the editing for you, so you don’t have to know anything about editing video to make this work. So if that sounds like something you want to try, let’s see how this basic video editor is used on a Mac.

What We Used

For this tutorial, we used a GoPro Hero 5 Black edition and a MacBook Pro 2016. The hardware versions you use won’t change the steps for editing software with Quik.

Importing Video Clips

The first thing to do is import your video clips. Fortunately, the Quik app has this feature built right in (so there’s no need to worry about using yet another application). Here’s how to import video clips into Quik.

  1. Connect your GoPro to your Mac via the supplied cable.

    GoPro Hero5 closeup of data cable port

  2. Click the Launchpad icon in the Dock.

    Screenshot of the Launchpad icon in the macOS dock.

  3. Type Quik and click the Quik launcher.

    Screenshot of launching the Quik application.

  4. Make sure your GoPro camera is selected in the left sidebar.

    Screenshot of selecting a GoPro camera in Quik.

  5. Click Import Files.

    Screenshot of the Quik Import Files button.

  6. Allow the import to complete.

After Quik finishes the import, you’re ready to create.

Creating a Video

With your files imported, here’s how to create a video:

  1. On the Quik main window, click Media.

    Screenshot of the Quik Media.

  2. In the resulting window, click Create.

    Screenshot of the Quik Create button.

  3. In the Media section, select a highlight from a clip by clicking on the start point and then on the end point.

    Screenshot of adding start and end points to a clip.

  4. Repeat the above step on the next clip. Do this until you’ve selected start and end points for all the clips you want added to the video.

At this point, all of your highlights will have automatically been added to the new video (in the order you selected start/end points). You will also notice Quik has also auto-added a piece of music for your clip. You can change that music by following these steps:

  1. Click on the song title.

    Screenshot of the Quik song title.

  2. Click the play button associated with a piece of music for a sample.

    Screenshot of the music play button.

  3. When you find a song you like, select it and click ADD TO VIDEO.

By default, videos will add a Quik-branded outro. To delete that:

  1. Click Select Outro.

    Screenshot of the Select Outro button.

  2. Click No Outro.

    Screenshot of the No Outro button.

  3. Click Apply.

Once you’re finished, click Save. In the resulting window, give your video a name, select the quality, and click Save.

Screeshot of the video naming window.

Once the video has saved, it will be listed in the View window, where you can right-click the video and opt to View, Share, Edit (Open in Create Mode), or View the new file in Finder.

Screenshot of the Quik sharing menu.

And that’s all there is to creating a simple video from your GoPro camera footage.