Hey guys, it’s Gaba VR, and this time I show you the simplest method ever to track objects in 360 videos.
Why is it important?
Because many of us shoots in 360 just to get some freedom during editing to create „traditional”, reframed videos.
And of course, in many cases there are some highlighted objects, animals, people or some actions we want to follow.
And sometimes this can be a little bit time-consuming during editing.
Almost 4 years ago I already posted a video about it, showing you the method, I used then,
which you can check out in the right top corner.
The point is that you need to do a lot of keyframing, and use a professional video editor with a subscription.
But this time I will use a free desktop app with two different techniques,
showing you how you can combine them for the best result.
The first one is a very user-friendly keyframing solution,
and the other one is powered by artificial intelligence, AI, which is one of the most effective tools I’ve ever met.
It’s even better than the automatic tracking in After Effects.
So let's jump into it!
I will show you how to create this short scene, shot with ONE X2, tracking these colorful lamps above the street.
Insta360 Studio is really great video editor for 360 videos.
It was updated many times during the years,
and it’s good to know that the developers are working on it to make this app even better and better.
It has a lot of smart functions, while it’s still very easy to use.
So first I import my video in the editor.
Insta360 ONE X2 creates two video files, which are actually comes from each lens of the camera.
But during editing it’s enough to import only one of them, and the software will stitch the full 360 video for us automatically.
After importing and a short processing we can see this 360 video.
We have a few options on the right side to finetune everything,
among others in terms of stabilization, stitching and colors.
And then we can start editing. First, I will show you how you can work with the keyframes.
I just simply click on this plus button to add the first one.
A keyframe records several parameters at the same time.
First it contains the projection mode, which can be fisheye, crystal ball, tiny planet or natural view.
This time I keep the default fisheye mode.
And of course, this keyframe records the angles, the field-of-view and the so-called distortion control.
You can modify these parameters one-by-one,
but the simplest method is to just simply hovering the mouse over the video
and change everything by dragging the image or zooming in and out with the scroll wheel.
Then we can set up the view and add further keyframes with the plus button as many times it's needed.
And we can also play around with the characteristics of the transitions between two keyframes.
But in such a case, I think the default setting is fine.
As you can see, it’s a fast and easy way to track anything in the video.
And instead of keyframing five or six different parameters,
we can simply solve this problem with only one keyframe at once.
But let’s see what about AI. In certain cases, it leads to an even faster result.
I delete these keyframes and start it over.
Remember, I just wanted to track those lamps over the street,
so this time I click on Deep Track and select them.
Then I click on “Start tracking”.
You can see in real time, how the tracking is going on.
And of course, you can stop tracking anytime, if you feel like it covered enough frames.
Now, let’s see the result.
It’s really smooth, continuously tracking the object,
moving the virtual camera in the 360 space in the right direction all along the edited period.
And what about the field-of-view during Deep Track?
You can simply select the tracked area
and change the parameters with zooming in and out with the scroll wheel
or clicking on each of them and set them up individually.
And there’s a trick how you can mix Deep Track with keyframes.
Basically you cannot apply a keyframe on a Deep Tracked area,
but before and after these tracked sequences, you can add keyframes to play around with the camera movements.
And this way you can combine normal projection with little planet view or any other further settings.
And it depends on your preferences, but now you can select your output format.
I say it depends on you, because this can be the first step, if that’s what you want,
but you can modify the aspect ratio anytime, even after editing.
So here you can change the basic horizontal 16:9 aspect ratio to vertical, 1:1, 4:3 or a cinematic version.
Now all we have to do is set up the start and end locators as the beginning and the end of the video, and click on export.
Here we can go up with the bitrate until 200 and select the best codec for us.
And that’s all. We’re done with tracking our object simply and fast.
I shot this sample video with my brand new Insta360 ONE X2,
and if you’re interested about the details, why I finally switched to this camera from my old ONE X,
check out my previous video in the right top corner.
But the good news is that you can use Insta360 Studio with any other 360 videos, even shot with other 360 cameras.
In such a case Insta360 Studio won’t stitch it for you,
but if you stitch it beforehand, you can import and edit any spherical 360 videos.
So I hope you will find my tips useful, whatever camera you use to shoot in 360,
and if you do, please thumbs up!
And for further 360 contents and tutorials, subscribe to my channel, and see you next time.
you