Hey Guys, its GABA VR, and this time I launch a mini-series on my channel,
showing you how to create Insta360 Shot Lab effects manually, in high quality, on desktop.
I hope you will find it interesting if you don’t have a supported Insta360 camera,
or you want to have more control over each effect,
and render your videos in higher quality, even in 4K for professional use.
Of course, if you don’t like editing videos with smartphones, you don’t have a powerful smartphone,
or you shoot with any different cameras than Insta360 One X or One R this mini-series is for you!
Even more you’ll be able to use these techniques in professional projects,
even if you shoot with a camera like Insta360 Pro2 or Titan.
But now let’s jump into it and start with the first technique!
I’ll show you the one called Parallel Planet.
It’s very similar to the one I created years before Insta360 cameras appeared on the market,
and I called it Holey Planet.
My Holey Planet technique is a creative photo-trick by merging a little planet and inverted planet.
And this was the very first photo ever in this style, where I used the same photo inside and outside,
while later I upgraded this concept by merging different takes to create these special rings.
Then I was experimenting with Holey Planet videos, too.
But the main difference now, is that Insta360 allows you to create this effect
easily on your smartphone using AI.
But what if you wanna have more control over the process,
even combining different shots or simply use them in professional videos in higher resolution.
Well, good news, you can make it even in Premiere Pro or any other editing software.
But before we start editing, here are a couple tricks you need to know about the shooting method.
You can put your camera on the ground or even on a tripod,
depending on the distance between you and your camera.
As a basic rule I can say, the closer you walk to the camera, the lower your camera should be.
Using a mini tripod, I keep a two meters distance, and start walking around the camera in the middle.
It’s a really fast trick, because after recording a couple of rounds, I can go home and start editing.
Working with the non-stitch workflow, I simply import my raw videos into Premiere
and create a New Sequence from the clip.
If you have a footage like this, the first editing step is straightening the horizon.
I turn on Safe Margins or I create a custom grid.
First, I create a solid, and then I apply the Grid plugin.
Here I can decide how many rows and columns I need.
Moving this solid above my footage can help me check the horizon of my 360 video.
And after making it totally straight, this grid is very useful during the next step, too.
As I’m walking around like this, of course, my position is continuously changing.
If I turn it into a little planet, it will look like I was walking around the planet round and round.
It’s an artistic choice whether you keep it this way or you go forward to the look you can create in Shot Lab.
This time I keep on working, and try to keep myself in a fix position and create a look with a rolling planet.
So as I finished fixing the horizon, I work with the same plugin.
But now, I modify another parameter to set up the direction of the video.
I create a keyframe and move myself in the middle of the canvas.
Then as I’m walking around, I always refine my position until it looks like I was walking in place, just like on a treadmill.
And now it’s time for the magic!
When everything looks fine, let’s create the parallel planet!
First, I duplicate the edited video, and apply vertical flip to the top clip.
Then I search for the Crop effect and drag it over.
I cut off 50 percent from the top, and the reflection effect is created.
It’s not perfect, but in a couple of seconds I show you some tricks, how you can customize it.
Until that let’s turn it into a parallel planet first, just to see, how it will look like.
There are two ways to do it.
First, you can apply the old GoPro VR Reframe plugin, or the one called Reframe360.
Or you can play around with the new GoPro FX plugin.
First let me show you the advantages of the first method.
I create an Adjustment layer and drag it over the whole sequence I’ve created.
I apply the Reframe 360 plugin, turn on the little planet view,
set the Pitch parameter to minus 90 degrees, so my virtual camera will face down perfectly,
and finally I zoom out a little bit.
As you can see, the effect is created.
Working on an Adjustment layer, the Reframe plugin affects all the layers underneath,
so we can get an instant effect.
Even more, I can turn it on and off with one single click.
But as I said before, this image is not perfect yet.
I find this ring to be a little bit thin, and my feet are too close to the edge.
Even more, sometimes they disappear.
So turning off the Reframe effect I play around with the thickness of the ring.
Of course, playing around with further steps you can create custom looks and effects,
but this time I only make a little correction.
I click on the top clip, which goes inside the ring in the final video,
reduce the amount of cut on the top and move it down a little bit
to make the grassy part a little bit bigger, and the ring a little bit thicker.
This way my feet won’t be cut in the middle, but there’s one more important step before finishing.
As the top of the sky got out of the frame, it would look weird after I turn it into an inverted planet.
So I go to the Scale settings and uncheck “Uniform Scale”.
Now, I resize the image, only modifying the height.
This way it will perfectly fit to the canvas, and I get rid of the artifacts in the middle of the final video.
I like this method, because I can modify anything and instantly get the final result, too.
And of course, it has a lot of creative possibilities to customize the final look of the Parallel Planet.
We can make the circle bigger or smaller by transforming the top or the bottom video layers.
But another way to reframe this video is using the new GoPro FX plugin.
In 2020, maybe you’re more familiar with this one,
but unfortunately, it doesn’t work with this instant method, using adjustment layers.
So first I have to render the edited 360 video, and then I apply the effect on this video file.
The settings are very similar to the previous one,
as I set the Camera Tilt to minus 90 degrees and I zoom out.
The advantage of using this method is that I can move the Parallel Planet left or right,
up and down within the frame,
but unfortunately most of the settings are baked in,
and I can’t step back and forth between the steps so fast and easily like in the previous case.
So in most of the times I work with the older reframing plugins using Adjustment layers,
but if you prefer the new GoPro FX plugin, you’ll be good to go with this second method.
And I hope you like this effect and find these editing tips useful.
If you do, please thumbs up,
and for further 360 contents and tutorials, please subscribe to my YouTube channel,
browse my playlists, and see you next time!