﻿If you're looking for a 360 video editing and reframing tool that's both fast and easy to learn,
then the Insta360 mobile app is the ultimate solution
with its wide range of features and simple touch interface.
However, in the past, Insta360 software has had a big limitation
of being able to only edit one clip at a time.
This meant that you needed separate stitching and reframing software
and video editing software in order to edit videos with multiple clips.
Today, that changes.
In this video, I'll show you how to unlock the best
and most feature-rich hidden editing mode
of the Insta360 app, which will allow you to edit and reframe
as many video clips as you like into the same edit,
add music, text effects, and more.
At the end, I'll also share a bonus tip
for how to create cool shots like this and add them into your multi-clip edits.
Big thanks to Insta360 for sponsoring this video; however, as usual,
all opinions within the video are 100% my own.
Now, grab your phone, and let's edit.
Start by downloading or updating to the latest Insta360 app.
To connect to your camera, make sure it's on and within range of your phone.
Then, tap the yellow button and follow the prompts to connect the camera.
Once connected, you'll find the clips from your SD card in the album tab at the bottom.
You can also use the Insta360 Quick Reader if you want to keep your camera off and edit your shots
directly from the SD card without having to drain access phone battery or camera battery,
that would happen when editing wirelessly for a long time.
Now, you can edit directly from the SD card without downloading your clips first,
which will make the editing process a little bit slower
but will save a fair bit of space on your phone's memory.
For faster performance, though,
I'd recommend downloading the clips, which you can always remove at the end of the editing process.
To do that, tap the box at the top right and go through your SD card storage,
tapping all the clips you want to download.
Once you're done, tap "download," and it will give you the option to download the full clips
or trim them by removing the top and tail to reduce file sizes.
Now, the first way to edit your shots is individually,
which isn't what this video is about, but if you do want to do it, simply tap on a clip,
and you can edit here by adding keyframes and so on and exporting the shot individually using
the same workflow I'll show you in this video.
Now, to get started with your multi-clip edit, head over to the Stories Tab,
and the first and definitely simplest way to do this is by tapping Auto Edit.
Now, choose the clips that you want to include in the video, tap next, and then
it will suggest a few different lengths that the final video could end up as, so choose whichever one you prefer.
Now, AI will work its magic to edit your video using the shots you selected,
and the result will be fairly basic, not anything amazing or cinematic,
just the most basic edit and reframe of your clips.
Interestingly though, they do have multiple templates of these preset edits,
so if you don't like the first one, try another style. It might be a bit better;
it might be a bit worse. There's only one way to find out.
Another similar template-based editing process that's a bit better is the Flash Cut menu,
which is a small library of shorter preset edits
that are definitely more stylish. To preview a template, tap on it, and if you like it,
choose "use this theme." Now, down at the bottom, it will tell you how many clips it
needs to complete the edit, as well as roughly how long each clip will play for, so do your best to
choose clips that fit. Now, it will automatically try to figure out how to best edit your video,
and the results are decent, probably a bit better than before but still nowhere near the level of
what you'd get from editing manually yourself.
So, I'd recommend these Flash Cut templates only
for really fast edits where you don't need super high production value and you just want to share
something quick with friends and family.
What I would recommend, however,
is doing a fully customized edit where you have complete creative control.
To do that, from the Stories tab, tap "create a video."
Just like before, it will prompt you to choose
the shots you want to use in your edit, so tap on all the clips you want to use,
then tap "next" to go to the editor.
And don't worry, you can always add more clips in later by tapping this button.
Now, here's where the magic happens.
In the middle, you'll find some key controls
starting with play, pause, undo, and redo.
So if you do something in the editor like add a clip or an effect,
you can easily undo it or redo it.
Then there's the full-screen button for full-screen playback.
Up at the top, if you tap "HD," you'll find two different playback settings.
One is HD, aka high definition,
the other is "quick," and quick will be the better choice for slower phones
in order to get faster playback, and HD will be the better choice for faster and newer phones
in order to get higher quality playback.
At the bottom, you'll find the video timeline.
To scroll across it, simply swipe left or right and pinch to zoom in or out.
Doing this will be very, very helpful when editing lots of clips.
If you want to delete a clip, just tap it to select, then tap the trash can.
At the bottom, you'll find a few more options that will help you edit and rearrange your clips on the timeline.
Firstly, there's "split clip" if you want to slice one of your clips in two
to edit and reframe the two different sides of the clip in different ways.
There's "volume," and this refers to clip volume, not playback volume,
meaning that any changes you make here will be reflected on the loudness of your final exported video.
