How To Edit 360 Video Fast | My Workflow 2021

time is money and money is time i'm about to break down the most efficient workflow for 360 degree filming and editing let's go there are two main ways to edit 360 degree footage on pc or mac and then on mobile i use both depending on where i am editing rendering and uploading my final project if you aren't already a keen editor with a setup i highly recommend you just take the mobile route it's faster easier and cheaper however my method works for both i use an insta360 1r but this method translates to other 360 degree cameras i'm not sponsored or in any way affiliated with insta360 i did my research chose what was best for me and paid for it with my own money however if the crew at insta360 are watching do get in touch let's cover filming regardless of what you're filming on you should always shoot intentionally if you don't know why you're filming then don't every unnecessary minute of footage you film multiplies the time of your edit 360 especially so film intentionally check you got the shot and then move on make sure the frame rate matches what you want to output your final project in and that of any other cameras you might be using i have mine set to 24fps because that is what has been determined by the industry as the best frame rate to use especially in the case of 360 cameras you want as much data per frame as possible so any higher frame rates you have to spread your bandwidth across more frames if you like color grading shoot in flat you get higher dynamic range if not just use their standard profile now we're on to the processing side of things step one is obviously to do your data management get the footage that you've taken onto the device that you're going to edit on for mobile friendly 360 cams such as the insta 360 or gopro max you can connect directly with the camera and only download the clips that you need insta360 take it one step further and let you edit directly off the device this means that all that will be on your phone will be your final renders which is very efficient for mac or pc plug the sd card straight in and start transferring the files into your file structure make sure you take everything from the action cam for the case of insta360 if you copy across the individual clips and not the whole file structure and then you format your card you will not be able to move those clips back and then edit through the app if you want to use some of the powerful effects that they have in their app editing suite i will have a video in the future on my full data management process so stay tuned for that next we're going to talk about the whole process of stitching framing and editing your 360 footage the mobile apps are fairly straightforward so i'm not going to cover them in depth they will stitch your footage together automatically allowing you to then choose your aspect ratio and the framing that you want all you need to do after that is cut your clips to size and then render them out from here you can import them on your mobile into your favorite editing app for computers there are many approaches to stitch frame and export your 360 footage especially if you want to put your footage into your preferred editing program to add to a full timeline if you don't have one of these and are looking to make a more complex edit i highly recommend davinci resolve i've put a link in the description the non-studio version is free to use i also have a video in the pipeline for why davinci resolve is better than both final cut and premiere pro this won't be for a little while though as it's a big edit the most efficient way to stitch and edit your 360 footage is to do it immediately in the application that your device comes with in my opinion neither davinci resolve final cut or premiere pro have a decent 360 degree editing workflow because i have an insta360 i use insta360 studio here i cut and edit each individual clip that i want for my full timeline on davinci resolve the advantage of doing this all before putting it in your main program is that you can run the heavy 5.3 k or dual 2k unstitched 360 files with relative ease the user interface and the whole program is designed to work with 360 so it's much more intuitive if you find that your computer can't manage the software that your 360 cam came with just use your mobile especially if you're on iphone it's one of these scenarios where the technology just works better even though in theory your computer is probably more powerful a small advantage of doing all the renders on your phone even if you're going to then export it onto your computer to edit is that you can do it in your spare moments and you can do it whilst your is rendering something to maximize your efficiency this method is the most efficient because it means that you only view and process the footage once as well as only rendering what you actually need it is also the most direct path which means that you will lose the least amount of quality from your shot although your image is probably 5k and around 100 megabits a second which sounds like a lot once you've refrained that to a normal viewing angle you are most likely looking at a low bitrate 1080p or 720p image we will talk about the best export settings later i often have multiple cameras on a shoot if you have your a-roll on a different camera edit and place this first there is no point in going through your footage framing and rendering a load of shots that don't end up actually getting used the biggest advantage of editing on a 360 camera is that you're framing it after the fact this opens up the world to perfectly tracking subjects but also doing perfect pan-whip transitions without any planning use this to your advantage to achieve this follow the following tutorial make sure you know which clip is leading into the next clip at the end of your first clip pan whip the camera by using keyframes into the direction that you want the next clip to pick up on on the following clip do the same but at the beginning lead in from the direction that you let out from in the previous clip and flick the view in to where you want it to end up you can then either cut these clips in the program or if you're going to be editing this later leave that extra space and it just means that once it's on your timeline you can choose the best places to cut here's a recent cool little edit i did using this technique [Music] there are two other main approaches i'm aware of that you could try using here's my experience on those at first i thought i could skip having to frame all my stuff or use it in a different program or render it off before importing it into premiere pro you can edit the raw 360 individual files you've got from each lens by using the gopro fx plug-in i'll put a link to where this is available in the insta360 store however i found that the stitching wasn't as neat as if i did it in the insta 360 studio software and i occasionally had issues with how the footage was stabilized on top of this even if you have a more powerful pc you're going to have to be rendering your timeline at an eighth quality and then rendering your timeline out once you've made your changes in order to watch it smoothly to further prove the point that this is not an efficient route to take premiere pro continuously crashed as i tried to render out this timeline which had previously been fined premiere pro's instability does have to be taken into account when you're deciding how you're going to do your workflow on top of this you'll find that your final export times are going to be significantly slower than a normal render when i tried this method i found that the overall process was actually slower especially as you can leave your footage stitching and rendering overnight in your 360s software if you're sleeping your computer probably isn't doing anything anyways so there's not really any time lost there let's talk about that option with this you could stitch with your 360 footage without framing it and move it to your preferred editing program to frame and cut while this works it's inefficient you have two paths of approach one is that you could go through and view all your 360 degree footage to choose and cut out the bits that you want to render however you're then going to have to do that again in order to frame your footage once it's in your editing program to get around that you could render everything out so all your footage is stitched and then do everything in your preferred program but for various reasons we're going to explain later you're going to be rendering this in prores which means you could end up with hundreds of gigs of extra files in your storage on top of this you need to make sure that when your machine is using that program it can actually manage 5k files with the effect on that allows it to be edited like a 360 image rather than an equa triangle normal image however if you want to go to town with your edit this is the best approach i did this whole water rafting trip that i filmed entirely in 360. and it enabled me to do some really fun transitions unless you're filming with a really decent 360 setup the chances are that the actual image you get out of your 360 camera is pretty terrible especially if you've got a proper camera on the same timeline this means you should really be rendering out your clips in prores regardless of whether you're editing your full 360 degree clip in your timeline or the piece you've cuss out and reframed prores is a far more edit-friendly codec so it will be easier for your computer to run however it does use significant more space assuming that you went with my main method and you've got your finalized framed and rendered shots you can now import them into your preferred application this approach has saved me so much time and stress i can't even put it into words i hope it will help you get your mind around how you're going to edit your 360 footage and feel free to let me know if you have any questions on this process down in the comments thanks for your time see you soon

