A feature I have only played with a few times (on any camera) is timelapse. The first time I did it with an Insta360 camera was when I got my first one – a ONE X2 – and tested it while visiting Universal Studios Florida. While having a meal, I let the camera run . This video is on my Park Hopping YouTube channel:
Later, when I upgraded to an X3, I stuck it on the top of my car with a magnet mount and just let it record the sky.
I did a few tests like this, and they are somewhere on my Sub-Etha Software YouTube channel.
By the time I had an X4, I think I only used this feature one time — and that was just a few weeks ago. I let it record while folks where leaving Silver Dollar City at the end of the day. That video is posted on my DisneyFans.com/ParkHopping.com Facebook page, I think.
And that was the end of my experiments with timelapse…
But recently, I saw an interesting “day to night” timelapse posted by Best360:
This motivated me to began experimenting again. I used an external battery pack handle, attached to the top of my tripod, and set up my camera to record from 7:30pm until it was dark at 8:30pm.
My first attempt failed. Apparently I did not hit the button properly…
My second attempt went much better, but at the end of the timelapse, everything was still pretty bright due to the new X5 producing a brighter image. I am unsure if the camera is doing something to change modes as it gets dark — I just used the “Timelapse” mode and let it do whatever it wanted to do.
My third attempt I ran from 7:30pm to 9pm. It was even more dark, but you can see it still does not look dark in the timelapse:
It is an interesting feature, but quite boring unless you actually reframe it to pan the video and give it a bit more motion.
Have you done much with this mode? If you know of a good use for it, leave a comment.
UPDATE: Sold for $400. Congrats to the buyer! You got a great deal!
It has been only a year since I picked up my Insta360 X4, but now that I have a new X5, I am getting rid of all my X4 gear. This includes the X4, three batteries total, quick charger, dive case, lens covers, lens guards, several carrying cases, mix wind muffs, and more — some of these items never got used. I really expected the X4 to be around for two years before the replacement model came out ;-)
The X4 by itself is $424 on Amazon, but you can buy my whole kit for less than that right now if you want, or bid and try to get it cheaper:
Here are some raw footage clips of the Insta360 X5 camera recorded at night. For the test, I had my X4 recording in 8K 30fps Video mode, and put the X5 in 8K 30fps PureVideo mode.
One surprising thing was that even the preview screen looks much brighter on the X5:
Insta360 X4 (left) versus Insta360 X5 (right)
Here are the results:
As you can see, the X5 produces a significantly brighter image. But, freeze frame along the way and you will see it still suffers from graininess and image blur when recording in low light levels.
And since the X5 has a slightly larger image sensor, I wanted to do a comparison that I did not see in any of the pre-release YouTuber videos. For this test, I set both the X4 and X5 in normal 8K 30fps Video mode (NOT using PureVideo on the X5). I was surprised at how much brighter the X5 video is even in “normal” Video mode:
There may be a few more short tests I want to complete before selling off my X4 gear, so keep checking this site.
If you have any specific things you want to see tested, leave a comment. If I have time, I will try to do them.
As my two photo gallery sites prove, I prefer sharing photos over videos. A video goes by, and if there is something interesting in it, you won’t ever find it again unless you write down a timestamp so you can replay the video and seek to that point later. But photos? You just pop into a gallery and can drill right down to find photos of what you are looking for. It is much easier for me to find something at the Branson Ferris Wheel by looking at my photos of it than looking at my videos of it.
With that in mind, here are some unprofessional cell phone pictures of the exterior of the X5 compared to the X4. Some interesting differences.
Sides
On the X4 (left), the USB port is just above the battery. On the X5 (right), only the battery is on that side and the USB port has been moved to the opposite side.
On the opposite size, you can see that the control buttons (power and Q) have been moved up a bit, and the USB port is now at the bottom. The flap that covers the USB port is very different, as well.
Bottom
Where once cameras only had the 1/4″ tripod mount, newer cameras will have indentions and such for installing “quick release” adapters. You can see how this has changed a bit between X4 and X5.
Physically, the X5 still fits in the carrying case I have for my X4 so, unlike the X3 to X4 size increase, you should be able to keep using your same camera case.
Up next … a look at the revamped (again) menu system….
2025-05-06 – Files must be in a folder called “IMPORT” then you drag that in. BUT, this is no longer documented in the X5 manual, and in testing today, it does not appear to work with the current V2 App and X5. Instead, you can create “DCIM\X5” and put files there, then drag that in (it will erase all current files on the X5). I then had to disconnect from the computer and restart the app to see them. I tested this with 10 photos today and it worked, so I will be updating this article with the new steps as soon as get a moment.
Today, I asked Microsoft Copilot if it knew how to get Insta360 files into the phone app. TO my surprise, it referenced the official Insta360 support page, and this blog post.
I decided to take a look at what I wrote, and found an issue to correct. This is the fixed version.
This topic seems to come up often, which is maybe it shouldn’t since Insta360 even documents these steps. Here is the background…
If you have an Insta360 360 camera such as the ONE X, ONE X2, X3, X4 or X5, you can run the Insta360 App and download photos/videos from the camera for editing on your phone or tablet. You can then export them out and share them as normal photos, reframed videos or even 360 photos/videos.
If you want to backup the original files your phone/tablet downloaded, you can do that too by plugging the phone/tablet up to your computer via the USB sync cable.
On macOS, when you plug in the device and allow it to connect, it will show up under the Finder. You can select it and get a series of “tabs” in the Finder on what you want to look at. By selecting Files you have access to the file system of the device:
Look for the “Insta360” app and expand it:
If you want to copy .insv/.insp files TO the phone app, you must first copy them into a folder named IMPORT. Once there, you can drag that IMPORT folder into the Insta360 app.
