Have you ever wanted to take a picture of something but weren’t sure if it was allowed or felt unsure if people would be offended if they saw you point your camera at them? If so, one way around this is by taking pictures using a 360° camera like the Insta360 ONE X2.
Since the camera can take a picture of everything around you, you can point the camera at a 90° angle or 180° away from the object you want to take a picture of. Then, in post editing, just drag the picture around to face the object of interest and click the snapshot button to export a regular, flat picture. By pointing your camera away and looking away from your object of interest, no one would know that you’re actually taking a picture of something else.
This is my usual workflow when filming and editing 360 videos using the Insta360 ONE X2/X3 and Corel VideoStudio Pro.
Hold or Mount the Camera
Selfie Stick in Hand
When I’m walking, I like to hold the selfie stick in my left (or right) hand with the stick extended such that the camera lens is at face height. Optionally, the point of interest could be behind me. In post-production reframing, I could rotate the view to sometimes face me and sometimes face some other direction.
Selfie Stick on Tripod
In certain situations, I’ll turn the selfie stick into a tripod and place it on the floor/ground or on a table.
Chest Mount (Body Cam)
When I don’t want to hold the camera for a long time or when I don’t want people to know that I’m filming them, e.g. when boarding an airplane, when standing in a subway car or bus, when buying something, etc, I’ll mount my camera to my chest.
This mode lets you push the shutter button to do two things at once
Turn on the camera and start recording
Turn off the camera and stop recording
While traveling, this can be really handy since you won’t have to waste time clicking two different buttons and waiting in between.
The recording mode will be the last mode used. If you switched the mode to timelapse and then turned off the camera, then the shutter button will turn on the camera and start recording in timelapse mode, not regular video mode.
Enable Standard Video Mode
This mode is for regular video shooting. Other modes are HDR, Timelapse, Timeshift and Bullet Time. HDR is only good for when you are filming on a tripod and not moving.
Disable Prompt Sound
By default, when you turn on and off the camera or start and stop recording, you will hear an annoying beep. Disable this “Prompt Sound”. To know whether the camera is on, off, or recording, just look at the light status.
Light off = camera off
Light solid blue = camera on
Light slowly flashing red = filming in progress
Press The Shutter Button to Start Filming
Fingerprints on the lenses can result it blurry videos. Always wipe the lenses with a clean lens cloth before filming.
When you are out and about traveling and you want to start filming, just press the shutter button once. Since Quick Capture will be enabled, you won’t need to turn the camera on first. Note that there is a bit of a delay before the camera actually starts recording.
Press The Shutter Button to Stop Filming
When you are done filming, just press the shutter button once again. Since Quick Capture will be enabled, you won’t need to turn the camera off as it will turn off automatically (and save battery).
Note: The latest Windows version of the Insta360 Studio app is version 4.3.0, which came out on 2022-05-24. The previous version is 4.2.2. I have found version 4.3.0 to have significant performance issues so I have reverted back to version 4.2.2 which performs just fine. See Insta360 Studio versions
Connect a USB cable between the camera and your computer. On Windows, it auto-detects the camera as an external drive. You can then copy and paste the .insv files. Note that each video contains 3 .insv files. For example, below there are actually only 2 videos.
Note that transferring video files from the Insta360 ONE X2 to your computer can be really slow. For example, when I transfer files from the Insta360 ONE X2 to my laptop over USB C, it transfers at about 30 MB/s.
Video files are huge. You may not have enough space on your laptop to store video files. And even if you did, you should have a backup, e.g. on an external SSD. I like the SanDisk Extreme 1TB Portable External SSD Flash Storage Drive, which claims to have a data transfer rate of up to 1050MB/s.
Import the .insv Files into Insta360 Studio
In the left pane, you will see thumbnails for all uploaded videos. .insv files are unstitched 360-degree files that can only be opened in the Insta360 Studio or mobile app.
Reframe the 360-Degree Video
In the right panel, you will have many options. Enable FlowState Stabilization so that the video isn’t jerky. If you want the video view to always face one direction (front), then enable Direction Lock.
At the top, you’ll see two icons. One for edit mode and one for view mode. Ensure edit mode is on. In the video preview window, you’ll see an option to change the video aspect ratio. The most common is 16:9, e.g. for TVs and YouTube.