Next, if you go across to "ratio," this will set the aspect ratio of the entire timeline,
and make sure you set this before you start reframing,
since you want your shots to fit perfectly within the frame size you set.
So, pick 16:9 for YouTube, 1:1 for a square, 9:16 for a vertical video, and 2.35:1 if you're pretentious.
Just kidding, kind of.
The final two options are "copy" and "replace."
What "copy" does is it duplicates your clip if you want to reframe the same clip in two different ways,
and "replace" will replace any clip on the timeline with a different clip.
The order of the bottom menu is a bit disorganized; I do think some of them should go up here;
however, you'll still get used to it pretty quickly.
Now, let's talk about how to keyframe.
If you haven't touched a clip yet, you'll notice "reframe 360 clip" will appear.
You can either tap that or the "reframe" option down at the bottom.
Now, in the reframing menu, there are multiple ways you'll now be able to reframe your clips.
The first is "viewfinder," where it uses your phone's gyroscope
to allow you to reframe as you swivel the phone around.
While swiping the record button left and right will affect zoom.
Personally, though, I'm not a fan of this.
The next option is "deep track," where you long-press the screen to activate it, then draw a box around the subject.
Then the app will go ahead and track the subject throughout the clip, and once done,
it will keep you in the dead center of the frame.
Once you've deep-tracked a part of your clip,
you can also customize the field of view.
So let's say you want narrow, linear, wide, ultra-wide, or tiny planet.
This will apply these field of views to your tracked clip.
To delete it, tap the yellow portion, then delete.
The next keyframing option is "Auto,"
and what Auto does is it gives you four different viewpoints that you can choose from.
"Forward view" shows your point of view, aka what's in front of you. "Selfie view," well, you can guess.
Then there's what they call "out" and "in direction," and this refers to
the front lens and the back lens. So, you don't always have the lenses facing you perfectly;
sometimes they're on the side, or sometimes you're not in the shot at all.
So, these two perspectives stay perfectly fixed in the direction of either lens,
whereas "selfie view" will always point toward you,
no matter where you are in relation to the camera. These modes are okay, but I personally
wouldn't use them unless you're short on time. I've saved the best for last. The final keyframing
option is "keyframe," where you simply set your field of view, tap the yellow plus to
add a keyframe, move the timeline forward, and repeat the process. Reframing the perspective is
as simple as pinching to zoom and swiping to move the perspective left or right. If you're not happy
with the placement of your keyframes, for example, this movement here takes a bit too long, swipe the
timeline across so it hovers over the keyframe you want to delete, then the X will show up,
which you can tap to delete. Now, simply move to the new position and add the new keyframe there.
Another way of adjusting a keyframe, as opposed to deleting it completely, assuming you want to
keep it in the same place, is hovering over it on the timeline and adjusting the perspective,
then tapping "update keyframe." Now, you can keep keyframing to your heart's content, always
remembering to tap the plus icon every time you change the perspective to save that perspective
in place on the timeline. So, that's how you do basic keyframing. It really is very easy,
and you'll pick it up in no time. Personally, I've been reframing in many different ways over
the years, but this is the method I keep coming back to due to it being the fastest
and having the most amount of flexibility. The final keyframing option is "combination,"
which essentially gives you a combination of viewfinder, deep track, and field of view,
all of which can be used on the same clip. So, if you want to track one part, then keyframe the
next, placing manual keyframes as we did before, you've got the option to do that.
Here, you'll find "rotate," which gives you the ability to flip your horizon up to 360 degrees to create
a cool rotating effect. Just make sure you do this on the second keyframe and not the first.
If you ever want to start your reframing on a clip from scratch, tap the paintbrush icon on the left,
and here you'll have the option to clear either the keyframe data or all reframing
techniques you used on that clip. Next, let's talk about speed effects.
If you want to add either a hyperlapse or slow motion to your shot, tap "speed" at the bottom,
then choose whether you want it to be for the entire clip or just a segment of it. Now, drag
the slider across to choose how fast or slow you want your clip to be. Also, keep in mind that it
won't apply the motion blur effect until after you export. Now, the hyperlapse will be automatically
saved, as you can see with the yellow line on the timeline. This will save as a reference
later on that this is a hyperlapse clip. Another effect down here is multi-view.
If you want to create a picture-in-picture effect or display two different viewpoints
simultaneously, you can do so using the various modes of multi-view.
Now, let's talk about transitions. In between each of your clips, you'll notice a white box.
These are the transitions. Something else worth noting is when you move the timeline around,
your keyframes will reduce to small yellow dots to make accessing the transitions much easier.
