An official technical LUT is a useful starting point because it gives you a defined transform instead of guessing contrast and saturation. I would apply the transform first, then judge exposure and creative adjustments in the normalized image.

The important distinction is technical conversion versus creative look. Do not stack a strong “cinematic” LUT on top and assume both operations are the same thing.

In VSDC I would test the official LUT on a representative D-Log M clip, verify that levels and color look sensible, then make shot-level corrections after that.

If you prefer a manual transform, keep it repeatable. The benefit of the official LUT is not that it is automatically beautiful; it is that you start from a predictable baseline that can be applied consistently across the DJI clips.

For mixed cameras, normalize each source family first. Convert DJI D-Log M to a normal working look, normalize the other camera separately, and only then make creative shot-to-shot matching decisions.

Otherwise you can waste time using creative controls to compensate for two different source interpretations.

That makes sense. I was trying to match the flat DJI clip directly to an already-normal Insta360 clip, so every correction was doing two jobs at once.

I will use the DJI LUT as the technical first step and reserve the later corrections for the actual match.

That workflow is also easier to troubleshoot. If the DJI conversion itself looks wrong, you know where to investigate. If the normalized clips look correct individually but not together, then the problem is the creative match rather than source decoding.