They will be copied via USB and placed into the location where the app will recognize them and you can edit them on your device. You will see a new status line in the bottom of the iPhone file browser:
If you want to copy files OUT of the phone, you cannot pick and choose, but you can drag the entire DCIM folder out from this window to wherever you want it copied and all the raw .insv/.insp/etc. files that have been imported into the Insta360 app will be copied there, likely much faster over USB than they would over WiFi from the camera in the first place. You will then be able to backup these files, or drag them into the desktop Insat360 app for editing.
It would be nice to have some kinda of automated script to do this (perhaps one that monitors for the phone/tablet to be connected then runs, backing up all the DCIM files automatically). If there is interest, I can look into trying to create one.
And if you want to read these instructions direct from Insat360, they are found in the manual. Here is the entry from the online X3 manual:
That said… What would really be nice would be for Insta360 just to support the built-in Files system on iOS/iPadOS. Most of the apps I use allow me to export a file to anything mounted in my Files app. If you have installed Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, etc., they show up and apps can just save a file there. If it is a cloud service, they will automatically sync to the cloud via that app. There are also FTP clients that look like drives, so you can export to a location and have it FTP to your own server. Likewise, most apps I use allow me to open from the Files app, so I can import files I have saved on Dropbox or whatever.
This also allows access to external USB hard disks or memory cards attached to the Lightning or USB-C port of the device using the appropriate adapter.
Insta360 may not be doing this because they knew they were planning to bring out their own cloud service they charge for. If they had allowed support for the native Files system, you’d be able to do all of this “for free” with any cloud service you were already using and there would be very little reason to subscribe to their subscription cloud service
But who knows… Maybe if enough of us ask them for it, we might see it. You can contact Insta360 and ask them here:
I see this question come up over and over (and over and over) again on discussion groups (Facebook, REDDIT, etc.). Folks see “8K camera” or “5.7K camera” and expect that will be better than an HD camera or 4K camera.
But not with a 360 camera.
With a normal camera, you have a lens recording a square/rectangular image. An HD camera will record an image that is 1920×1080 pixels. Those pixels are used for the entire square/rectangular image.
But, a 360 camera with two lenses takes its resolution and divides that by two — one for each lens. An 8K Insta360 X4 camera is therefore shooting a 4K image out the front lens, and a 4K image out the back.
BUT, instead of shooting straight ahead, it is a wide angle fisheye style image that is actually capturing everything in front, above, below, to the left and right of that lens. The back lens is doing the same.
When you think of it that way, the number of pixels that would be for the “forward” view is a fraction of the pixels you would get with a normal non-fisheye single lens camera.
Here is my quick doodle:
Now, reality is actually much more complex than this simple drawing, but the end result is you an “reframe” 360 footage to be a view in any direction. If you only use those six main directions (forward, backwards, left, right, up and down), you are dividing the pixels of that 8K image in to 6 smaller images. If 8K video is 7680 × 4320, then each view is closer to 1280×720 — which you can see is below “full HD” of 1920×1080.
So even with an 8K 360 camera, what you get in any specific direction is still not going to be as good as a simple HD camera that only records in one direction.
(And yes, I know the reality is much more complex, but this is just greatly simplified to help new users visualize how it works.)
2024-08-01 – Fernando T. in the comments noted that there are still missing features: “I can see no control of bracketing steps and number of shots for composing HDR Photo yet…” Let’s hope that, eventually, Insta360 can make the X4 do as much as its predecessor could do.
Finally! The GPS Remote and Apple Watch may be used to control the X4. Also support for streaming. We are now getting close to the standard features we were used to with the X3.
From my Park Hopping site, here is ten minutes of Insta360 VR 360 video.
I set the camera in various places using a Best360 tripod I purchased on Amazon. I set the camera to 8K 360 video mode and just clicked record. No manual settings – just automatic mode.
The only “editing” of the video was putting the clips together in Final Cut Pro’s 360 video editor, adding some transitions, and some overlay text. I did no color corrections or enhancements. These are the files exported out of the Insta360 desktop app and then brought into a Final Cut Pro 360 video timeline in 8K.
YouTube renders the video down to 4K, it seems, so I guess we can’t share 8K video on YouTube yet…
2024-04-26 – When I did this test, I recorded an 8K run, a 5.7K+ run, then 5.7K. I could not tell which video was which from looking at the info inside Insta360 Studio. I now think the #1 pass was in 5.7K+ mode. I will have to redo all of these ;-)
By request, here are comparison videos of the Insta360 X3 and Insta360 X4˘cameras recording in low light conditions. The recording was made at sunset, and the light level was low enough that the X4 displays the warning that it is too low for shooting in 8K.
But I did it anyway.
In the first test, I set the X3 to 360 mode and 5.7K. This allows reframing and exporting to HD. For the X4, I set it to 360 and 8K. This allows reframing and exporting to 4K. This obviously should make the X4 side have more detail, but what will it do to brightness of the video?
X3 5.7K versus X4 8K
X3 5.7K versus X4 5.7K+ (I think)
For the next test, I did two recordings with both cameras set to 360 5.7K+ (I think). In both cases, the reframed video is exported as HD. This was the mode the X4 tells you to use when recording in low light.
Test #1:
Test #2 in normal 5.7K mode (unless I have #1 and #2 mixed up):
Is one better than the other? You can certainly see alot of stabilization glitching going on at these low light levels.
To be continued…
I also repeated these tests at 24 fps (to see if that really does increase low light performance) and some other frame rates, but one of the files was incomplete from me hitting the button by mistake. I’ll go through the rest of my test clips, including some done in single lens mode, and create more comparison videos soon.