Channel: Tim Belchamber

Views: 12,611

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Id: 1MHghXzbKso

Length: 10min 12sec (612 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 21 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/TimBelchamber]

Ask any questions you have and I'm up for a debate if you have a better approach!

[u/jeffgolenski]

This is great. Just started video editing a few days ago. Thanks for all the helpful info. I’ll be following!

[u/vevantzemoney]

Uhm I used to trim a bit my footage on insta360 studio a bit and export prores to premiere and then edit with gopro fx reframe, I just realized that since I do use proxys it wasn't worth the extra step since Premiere doesn't crash for me with the .insv files. You mentioned stitching is better with the insta360 studio but I can't really find differences in my tests, do you have any testing?

Also, the approach of cutting in studio and then to premiere is impossible for me since I tend to do the transitios and cuts according to the music, and that I can't do it until I reframe and cut in Premiere with GoPro FX.

[u/nguyentanbao]

Thank you for sharing your workflow. I'm struggling with this as well. I have quite a bit of questions when researching for a workflow. I will ask one by one for focusing discussion.

My environment currently are: Android Phone, IPad, Windows and Mac. I have NAS to store all my raw footages.

I'm wondering about a workflow to help me work across the devices seamlessly, for example, I did partial edit on one device, I should be able to continue editing on another device. As I understood, this requires some supports from Insta360 App and Insta360 Studio at least to allow customize where to save the edits progress (would be great if it allows to save into sidecar files along with the insv files). However, I'm trying my luck with community to see anyone ever got any workarounds/approaches around this?