If you tap on a transition, you can customize both the style and length.
At the bottom, you'll find a bunch of stylish presets, so choose whichever ones you like and drag the
slider to change the length of that transition. Now, going back down to the bottom menu, and there
are a few effects that can add that finishing touch to your video. The first one is "Filters."
If you don't really feel like color grading manually, there are a bunch of color presets
you can add with one tap. There's a face filter if you want to add filters to your face, which kind
of seems weird to me, but whatever, it's there if you want it. And then there's "adjust," which
is manual color correction. So, if you do want to manually change the brightness, contrast,
saturation, shadows, highlights, and all the usual stuff, you can do that here in this menu.
There's also an "apply to all" option if you want to add your color grade to every shot on your timeline.
So, you'll notice that the timeline has multiple layers. Let's go through them one by one,
starting with "music." If you tap on it, up will come a bunch of different themes. Tap on one,
and here you'll find a library of royalty-free tracks you can use with your edits.
You'll now see your chosen track appear on the music layer, where you can drag it left or right
to place it anywhere in your edit. You can adjust the volume of the music here, as well
as splitting a track in two and deleting one part if you only want to use a portion of the track.
The next layer is "text," where you can add basic text or an animated text template. So,
you can choose from a library of different kinds of text animations. There's definitely some decent
ones here that are worth checking out, all of which can be resized within your video with your
custom text of choice. You can get a decent amount of customization over these graphics as well,
so you can choose from different fonts, as well as colors and transparency. Just like the other
layers, you can adjust the length of your text layer by simply dragging the edges across.
Then from here, you can either add more, split it, copy it, replace it, or just delete it.
The third layer is "stickers." If you want to add an animated sticker to your video,
go for it. Then, the fourth and final layer is "effects," again, fun but kind of silly effects
that may make your video more engaging. One cool thing I like about the adjusting layers
process is when you're moving clips around on the timeline or changing lengths, your phone
will give you haptic feedback and vibrate when you're perfectly in line with the layers above.
So there we go; we've just done a multi-clip, multi-layer video edit, which isn't that much less
than what you could achieve with a desktop-based editing software with a lot more time and workflow
steps. Finally, to export, tap the export button up at the top right, choose custom settings,
and drag the sliders all the way to the right. Currently, with multi-clip edits,
the resolution maxes out at 1440p. However, a new feature I noticed with single-clip edits is
you can now export those one shot at a time at 4K. However, 1440p is still pretty good.
I'd recommend a bit rate of 25 to 50 if you're short on phone storage, but if you've got plenty,
make it 100. Finally, don't tap "color plus" or "remove grain," and hit export.
By the way, if you ever want to come back to one of your previous edits in the future,
tap "drafts," and here you'll find all of your previous edits with all the editing data that
was there before. Now, you may be familiar with the various shot lab effects and wondering if you
can integrate these into your multi-clip edits. The short answer is no, but it seems that one or
two (I've only found one so far) can, in fact, be added, and that effect is Sky Swap. To do it,
open up the Sky Swap effect, apply the effect as you normally would, then when exporting the
effect, instead of "export," choose "create a story." This will create a brand new timeline
just like the one we were using before with the Sky Swap effect as the first clip on the
timeline. So from here, you can reframe your skies for perfect using the same methods from
earlier or add more clips to the timeline to combine with the Sky Swap shot.
Unfortunately though, it seems that you can only use one Sky Swap effect per video right now. I am, though,
expecting this to change in the future. Insta360 has improved the mobile app and desktop software
a fair bit over the years, and I don't see this stopping. So you can definitely expect some more
cool and updated features coming over the next few years. That said, something I'm expecting,
and I know many are hoping to see, is that the desktop and mobile experiences become one, and
all the features from the mobile app can be done on desktop and vice versa. I'll make an updated
version of this video when that happens, so be sure to subscribe if you want to see that video.
If you're a new content creator making 360 videos for either personal or professional use,
the editing process is really only a small part of the overall workflow you'll need to master in
order to create the viral-worthy reframed 360 videos you are hoping for. There are
many other important steps that will ultimately determine the success or failure of your content,
which is why I made my new 360 video 101 course to fill in all the knowledge gaps and take you
from a complete beginner to a 360 video pro in just seven days. So if that's something
you'd find valuable, then follow the link below to learn more about 360 video 101.
Next, if you also want to master the Insta360 desktop software,
which is also completely free for Insta360 users, then check out this video here to get
my full breakdown of how to use Insta360 Studio to edit and reframe your 360 videos like a pro.