Today
It is a big day for cinematic VR filmmakers.
Insta360 Titan, after the official launch announcement four months
ago, finally start to ship.
If you pre-order your Titan, you should have it in your hand soon.
I have been very lucky selected as one of the
few creators that participate in the Titan beta program and
have been shooting with the Titan beta unit for almost three months.
I want to give you an unbiased review of the Insta360 Titan immediately, so you can
decide if you should upgrade your current camera setup to Titan or
wait on the next cinematic VR camera.
If you can’t wait to watch the full video, I can tell you now that I enjoy
the Titan so much that I decide to purchase the Titan official unit
for my production company.
I provided some 10K3D and 11K2D Lighting in the Bottle festival footage from Michael and
some official low light footage for you to view in Crystal View on Oculus Go.
After you watch those in your VR headset, let's dive right in the review.
Hey, what’s up everybody, it is your Boi Hugh here from CreatorUp, the
YouTube channel that dedicated to beginner and professional VR
Filmmakers.
If you want to learn all the latest filmmaking techniques
in VR360 and VR180, don’t forget to subscribe and hit the notification
bell.
Before I start, I want to say no one sponsors this video.
Most of my videos are not sponsored, so I can give unbiased
reviews on all the VR cameras.
I am not afraid to offend camera manufacturers and point out the problems
I always look after my viewers and put my viewers, that’s you, first.
Same goes with this review.
Insta360 Titan, just like any other cameras have its strong points and its weakness,
you need to understand what it does to your production
and what it means to your POST workflow.
11K 3D 360 footage is very nice, but can you even
handle it with your current machine, that is something you should find
out before you even consider purchasing it.
Spec.
I already made 2 initial review videos right here.
I will highly recommend you to go check it out to learn
about the spec of this breast.
Basically, it uses 8 MFT sensors instead of small sensors like
the Insta360 Pro 2.
With big sensors and 8 big high-quality lenses -
you can capture up to 10K 3D or 11K 2D 360 footage with fantastic image quality, low
noise, and low compression artifacts.
If you don’t understand why this is a huge deal for professional VR filmmakers, I will
suggest you to go check out VR denoiser tutorial right here and understand sensor noises and
compression artifacts and why they are bad for you and end up causing you more money
to fix in POST.
One thing no one mentioned but hidden in the spec somewhere is that simultaneous live-streaming
and recording is supported in 8K 3D.
Insta360 Pro 2 only supports Livestream and recording in 8K monoscopic.
Lot's of the live stream jobs, besides streaming in 4K 2D or 3D on Facebook or YouTube, lots
of my clients require archive a high-quality stereoscopic version for later post-production
edit for a recap video.
And they want that in 3D.
Now it is possible to do it all in one instead of renting extra cameras.
Also, Titan supports 8-bit 8K 3D in 50fps - to capture slow motion without sacrifice
resolution.
This keeps your whole production in 8K 3D instead of dropping your final render to 6K
3D like using Insta360 Pro 2.
Slow motion capture is more often than you think.
Also with 50fps, it will help avoid flickers when you film in other countries like in Europe.
I know, it is not 60fps.
But it is close enough, and it looks good when slow it down.
I shoot many sports VR video, and it is nice not to have to choose between frame rate and
resolution all the time.
One of the reasons why I decide to purchase the Titan is the 10-bit color
depth.
Titan is the ONLY ALL-IN-ONE VR camera that can do 10-bit color
in Video Capture.
Why is this a bid deal?
Watch this explain video and you will know why.
Don’t just listen to me, my friend Mark Lambert, who shot with the
Titan can tell you all about why he enjoys the Titan image quality.
He and his daughter are actually on the Titan official press release.
Just try to respect his time and don’t blow up his inbox.
In term of camera control and usability, Titan is a lot like Insta360
Pro 2.
In fact, the Titan app looks almost identical to the Pro 2
camera app.
If you are familiar with Pro or Pro 2, there are almost 0
learn curve for learning how to operate the Titan - which I
enjoy.
Essential features like FlowState Stabilization, Farsight camera
control are all part of the Titan package.
The Farsight work extremely well with the Titan, better than my Insta360
Pro 2, even on my Beta unit.
Insta360 learn from their old mistakes and improve in
every way in the design of the Titan.
Low light performance is another welcome feature introduced in Titan
- Both in Photo and Video.
Low light image is clear and better looking that any ALL-IN-ONE VR camera I had
used.
Let’s talk about Stitching and parallax.
Big sensors camera will have parallax issues.
If you used Z Cam V1 Pro, you know that already.
Especially for Stereoscopic production.
I will suggest pushing your talents further away from the camera than
your usual production using cameras like the Insta360 Pro 2.
For monoscopic, thanks to the 200 degrees improved giant fisheye lenses, you get decent
overlap between lenses - so you can always fix any stitching issues with Mistika VR in
post.
If you follow this channel, you know this workflow well.
I will provide my Titan template for Mistika VR download below.
And try it out yourself.
Okay, now let’s get real here.
Do you really need 11K 360 footage?
To me personally, this is not realistic.
As some of you might know already, I recently upgrade my entire pipeline
to try to handle 11K Titan footage with the Nvidia Titan RTX Graphic
cards.
I can tell you my machine form Maingear is a breast - but
it is not cheap.
Not only you need to spend the money on purchasing
the Titan, or rent the Titan for most of the production, you also need
to make sure your editing machine can handle Titan footage.
Right now, Adobe Premiere CAN NOT even create an 11K sequence to edit 11K footage.
