Preview and export

Preview

Select a recording and click ▶ Preview, or double-click it, to play it, with its sound and the editing pack's settings, in the built-in 360° player.

You look into the 360° picture through a movable view: drag with the left mouse button to look around in any direction, drag with the right button to straighten the picture if its horizon is tilted, and scroll to zoom in and out. Looking around afterwards keeps the horizon where you put it. Click anywhere on the timeline to jump there. Clear Sound to play without sound.

The list beside Sound chooses the picture while playing. A recording with a proxy plays from the camera proxy by default, which is smooth. The larger sizes stitch the full recording as you watch: on most computers that is slower than the recording's frame rate, so the picture shows fewer frames per second while the sound plays normally. When you pause, the picture is the full recording at full resolution.

The preview is the same player as the TLW 360 viewer, which plays recordings straight from File Explorer; that page lists its keys and menu.

Export

When you need a stitched file outside your editor, for example to upload a full 360° video, select recordings and click Export stitched files….

• Save to folder: where the files go. It cannot be on the virtual drive.
• Write: Originals only, Proxies only, or Originals and proxies. Proxies are small stitched copies with the same names, in a Proxy folder beside them, for editing elsewhere.
• Video format: H.265 gives smaller files than H.264 at the same quality. The graphics card formats are fast; the NVIDIA ones need an NVIDIA graphics card. The CPU formats, ProRes 422 among them, work on any computer and are slower. The format sets whether the files are .mp4 or .mov.
• Proxies made from: the camera proxy, which is fast, with the main file used when there is none; or always the main file.
• Include the recordings' audio.

Click Export. The files are full stitched 360° panoramas with the editing pack's settings, the original frame rate and length, and the recordings' names. Files that already exist in the folder are listed before the export starts. The original recordings are not touched.

You do not need to export to edit: your editor uses the stitched files on the drive directly.