To reframe the 360 video, you’ll need to first add keyframes at each timestamp where you want to change the angle and lens of the video. Drag the white vertical playback bar to the very beginning of the timeline and click the + icon.
This will add a yellow circle at that timestamp, indicating that a keyframe is there. Also, the + icon turns into an x icon in case you want to delete that keyframe. Clicking on the keyframe shows options where you can choose the lens type, e.g. fisheye, etc. Choose “Natural View”. Then, drag the video preview in any direction you want so that the video beginning at that keyframe will point in that direction.
When you click “Natural View”, the Field of View (FOV) value will change to the default value of 90 degrees.
Following is what the FOV looks like at 90 degrees.
You can increase the field of view (like zooming out) and decrease the field of view (like zooming in). Since the ONE X2 is a 360 camera with two 180-degree lenses, you can increase the FOV to a max of 180 degrees (actually 179 degrees). You’ll end up getting a circle like the one below.
The smallest FOV is 1 degree, which results in such a zoomed-in view that is just blurry, like below.
Drag the playback bar to another timestamp and repeat the steps above. You will see a yellow line connecting the two keyframes.
Clicking on the yellow line will allow you to choose a transition between the two keyframes. “Smooth Dissolve” is a good transition. If you choose “None”, for example, and the camera angle is facing the sky in keyframe 1 and facing the ground in keyframe 2, then at the beginning of keyframe 2, the video will jump from facing the sky to facing the ground. With the “Smooth Dissolve” transition, the video will transition slowly from facing the sky to the ground.
Click the lightning icon to enable Timeshift.
Then drag in the timeline where you want the timeshift to occur and choose a speed from slowing down at 1/4x speed to speeding up to 64x speed. Sections that are timelapses will have their audio muted.
Note: Creating a timelapse in a video editing tool like Corel VideoStudio is easier and comes with more options. Also, it preserves the audio.
When you are done adding keyframes, setting camera angles, and adding timeshifts, adjust the picture color, if necessary. Click the media processing icon and compare the color when Color Plus or AquaVision 2.0 is enabled.
Below, you can see the difference in color between the default color and with Color Plus or AquaVision 2.0 enabled.
Default colorColor Plus enabledAquaVision 2.0 enabled
The AquaVision 2.0 setting is for taking underwater pictures. It produces a brighter picture. The Color Plus setting produces vivid, more saturated colors. It especially helps improve skin tone when the subject is in a shade.
Note: Adjusting color in Corel VideoStudio is better as you can tweak the color settings.
When you’re done adjusting for color, click the yellow Export button on the right of the timeline.
This will give you many options. Choose “Reframed Video” and leave the default as H.264. If you choose H.265, the video won’t open in certain programs like Corel VideoStudio Pro.
When exporting videos in the Insta360 Studio app, I tested various bitrate settings from 1 mbps to 200 mbps (max). I saw no difference in quality between 25 mbps and 200 mbps. I also did not see a difference in file size and quality between h.264 and h.265. So, I choose h.264 at 25 mbps.
Then, click the Start Export button.
Tweak video color in Corel VideoStudio
In VideoStudio 2018 Pro/Ultimate, double-click on a video clip in the timeline. In the Correction tab, slide the Gamma slider to the right to lighten the video. This may throw the white balance off. To fix the white balance, check its checkbox, click “Pick Color,” and click on a pixel in the video that should be pure white, e.g. a white napkin.
In VideoStudio 2018 Pro/Ultimate, double-click on a video clip in the timeline. In the Color tab, choose Tone Curve and drag the curve. Usually, dragging towards the top left produces a brighter picture.
Edit video in Corel VideoStudio 2022
Note: Corel VideoStudio 2018 used to work fine but, at least for me, it now hangs even after installing and running it on a brand new computer. Corel VideoStudio 2022, however, works fine.
This step assumes you have already reframed and exported the videos.
Under Settings, Smart Proxy Manager, ensure “Enable Smart Proxy” is checked. This will cause VideoStudio to create a small proxy video for videos that are large. This will help with video editing performance.
In the Edit tab, create a project, e.g. Korea, and drag all assets to it (photos, videos, audio, etc).
If the assets are in the order you want them inserted in the timeline, then select multiple assets, right-click, and choose “Insert To > Video Track”. This will make it quick and easy to insert multiple assets at once.
