Here at VRFocus, our work takes us to gaming events all over the world and we are always keen to find new and simple ways to capture our surroundings wherever we go. We recently decided to experiment with capturing 3D footage and turned to Insta360, one of the most well-known companies manufacturing 360-degree cameras.
As the video editor here at VRFocus, I had no previous experience with any form of 360-degree editing and found the Insta360 process surprisingly easy, discovering that a basic 360 panorama can be created entirely through Adobe application Premiere Pro thanks to Insta360’s custom plugin. This article will outline how I achieved this using sample footage shot on Insta360 Pro 2 to experiment editing with.
What you will need:
- Adobe Premiere Pro
- Insta360 Stitcher App
- Insta360 footage
- YouTube access
Here are the steps.
- Head to insta360.com/download to download the latest version of Premiere Pro plugin. Enter the serial number provided to do so.
- Once downloaded, start the installation process and on the Installation Type section, make sure to keep the Premier Pro Plugin option box ticked and finish the installation.
- Now open Premiere Pro and create a new timeline. Head to Window and then Extensions below that, where you will find the newly imported stitching plugin, named Insta360Pro Importer. Click on this and the stitcher will open as a new window within Premiere Pro.
- Select Import and head to the location of the folder containing the unstitched files. Clicking on the folder itself will stitch together the individual videos into a completed 360 clip while they are being imported. You will then see the stitched clip in the project.
- Now you can edit the length of the stitched file like any other Premiere Pro clip. Then it’s time to render, by using the usual Premier Pro exporter. When doing so, go to Export Settings, then Video and then Basic Video Settings make sure to tick the one box stating the video is VR.
- Now upload the video to YouTube as usual, where you will be able to navigate around the 360-degree footage on both on desktop and within a VR headset.