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As pieces of technology, Insta360’s 360-degree action cameras like the X4 and recently launched X5 are nothing short of dazzling.
Their ability to capture everything around them in crisp detail by seamlessly stitching together images from two ultra-wide lenses makes them the ultimate “fire and forget” action, travel or vlogging camera.
They allow you to shoot with abandon in the knowledge that you’re not missing a thing. Later on, curled up in front of your phone or laptop with a cup of tea, you can reframe your footage or photo at will, picking the best angles to convey whatever story it is you’re trying to tell.
That’s the theory, anyway. In reality, editing 360 footage has always been a painful, frustrating slog, at least in my personal experience.
Even as someone with a solid working knowledge of professional-grade desktop editing software, I’ve always found Insta360 Studio (the company’s Mac and Windows app purpose-built for honing raw 360 camera footage into eye-catching standard videos) simultaneously too complicated and too under baked. I always bounce off it, thanks to one recurring feeling: I know exactly what I want to do, but the app just doesn’t have the tools to make executing my intentions as easy as it should be.
Camera rich, time poor
I know what you’re probably thinking: stop being so lazy. I should just suck it up and spend some time poring over Insta360’s tutorials, browsing the company’s user forums for tips and watching 360 creators’ how-to guides on YouTube until dropping keyframes becomes second nature to me. But who really wants to waste hours of a busy life learning how to use an entirely new video editor when you’ve already mastered an industry-standard platform like DaVinci Resolve? Really, I think the app just needs to be easier and more intuitive to use.
The alternative, of course, was always Insta360’s mobile app, also possessed of a full-featured video editor – but far too crash-prone for comfort and with a fiddly UI that relied on tiny icons that were tricky to accurately press. Frustrating for different reasons, in other words.
The upshot of the above is that those potentially incredible-looking raw 360 videos have generally wound up sitting there on my 360 camera’s microSD card, remaining just that: raw potential. Unused, wasted and never seen by a single soul.
Until now.
Enter InstaFrame…
With the new Insta360 2.0 app update and the Insta360 X5’s InstaFrame shooting mode, getting videos from a 360 camera to a usable, shareable state has just got a lot, lot easier.
An entirely new shooting mode brought in with the X5, InstaFrame captures two videos simultaneously – one full 360 video and one standard flat video at a fixed angle. It gives the user a wide choice of angles for the flat video, including a face-tracking selfie mode that’ll always keep them in frame – but the upshot with any of them is you’ll get an instantly shareable 1080p video file the moment you stop recording. Then you have the 360º video (captured at 5.7K quality) to add any extra angles you might need later on.
For content creators in a hurry, InstaFrame could be a godsend. Get the flat video posted online first and if necessary, follow up (or replace) with a fully edited version including extra 360-captured material later on. It’s not perfect, because it limits the quality of your recording slightly (there’s no HDR, 60fps or 8K options, and it’s not available with the X5’s low light PureVideo mode), but I really like this “one and done” approach.
Letting the app do the hard work for you
Of course, as time saving as InstaFrame can be, it doesn’t really fix the problem of tricky editing. What does go a long way towards addressing that, though, is the latest update to the Insta360 mobile app. Dubbed, with some fanfare, the 2.0 update, it streamlines the UI and improves AI editing – meaning you can craft your own videos or have a robot brain make them for you.
Insta360’s AI editor isn’t exactly new, but it does feel somewhat refined in this new update. I can just select the videos I want to be used, pick a template and some background music and within a couple of minutes I have a very usable AI-directed clip, complete with transitions and a spot of color grading.
There are times when some of the AI’s editing choices aren’t amazing (it might choose to frame a building that isn’t particularly interesting, for instance), but the good news is that it’s possible to step in and change a scene or two manually without having to throw out the entire clip. I found that this, funnily enough, is a pretty good way to pick up a bit of practice using the app’s full editor without the daunting prospect of reframing and cutting an entire video.
Perhaps one day I’ll have the time and patience to delve into Insta360 Studio or really master the mobile app’s editing arsenal, but for now I’m happy letting AI do the heavy lifting with 360 videos. Much as I dislike the idea of a computer making creative choices, I dislike the idea of nobody seeing my 360 camera footage even more.
