Stabilize Video In iMovie

iMovie includes an easy-to-use function that lets you stabilize shaky video. It works best on video that is relatively still. You can make shaky video easier to view and appear more professional.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com.
On this episode let me show you how to usethe Image Stabilization feature in iMovie.
It was really only a few years ago that somethinglike video image stabilization was only a
feature that you would get in expensive softwareor maybe not at all.
But now it's pretty easy to do and you canjust do it with iMovie that comes with your
Mac.
So I'm using the latest version of iMoviehere, 10.1.3, it's been around for awhile
though.
I'm going to take this video and drag it intomy project here.
I started a new project and I had this mediain it already.
You can see here in the preview on the rightthat I was holding my iPhone pretty steadily
when I took this.
But it wasn't on a tripod or anything so youcan see some shake.
Look at the corners of the video and you canreally see, up here, how much shake there
is.
It doesn't look too bad but I want to getit perfect.
I want to get it to look like I took thiswith a tripod.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to selecta video down here and I have the controls
here at the top.
I'm going to select the stabilization functionthere.
Then I'm going to turn it on.
What it's going to do if this is the firsttime you've ever used for this particular
video here is it's going to take a few seconds,or maybe longer depending on how long the
video is, to analyze it.
Then it will give you this percentage meterup here.
As I scrub back and forth I can see it kindof still shakes but in a more smooth fashion.
Like if I turn it off you can see it's jitterybut here you can see it kind of just shakes
smoothly.
I can increase stabilization more.
Now, what's the drawback to that.
Well, the drawback is that it is zooming inon the video more.
So I'm cropping out some of the edges so itcan deal with, as things shake, making sure
that it never has blank spots around the edgesanywhere.
So now that I've done that you can see, forthis video where it was relatively stable
to begin with, it almost looks like it's ona tripod now.
It's very well stabilized.
That's all I need to do was to turn that onand now as I use this video in this project
or maybe I don't even want to do anythingelse with the project, I just want to go from
here and just Share and Export as a file,I can make a stabilized video out of this
shaky video here.
Of course, the results are going to vary dependingupon what you start with.
Something that's very shaky you're not goingto see much except maybe some smoother shakes
and something that's really close to it wherethe camera was being held very steadily, you'll
be able get some great results like this.

Stabilize Video In iMovie

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