The TLW 360 viewer

TLW 360 is a viewer for your 360° recordings that works like any other viewer. Select a recording in File Explorer, press Shift+Space, and it plays, with its sound, and you look around in it with the mouse. You do not need to add the recording to an editing pack first. It is installed with Two Left Wheels 360.

It opens Insta360 recordings (.insv) and DJI recordings (.osv) from the supported cameras, and ordinary video files in the formats Windows plays, such as MP4, MOV, MKV and AVI. A video twice as wide as it is high, such as a stitched 360° export, opens in the 360° view; any other video is shown flat.

Opening a file

• Shift+Space in File Explorer: select one recording or video and press Shift+Space. This works while the viewer is running.
• Right-click: choose Preview in TLW 360. On Windows 11 it is under Show more options.
• Open with: TLW 360 is listed under Open with for every file it plays.
• Start menu: open TLW 360, then drop a file on its window, press Ctrl+O, or choose Open in its menu.

Double-clicking a file still opens the program you chose for it, such as Insta360 Studio or DJI Studio. TLW 360 never takes that over.

There is one viewer window. Opening another file replaces the one it shows. Closing the window hides it; the viewer stays ready, so the next file opens at once.

Watching

• Drag with the left mouse button to look around, drag with the right button to straighten the picture if its horizon is tilted, and scroll to zoom. Looking around afterwards keeps the horizon where you put it. In a flat video, drag to move the picture.
• Click the picture or press Space to play and pause. The Left and Right arrow keys step one frame. Drag the timeline to go anywhere in the recording.
• Press F11 or double-click for full screen, and Escape to leave it.
• Clear Sound to play without sound.

Picture size

The list beside Sound chooses the picture size while playing, by its size in pixels. A recording with the camera's proxy file (LRV or LRF) plays from the proxy by default, which is smooth on most computers. The larger sizes stitch the full recording as it plays: on a computer that cannot keep up, the picture shows fewer frames while the sound plays normally. When you pause, the picture is always the full recording at full resolution, so you can look at a frame in detail. The viewer remembers your choice.

Recordings play with the default processing settings, not those of an editing pack. To see a recording with your editing pack's settings, use the preview in Two Left Wheels 360, see Preview and export.

Start with Windows and the key

Setup asks whether to start the viewer when you sign in. Started this way, it waits, idle and unseen, until you press the key or open a file, and files open at once. Shift+Space works while the viewer runs. You can change both later in the viewer's menu (⋯ at the right of the controls): Start with Windows, and Key in File Explorer to choose Shift+Space, Ctrl+Shift+Space, Space, F12 or no key.

The key works only when File Explorer's file list or the desktop has the keyboard and exactly one file the viewer plays is selected. Anywhere else, for example while renaming a file, the key does what it always does. Shift+Space is the default because Space is already used by common Explorer previewers such as QuickLook and by DJI Studio.

A recording cut off while recording

An Insta360 recording that was cut off by a power loss or a crash has no index, so no player can open it. TLW 360 recognises it, says how much a repair keeps and asks Repair it now?. The repaired copy is made beside the original, named …-repaired, and opens. The repair borrows the camera's settings from a healthy recording of the same camera beside it; when there is none, TLW 360 asks you to choose one. The original is never changed.

Video that does not play

Ordinary video plays when Windows can decode it. H.264 plays everywhere. HEVC (H.265) needs Microsoft's HEVC Video Extensions from the Microsoft Store; the viewer says so when they are missing. ProRes does not play.