This is a huge bottleneck.
My workaround is to use Adobe After Effects as my editing
software.
But not everyone is comfortable with After Effects.
You can certainly use Davinci Resolve - but Resolve
does not have a streamlined workflow to deal with 3D Stereoscopic 360
footage just yet.
Another option will be Nuke, but that is very unrealistic
for any small production firm.
Then the next question is displaying 11K video footage.
Beside foveation technology, there is NO popular
headset can see 6K footages, let alone 11K.
So it means the majority of the people can not even see the
beautiful 11K footage you shot unless they use technology like Visbit
or the Insta360 very own crystal view.
But can Crystal View deliver true 11K in headset like Oculus Go or Oculus
Quest - 2 of the most popular VR headset today?
The answer is sadly NO.
You can watch this video for more information.
Don't get me wrong, the Titan footage in Crystal View on Oculus Go looks absolutely amazing
even it is not true 10K 3D or 11K.
The foveation tracking of Crystal view is slightly delayed and has a circle Screen door
effect.
It does make me a little bit dizzy.
You can watch up to, theoretically, 12K resolution 360 video using
VR player like Visbit with headsets like Pico G2 4K or Vive Focus - but
not many people, in the US at least, own those headsets.
I have it and I can tell you it looks absolutely amazing
without delay and screen door effects.
But you simply just can not see it b/c you don’t have the headset.
I will also have the Skyworth 8K headset in 2 weeks - a headset that can play natively
8K video.
So it will be really interesting to see if it works with my Titan footage.
So don’t forget to subscribe if you want to watch that video.
If your goal is NOT 11K, but better looking 8K 3D 360 video, especially
for low light production, then Titan is a great choice.
It shoots beautiful 10-bit video in HEVC - which allow
you to really color grade in post without banding issue or noise issue.
I am excited to show you more of my personal Titan production soon
- so stay tuned.
One other thing I want to be absolutely real to you, don’t rely on
FlowState stabilization.
It is nice to have FlowState so your moving footage look smooth without a gimbal - BUT,
this is a huge BUT so pay close attention: you
can NOT really use FlowState stabilization if you want flawless
360 footage without any stitching error.
Base on lots of my experience, the Insta360 Stitcher never
get a perfect stitching result, especially the camera is on the
move, with pattern background like a fence, and close objects are crossing the stitch
line.
So you need to fix it in Mistika VR.
But Mistika VR does not read FlowSate stabilization data, just yet.
So it won’t produce stabilized footage if you want to fix all the stitching issues.
If you own the Insta360 Pro 2 camera, you will know exactly what I am talking about.
There is currently no solution to this.
If we do, I will be the first one to tell you.
So just don’t bank on stabilization as your reason to purchase Titan.
As you see right here, to truly achieve stable movement with perfect
stitched Titan footage, you need professional rover with an enhanced
physical gimbal that can hold the weight of the Insta360 Titan - which
is close to 10 pounds (or 5KG) with battery.
To my knowledge, the only one right now works with Titan is the Motion
Impossible M Pro - an upgraded version of my old rover - Mantis.
I will do a review of the M Pro - a motion-control rover system with the
Insta360 Titan soon, so stay tuned for that video.
It is going to be a really good one and answer lots of your questions.
Titan still uses SD cards for the storage solution.
It uses 9 regular SD cards.
So it is 9 times of the risk if any of your SD cards go wrong.
SSD is still not supported like the Old Insta360 Pro - which is one of my favorite features.
So my advice is to invest in good SD cards and test all of them before your filming job.
Corrupted SD card is the most common enemy in any 360 productions.
I hope you enjoy this unbiased initial review of the Insta360 Titan.
The bottom line is, figure out your production requirements and your
needs.
If you are going to shoot a lot of tight space in 3D, like
inside of a car for car commercials, Titan prob is not the right
choice.
If you hope to upgrade to 11K production, I don’t think the
POST pipeline and the end delivery platform are there yet.
It will be kinda waste of money to get Titan for that
reason alone.
But if you are looking for 10 bit 8K 3D 360 production, especially in
challenging lighting environment with slow-motion involved, Titan is an excellent camera for
that.
And your Colorists will really thank you for that.
Clearer 8K video will also help with POST processing like stabilization and roto tracking
with Mocha Pro - make your CG artists happy as well.
I will have more tutorials and follow up reviews of the Titan coming
soon when I have my production unit which is tomorrow according to UPS.
Download the Insta360 Titan sample footage below and check it out yourself.
My friend Michale did a great job in capturing LIB so I want to give him a shoutout.
And comment below and tell me what you think.
Will you upgrade to Titan or happy with what you have right now.
Don’t forget to give this video a thumb up if you enjoy it.
If you are not a professional VR filmmaker and will never find the
needs for such an expensive camera, I still very appreciated you stick
around and willing to learn more.
Even you are just a casual 360 video creator, and happy with your Insta360 ONE
X or GoPro Fusion, your boy Hugh will still encourage you to learn more
about how the professionals do thing - to home your skill
and improve your video quality using some of the tips and tricks
I am going to show you in the upcoming series - 360VR editing, from
beginner to master.
Knowledge is power, by watching this video, it makes you a better 360
content creator than anyone else who do not watch this.
Okay, I think I need some sleep now.
I just got back from a filming job in Washington DC and worked overnight
on this review video so you can be the first one to know the in and out
of Titan.
So, like, share and I will see you in the next video.
VR creator level up on CreatorUp.