Go to Settings > Smart Proxy Manager > Smart Proxy Queue Manager. You may see a window like the one below. If you see video files in the list, that means VideoStudio is in the process of creating proxy video files. When it’s done, the list will be empty. Until it’s done, leave VideoStudio alone since editing before it’s done could be slow and possibly crash the program.
If you’ve added a song to the Music track, and you want to lower the volume of the song for a section of a video clip, e.g. when someone is talking, then do the following:
Click the sound mixer icon
Then tracks will change like below.
The white line is the audio volume line. Notice how on the music track, the volume line goes down at one point and then up at another. This was done to lower the volume of the song during that time range only. To lower the volume, move the playback marker to the point along the orange line where you want to change the volume. Then, in the sound mixer, change the dB value for the track you want to change the volume of. In the screenshot below. the music track volume was lowered to -20 dB,
VideoStudio will gradually change the volume from one point to another. If you want the volume to change immediately, then you’ll need to add another marker next to the first one.
If you want to speed up a video clip, right-click on the clip and choose Speed > Speed/Time-lapse…
This will open a dialog like the one below. Change the duration of the new clip, e.g. from 18 seconds to 8 seconds, and then click the Preview button. If the preview looks good, click OK to apply the timelapse.
Before you export the video from Corel VideoStudio, note that the input video clips exported video from Insta360 Studio have 29.97 frames (still images) per second (fps).
Corel VideoStudio may default to choosing export settings of 30p (30 fps). If you choose this setting, the audio will not be in sync with the video.
Corel VideoStudio doesn’t have a preset for 29.97p (29.94 fps).
So, you’ll need to create your own profile preset and choose a frame rate of 29.97 fps.
Workflow Summary
Take 360 videos
Transfer videos to SanDisk external SSD drive
Open 360 videos in Insta360 Studio. 360 videos have huge file sizes.
Take snapshots, if going to make video of pics.
Convert them to natural view mp4s which are much smaller. For each video,
Enable ColorPlus, if necessary
Set start and end positions, if necessary
At start position, set the field of view (FOV) to “Natural View”
Add additional FOV points to change viewing angle, as necessary
Click the Export button, chooses “Reframed Video”, set bitrate to 25 Mbps (25000 kbps), h.264 (not h.265), and click “Add to Queue”
When done editing each video, click “Export All”
When the batch of 360 videos has been converted to mp4s, select them all in Insta360 Studio, right-click, and select “Delete Original File” to delete the large 360 videos.
Using a content delivery network (CDN) to host website assets such as images is a well-known best practice. But, most CDNs just host these files and serve them from their nearest edge location. Developers still need to crop, resize, and optimize images. Then you have non-technical people, e.g. some blog authors or PR people, who innocently upload an image to a site like WordPress and scale it down in size (width / height) without realizing that the image file size is still huge! Fortunately, there are image-specific CDNs that will host and optimize images for you. Below are some features of imagekit.io. I chose this image CDN because I like it so far and it’s free for up to 20 GB of bandwidth per month.
Note:web.dev, which is a Google Developers site, also encourages the use of an image CDN to host images.
Following are some features of ImageKit.io.
Automatic Image Optimization & Fast (< 50 ms) Display Time
Let’s say you have a very large image that is > 1 MB in size. This, of course, is way too large to serve as is. If you don’t know how to optimize images or just don’t feel like doing it, that’s fine because imagekit.io will do it for you. To test this, I uploaded a 1.7 MB, 1800x1232px PNG image of some grass with a transparent background to my Media Library in imagekit.io. The library shows a thumbnail of the image, the file size, and dimensions. Hovering over the image lets you copy the image URL.
Below is the imagekit-optimized image embedded in this web page.
In Google Chrome, the Network tab of the Inspector reveals that the delivered image was
resized from 1800 px wide to 660 px wide
converted from PNG to webp
optimized from 1.7 MB down to 74.5 kB
I didn’t even have to open Photoshop, ImageOptim or some other image editor / optimizer!
This feature would definitely improve your website’s Lighthouse and PageSpeed scores.
Now, you might be wondering about image optimization processing time since images are optimized on demand. According to imagekit.io, images are displayed in less than 50 milliseconds globally and they have 6 processing regions backed by AWS CloudFront CDN. As you can see in the screenshot above, the Time column shows a delivery time of 40 ms.
