﻿So, you want to edit a video from start to finish with your Insta360 footage, including multi-track
editing, adding text and titles, transitions, effects, music, sound effects, and more, and you
want to do it for free. While Insta360 Studio has just received a big update for multiclip editing,
it is still in its very early stages and can only achieve basic edits as of early 2024. So,
to celebrate the release of my brand-new video editing masterclass, in this video I'm going to
share my entire workflow for editing your Insta360 shots completely for free inside
of CapCut. And this process can be followed with any kind of video, whether you're using Insta360
footage or not. I know you're probably thinking that CapCut is a gimmick or an editor that is
only for beginners, but I'm an experienced editor. I've been editing for over 20 years,
and I have edited all of my recent videos inside of CapCut, including this very video. And not only
that, but I'm editing videos in half the time I used to take in Premiere Pro, and the results are
significantly better, especially for social media style videos where you don't want to overinvest
time and money. So let’s get started. So the first step in the editing workflow is reframing your
footage. Unfortunately, CapCut isn't a reframing tool. However, Insta360 Studio is still free,
and you can still use it as a reframing tool to convert your 360 videos into flat 16:9 videos
or whichever aspect ratio you prefer. This, on average, will take a few minutes per clip and is
very easy to do through creating a keyframe, then moving along the timeline, changing the
perspective, and adding another keyframe. Then, once you're happy, hit export. And export at 4K
H.265 with a bitrate of a 100. And now, we're ready for the real editing to begin. Now,
I will say that there are multiple programs you could use to edit these exported shots. Of course,
there are all of the paid options like Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro. But then, there are even
better free options like DaVinci Resolve and CapCut. These are my two personal favorite
video editors, and I think each one does have a time and a place. DaVinci Resolve is more suited
to advanced projects where you're doing a lot of editing of talking heads and you want to create
your own customized graphics and do advanced color grading in the process. Which makes it the best
choice for more experienced editors working on bigger projects. Where CapCut is the best
choice, though, is for beginner editors who want to edit really quickly through using drag-and-drop
templates and really simple features that makes the overall editing workflow go so much faster.
And this can also be really appealing for more experienced editors like me. Which is why for
any kind of video for social media, CapCut is my number one choice. Did I mention it's free? Yeah,
I think I did. So, here's how to edit with it. After downloading and installing CapCut from
the CapCut website, which I'll link below, start a new project. And this is what the interface looks
like. It's really very simple to use CapCut. So, I'm going to start by selecting all of my video
files that I've just reframed, and I'm going to drag and drop them over import here on the left.
This has imported them into the project. You can adjust your project settings by clicking modify,
where you can give it a name and adjust the resolution and frame rate. I'm going to customize
mine to be 3840 by 2160, which is 4K at 30 frames per second. Now, I'll click save. To add a clip
to the timeline, hover over it and click the blue plus icon. Here it is. So, now we've got
the option to trim this down even further. Maybe you want to cut the top and tail off of it. And
I'm going to do so by pressing Q on the keyboard to delete everything to the left of the playhead.
Then, let's say I don't want anything beyond this point here. Now, I'm going to press W and what
that's going to do is remove everything to the right of the playhead. So, you can go ahead and
repeat the process with your other clips. Add them onto the timeline. As you can see, we've got three
clips here. So, I'm going to repeat the process. I might just get rid of a few frames at the start
of this hyperlapse and a bit at the end as well by pressing W. I made a cool bike hyperlapse,
but I can see it's got a few frames at the start that need to go. So, I'll start at about here,
so press Q, go to the end, and hit W. You may have a soundtrack attached to your clips. You can tell
by whether there are waveforms or not. You can see this one on the left has waveforms and the other
two don't. And these waveforms just represent wind noises. If I play... Yeah, it's not very good. So,
to mute that, hover over the line that appears above the waveforms, and you'll see this arrow
shows up. Now, click and drag that down to the bottom, and we've just muted our track.
To add text to this video, head up to text at the top left, click, and over default text,
click the blue plus icon, and this will add a text layer to our timeline. Only text can exist
on this layer, and only video files can exist on this one. Likewise, there's normally an audio
track underneath the video one if you did record sound externally or if you want to add music or
sound effects, which we'll add in a bit. To edit text, click it, and then here at the top right,
replace default text with the text you want to add. You can change the size, the font, there's
heaps of fonts here to choose from. To reposition the text, click it here in the viewer and drag it.
And you can also adjust these handles on the sides to make it bigger or smaller. Next, we want to
animate this text so it animates in and out. To do that, head up to animation, and we'll need to set
the in animation and out animation separately. So CapCut has a massive library of transitions. Here
this is just a small portion of them. And I'm going to go with this one here, flip up. And as
you can see here by this line, it's added this in transition to the text. So, now what we want to do
is add an out transition so it animates out. To do that, click out, and you can either find the
same transition in here or choose a new transition to transition out. I've gone with the same one,
which is flip in and flip out. This is what it looks like. Now, you can reposition this text
layer anywhere on the timeline by clicking and dragging. So, if you wanted it at the very start
of your video, you can do that. Then, to extend it longer or shorter, just click the edge and drag.
