Hi, I have a reasonable basic knowledge of editing my Air3 & Mini 4 Pro and action camera footage but have no experience of 360 cameras.
With 360 drones now on the horizon thought I should first start looking into what I would need for editing, and propably get saving up !
I currently just use my Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 tablet as my laptop is āancientā by todays standards.
So my questions areā¦
Are there any Tablets out there that will comfortably deal with 360 vid editing
What spec of laptop would I need to edit 360 vid easily.
I currently use an Android system, is this adequate or should I shift to Windows ?.
Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated thanks.
Steve
Thanks for that, have been looking at the Insta 360 myself and its looking like I will really need to upgrade my editing hardware and software if I want to venture into the world of 360 Video.
Cheers, Steve
I have been using 360 cameras for several years now.
The insta 360 are my current favourites.
I edit the footage on my android phones without mu h problem. Cyrrently using a samsung s22 ultra and a samsung a34. No issues other than its fiddly on the small screen.
I also use windows laptops for editing.
My workhorse pc is a 12 year old intel i5 with an equally old graphics card and works well.
I have also tried editing on modern i5, i7 and n150 pcs. Using proxy videos, editing is not an issue. The difference is in the final render. The more powerful the machine the faster it will render the final output.
I did try the Adobe Premier plugin some years back, but my inexperience with premier as well as the clunkiness of the system mean that I now exclusively use the studio 360 software supplied by insta 360.
Thanks Dasa, very helpfull, am 76 and would prefer a ālargerā screen to work with but had thought a top spec laptop may be beyond my budget. Great to hear an i5 or i7 may fill my needs and be in my budget, do you think 512gb would work or do I need a 1Tb. Ps my current laptop in an i3 so prob not up to it though longer render time not an issue for me.
Cheers
Steve
I have the Insta 360 X3 and budget level Moto G54 phone. I have never tried to edit any sort of video on a phone, although I donāt doubt it would be perfectly up to the job.
Frankly, I love the fact that my phone is a little computer in my pocket that gives me access to all the Worldās delights wherever I am, and is also a stills/video camera and sound recorder, to hand whenever I need it, but I hate doing anything of any substance on that tiny little screen and keyboard. I have never done any sort of video editing (or photo editing beyond cropping and changing some sliders in SnapSpeed) on my phone.
The same goes for my Honor 10 pad. I have a specific use case for it, which it does superbly, but I wouldnāt sit down with it to do any serious amount of work, even though it may well be capable. I need a big screen, mouse and keyboard.
Like @Dasa, I have a PC for that (and gaming), and Iāve only ever edited Insta 360 footage in Insta360 Studio on the PC. And thatās usually just the first pass before moving on to Davinci Resolve for final production. The Insta360 Studio itself is great for what it does, itās just that, particularly from an audio perspective (Iām mostly recording band performances) the Insta is rather lacklustre and usually requires specialist attention.
Thatās possibly not too helpful, just my experience.
You can never have too much storage, and 360 videos are particularly large. I currently have a 128GB card in the Insta and that will hold about an hour of 360 video. Iād say start with 1TB because youāll lose a reasonable chunk to the operating system and software.
Thanks Earwig for info, agree about screen size, with me its a combination of age & eyesight although I do manage well with an 11inch tablet screen.
Good point re the system files taking up fair bit of room as well, had forgotton that !
Steve
I only have a 500GB main drive (SSD) on my main editing PC, but I have other disks to offload the footage on.
In my case, my finished video is transfered from my 500GB C drive onto my main data hard disk where all my photos / videos /documents etc are stored. This is my main storage medium. Its size will depend on how many videos/ photos you have. You can get external 1TB and 2 TB drives for Ā£50-Ā£80. If you have a pc rather than laptop, you can get internal disk. If you find you get hooked and fill up your drives, then you can add bigger drives as needed.
I also have another external hard disk that I copy all my raw footage onto in case I ever need it again.
I then delete all video and editing files from my C drive ready for the next edit.
I would caution you not to go over the top initially. After all, you will normally be exporting the video into a flat file that you would edit as normal on your existing equipment.
Thanks so much for all the info Dasa, feel I am a lot more prepared to make some decisions now. Would be happy to spend Ā£600-Ā£700 on a laptop and I now have a much better idea of what to look for.
I currently regularly transfer all my raw footage plus final edited versions onto micro SD cards to free up the internal memory and had not thought of using external disc drives as I didnāt realise they were that reasonably priced, great idea !.
Will also look at āproperā tower computers bearing in mind what you have said.
Very good point re exporting as a āflatā file that I can then further edit on existing equipment if need be, that had not occurred to me as an option and presume that is only required if the first round of editing needs further tweeking
Once again many thanks
Steve
SD card storage os ok for short term storage but not long term. If you leave it for some time (6 months to a year) and come to get your files, some will be corrupted.
The point about exporting to a flat file is one of how you use your oitput.
It is awkward to view 360 video. So I mostly use it to capture everything around and then selecrlt what you want to show as a normal video in the editing stage.
That sounds just how I would want to use 360 vid and point taken re sd cards, have already been looking at external hard drives, you have a convert ! thanks
Just as an aside, I thought Iād ask ChatGPT to build me a suitable desktop PC for video editing for under Ā£700. Iām an AI sceptic so I thought itād be fun.
I started with āsuitable for video editing with 12GB RAM minimum and 1TB hard driveā.
It suggested a refurbished HP mini PC from ebay for Ā£90. Although it did meet the 12GB/1TB requirement.
So I told it that I wanted a midi tower and dedicated graphics card and a monitor.
And it just went and found these components and added them to the mini PC.
After a bit more coaching, it finally came up with a workable list.
Summary Build Table & Estimated Pricing
Component
Model
Approx. UK Price*
Case
NZXT H6 Air Flow
Ā£83
PSU
Gigabyte P650G 650 W Gold
Ā£54
Motherboard
MSI MPG B550 Gaming Plus
Ā£95
CPU
AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
Ā£117
RAM
Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB
Ā£80
SSD
Crucial E100 1 TB
Ā£48
GPU
Nvidia RTX 3050
~Ā£170
Monitor
LG 24ā³ Full HD
Ā£95
Estimated Total
ā
~Ā£742
So itās blown the budget a bit and it seems to have sourced the GFX card from a US supplier, whereas it was previously a GeForce RTX3050 from amazon.co.uk
I suppose you could blame the operator, but I thought when my first instruction was ābuild me a PCā that it might have been a bit closer on the first go.
Anyway, Iām not trying to distract you, @Yorkylad, just trying an interesting experiment. I think Iāll stick to doing my own market research. but this would form a good starting point. At least it seems to have picked compatible components. Itāll be far easier for you to pick a complete PC anyway. You donāt really want to be messing with building it yourself.
Mac Mini at Ā£599 is a cracking starting point with an M 4 chip that will blow anything out the water at a compatible price` (but you will need external storage still)
Thanks for your hard work Earwig, you have been busy and an interesting AI experiment though I too would have second thoughts on the ebay offer .
Interesting list of components it has come up with though.
thanks
Although it did meet the 12GB/1TB requirement.
.