Note: When I embedded the image in this WordPress page, WordPress copied the image and hosted it itself so the URL changed from
This feature lets you deliver the smallest file based on the image content & device with optimal format selection. For example, the image above was uploaded to imagekit.io as a PNG but when I loaded it in this page in Google Chrome, imagekit.io detected that I was using Chrome and delivered a webp-formatted image. If I were using Safari, the delivered image would not be in webp format since Safari doesn’t support webp.
If an image has transparency, then imagekit.io will only convert it to a format that supports transparency, i.e. png, webp, avif. If a PNG image does not contain any transparency, then it becomes a candidate for a JPEG. If a PNG file without transparency is smaller in file size than a JPG, then imagekit.io will still deliver a PNG. Learn more
No need to move images
If you have a ton of website images on your web server, AWS S3 or elsewhere, there’s no need to move the images to imagekit.io. You can specify the existing location of the images as an origin in imagekit.io. Learn more
URL-based Image Transformations
This feature allows you to edit an image just by changing the URL a bit. For example, the following URLs are to the same source image but the delivered image sizes or compression quality are different.
The dpr is useful for devices like the iPhone or high-end Android devices. A dpr value of 2 is the equivalent of a 2x image (retina). In the examples below, since the dpr is set to 2, then the output image width is actually 2x (twice) the width specified in the URL.
“dpr-2” means “device pixel ratio = 2”
Change image compression quality
You can also change the image quality by simply changing the q value. This is a handy feature for people who have a picky Director of Brand and Creative who often complains that images are blurry or pixelated. Instead of resaving the image at a higher quality and republishing the image, you can just change a parameter in the image URL.
There are many more transformations including width, height, aspect ratio, crop, quality, format, blue, grayscale, progressive image, trim edges, border, rotate, radius, etc. Learn more
Digital Asset Management
With imagekit.io, you get a media library where you can upload, organize and distribute image assets. You can create folders and even paste an image to upload it rather than browser for it. You can easily upload entire folders as well. Right-clicking on an image thumbnail shows many image options.
You can easily browse images as well.
Copy ready-to-use URLs
If you need to share an image with someone, e.g. by email, chat, etc, or if you need to insert an image in a blog post or a landing page, you can easily get an optimized image URL. Just upload (or paste) an image into imagekit.io, then click on the image thumbnail to get the optimized image URL.
Search for images
Easily find an image by keyword and many other filters.
Performance Monitoring
You can add URLs that you want imagekit.io to monitor for performance. ImageKit.io will crawl all images at the URL and determine if any images could be optimized and how much savings could be achieved. For example, in the screenshot below, the home page of pepperfry.com could save 1.2 MB. If you click the Fix it link, you will see a detailed report of which images could be optimized and in what way.
One of my fence posts on a rental property was leaning over due to the previous owner not securing it correctly in the ground. To make matters worse, I use the fence post to secure a ratchet strap attached to one of 4 corners of a sun shade. Since I didn’t feel like redoing the fence post, and since the back of my property is empty, government land beside a slough, I decided to just pull the fence post back into position using a ratchet strap. It was quick and easy and worked perfectly.
If you don’t feel like redoing a leaning fence post or need a temporary fix, here’s what you can do.
Chicken breast meat is packed with protein and very little fat. But, it often comes out dry after baking. Here’s a recipe that is quick to cook and results in a more tasty, tender meat.
Ingredients
Chicken breast
1.5 tsp salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp ground mustard
1 tsp smoked paprika
¼ tsp cayenne pepper
1 tbs canola oil or olive oil
Instructions
Mix all spices in a single spice dispenser
Cut up the chicken breast into 1 inch wide strips
In a bowl, rub olive oil over the chicken strips and sprinkle on the seasoning. Mix with hands to ensure complete coverage.
Set air fryer to a target thermometer temperature of 165 F.
Insert thermometer such that tip is at center of thickest part of one chicken strips
When air fryer has preheated, put all strips in
When half way done, turn strips over
When target temperature reached, remove legs and let stand for 5 minutes
Let’s say you want to install a bath exhaust fan in a bathroom that doesn’t have one. You’ll need to cut the wall or ceiling where the fan will go and you’ll also likely need to make holes in the wall or ceiling to run electrical wiring.