To add a transition in between two clips, so we're cutting from this shot here to this hyperlapse,
head up to transitions at the top left. And here, you'll find again a massive library of
drag-and-drop transition templates. So, take a look through here. To preview one, just click on
it, and it will apply to your edit at the closest edit point to where the playhead is. I quite like
this rotate clockwise one. So what I'm going to do is click the blue plus, and that will add it
to the timeline. If you click it, now you can customize the length of it. So, you can make it
longer or shorter. Let's try this and see what it looks like. Nice. Then you can go ahead and repeat
the process with all cut points. CapCut also got a fantastic library of effects. If you click effects
up here, it has literally thousands and thousands of effects. You can keep scrolling forever. And
these are updated all the time. So, that really is a big benefit of using CapCut is it's constantly
updated with drag-and-drop templates. You'll find categories for the different effects here
on the left-hand side. I'm going to try the Vlog effects. What about this one? Camcorder. Nice.
To add an effect, click the plus button. Now, you'll see it's created an effects layer. And
just like with the text layer, you can drag it across to adjust the length. So, by doing that,
I've just applied this effect to this one single clip here, but not the second one. So,
if we watch it back, there we go. There's heaps of fun templates here, so definitely check them
out. Right now, Insta360 Studio lacks the ability to color correct. Well, no problem because CapCut
has a great inbuilt color corrector. So, if you select a clip and head up here to adjustment,
here you'll find a whole bunch of parameters that will help us enhance these colors and make your
video really pop. So, I'm going to do some quick color correction to this clip. Once you're done,
if you click this adjustment box on and off, you can see your before and after. This is a good way
to see how effective your color corrections are and whatever further changes they might need.
Now, you can do multi-track editing inside of CapCut. Here, I imported the video of me
talking from this video, and if I add that to the timeline and if I click and drag these above it,
suddenly I'm doing a multi-track edit where I'm using my Insta360 footage as the b-roll
track. And you can really keep going with as many layers as you like that are either video,
text, or effects. To add a music track to your edit, just click and drag onto your timeline,
and it will automatically be added. You can adjust the volume up and down the same way as before. And
CapCut has a whole menu here of different ways that you can edit your sound, voiceover, sound
effects, to sound extra good. It's also got a decent library of in-built music and effects. So,
if I head here to sound effects and let's say I want the sound of wind because I'm riding a
bike through the wind. Here we have a library of sound effects we can use. To preview one, click
it. Then, to add one as usual, click the blue plus. And as you can see, that's added a second
audio layer to the timeline. And it's really as simple as that. Once you're happy with your
video edit, head up to export at the top right, give your video a name, choose a save location,
choose your export settings. I'd recommend copying these ones, then hit export. [Music]
How easy was that? That video edit took literally minutes compared to what would have been hours in
other programs. Which is why I recommend that even if you are a more experienced editor,
try CapCut and see if you like it. Because at the end of the day, one problem that all video
editors face is workflow time. Anytime you can reduce your workflow time or even cut it in half,
you get all of that time back to work on more important things like new edits, new projects,
all the more creative aspects of making videos. And it really does have a wide range
of intermediate to advanced templates that make adding graphics to your videos a breeze. Also,
why pay for costly software subscriptions when you don't have to? And I've really only
scratched the surface here of what CapCut can do. Inside my new CapCut editing masterclass,
I cover it in much more depth, including every single feature of the software and how you
can use it to become a confident and speedy video editor in just one day, regardless of
your current experience level. You can learn more about the course by following the link below. Now,
I do want to touch quickly on the immersive side of 360 video editing. While most people
use Insta360 cameras to reframe footage to a flat 16:9 perspective, there are some people
that want to edit their 360 videos to be viewed immersively in VR. Well, unfortunately, the free
options here are a bit limiting with both CapCut and the free version of DaVinci Resolve. You can
edit 2:1 equirectangular videos but only up to 4K resolution. So, if you're shooting in 5.7K or 8K,
then you're going to have to downscale your footage, which obviously isn't ideal. So,
the software I would recommend for VR editors is either Final Cut Pro, which is a great beginner
software for Apple users, or DaVinci Resolve Studio, which is a great investment and allows
you to export as high resolution as you like and has a ton of VR-compatible plugins. If you
have decided to use CapCut, then also feel free to join the brand new Facebook group I started,
which is a great place to interact with other CapCut users and get your questions answered. So,
I'll link that down below. CapCut does also have a mobile app. However, I would always recommend
editing on desktop over mobile since your export quality is always going to be far greater,
and the actual editing experience is much easier when you're working with a mouse and
a keyboard and a big screen compared to a tiny screen and having to swipe around
with your fingers. However, the mobile app is still good for quick and simple edits.
Now, if you want to see the end result of an entire YouTube video that I edited 100% inside of
CapCut using reframed Insta360 footage, then check out this video here. In it, you'll learn how to
achieve 10 epic effects with your Insta360 camera. So, this is one you definitely won't want to miss.