In the photo above, you can see that I made two types of openings:
Circular opening
Square opening
Making a Circular Opening
For the circular opening, I just used a hole saw attached to a drill. The benefit of this is it creates a clean, perfectly circular hole and you can reuse the cut drywall later to patch the hole. This type of hole can be made anywhere – it doesn’t need to be near or over a stud or joist.
Patching a Circular Opening
To patch a circular opening, I use a 1″x3″ piece of furring strip wood.
Partially drill a long screw in the middle of a piece of furring strip that is about 3 inches longer than the diameter of the hole. Insert the wood into the hole as pictured below. Then, drill 2 screws while pulling the long center screw so that the wood doesn’t move around. Now you’ve created a backing for the drywall to be screwed into.
Remove the center screw and screw the drywall into the wood.
Making a Square Opening
For the square opening, I like to use a reciprocating saw – specifically, the Milwaukee 12V mini cordless saw because it’s small and lightweight. Use a stud finder to find the studs or joists and draw an outline of the square you want to make such that the square (or rectangle) goes to each stud or joist. Then, try to make a clean rectangular cut so that you can reuse the drywall.
UPDATE: With a reciprocating saw, you may accidentally cut some wires. An easier and safer way is to use a jigsaw with a shortened blade. Insert a blade into your jigsaw, extend the stroke as far as possible, mark 1/2″ or 5/8″ from the jigsaw shoe (bottom part), then, using a bolt cutter, cut to shorten the blade. Now, you can use your jigsaw to safely and easily cut drywall.
Patching a Square Opening
To patch a square opening, I use a 2×4 piece of wood to fur out the studs or joists to create a backing for the drywall will be screwed into. Pre-drive the screws into the wood a little bit and then clamp the wood to the joists to make fastening the wood piece easier. The 2×4 should be longer than the opening so you can position it such that the cut drywall will be level with the existing drywall when you go put it back in.
When you put the cut piece of drywall in the opening, if the four edges are not level with the four edges of the existing drywall, then you either must
If you want to create a video of an animated character that moves its head and lips as you move your head and speak, you can do so easily using Adobe Character Animator. Here’s how.
In Adobe Character Animator, click File > Import and select the puppet file.
2. Import a green screen
Since we’ll want to overlay the exported character animation on other elements in a video editing program, we’ll want to add a green screen so we can key it out. Create a solid green image (RGB = 0,255,0) the size of the scene, e.g. 1920 x 1080. Then, import it and drag the imported item to the lowest layer it the Timeline panel.
3. Enable Puppet Track Behaviors
We can tell Adobe Character Animator which parts of our face and body to track as we move and talk in the camera. Click on the puppet layer to reveal the Puppet Track Behaviors panel.
The red button indicates that the particular item will be tracked when you move in front of the camera. For example, the Face item, when expanded, will show a red dot by “Camera Input” meaning if move your face in front of the camera, your facial gestures will be tracked and the puppet’s face will move accordingly.
For the lip sync item, the red dot is by “Audio Input” so if you speak, the microphone will capture your voice and convert it into lip movements on your puppet.
For Adobe Character Animator to track your head and lip movements, you need to enable your camera and microphone. You’ll see a circle where your face should be centered in your resting position. Once centered, click the “Set Rest Pose”. You’ll then see a bunch of red dots on your face indicating points where Adobe Character Animator will track your facial gestures.
5. Start recording
Click the red record button. A 3 second countdown timer will begin. Start talking naturally and when you are done, click the red button again to stop recording.
You’ll then see some layers added to the timeline including your voice audio layer.
If some of the layers are longer than the audio layer, e.g. the puppet, Visemes and green screen layers in the screenshot above, trim the scene so the duration of the scene is the duration of the audio. Drag the right end of the gray Work Area bar to the right end of the audio track. Then, right click on that bar and click on “Trim Scene to Work Area”.
Now, your scene duration will just be the duration of the Work Area, in this case 5:20.
6. Preview and export the result
Click the play button to preview the recording. If you are happy with it. you can export it by clicking File > Export > Video via Adobe Media Encoder. This will open Adobe Media Encoder. In the Queue panel, choose a format (h.264) and preset (Match Source – High bitrate or YouTube 1080p Full HD). Then, click the green play button to start encoding.
You will see the encoding progress in the Encoding panel. You’ll also see the video duration as 5:21 seconds as that is the length of the scene in this example.
