Using Video Stabilization in iMovie and Final Cut Pro

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to use video stabilization in iMovie and Final Cut Pro. 

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So when we shoot video with our iPhone or another camera usually we're holding it with our hand. That means it is not completely steady. There's a little bit of shake in our hand, maybe a little bit of swaying. Maybe as we are panning back and forth we're not doing it completely smoothly. So you can correct a lot of this using Video        Stabilization which is available in both iMovie and Final Cut Pro on your Mac.

So looking at iMovie here I've got two examples. One example is a video where the shot is completely steady. Trying to hold the camera steady and capture some movement that is going on in the scene. So what I would like it to do is completely stabilize it. Like if instead of holding it I actually had the camera on a tripod. So if I bring it in and I look at the video here you can see there is some movement. It's easiest to see the movement if you look at the bottom. Look there and you could see how, of course I'm not able to hold the camera completely steady. Nobody is. So Stabilization could make this a lot better. If I select the clip here and then click the Stabilization tab at the top I can then turn on Stabilize Shaky Video. This will take a few seconds to analyze this clip. Longer if it is a longer clip. Then we can look at the video here and see it is a little bit more steady. Still not perfect but you have an adjustment.

Now the more that you increase the stabilization, the more it has to zoom in. So while it tries to correct the movement there are blank spots at the edges of the screen. So you'll get a little bit more zoom, you'll lose a little around the edges, but you'll gain more in terms of stabilization. You can see how much more stable that video looks. It almost looks like I shot it on a tripod. 

Now you can also do this with video where you want there to be movement but maybe only in one direction. So this, of course, shows me panning across but it is not completely stable. It is a little shaky as I do it. So I can turn Stabilization on for this and it will handle the situation noticing there is a dominant movement and try to stabilize everything else. So now I get it looking a little bit more stable as it goes across. Not perfect but I could do the same thing here increase the stabilization if I really want to. The idea would be to only increase it as much as you need to make the shot look good. 

So let's look at this in Final Cut Pro. Here's that same clip and if I go to the Video Inspector, which I've done here, then I can look for Stabilization. It should be there by default. I can turn it on and it is going to take a few seconds to analyze as well. Then I could click Show here and see the details. So it is going to go with automatic at a smoothing of 1. Then that will smooth this out just a little bit. I can increase the smoothing and it is basically the same as what you're doing in iMovie. 

Now I can adjust the method to something else. Instead of Inertia Cam, which I believe iMovie is using, I can go to Smooth Cam and then I can separate Translation, Rotation, & Scale. So Translation, of course, is movement. Then Rotation is if you're tilting the camera, and Scale is if you're moving closer or further or zooming in and out. So you can adjust these separately. I can have a Rotation smooth that is higher. A Scale smooth that is higher and leave the Translation smooth at something pretty low and see how that goes. Basically, I could adjust this as I like to get the best possible version. It is not always going to be possible to get what you see in your head on the screen because the video may just be too shaky and it just may not be able to compensate enough for what's there. But maybe you can get it looking a little bit better. 

Now here's that still shot here with the shake in it. Let's go and add Stabilization to this and you can see I can just use the default method. I can increase the smoothing on the default method quite a bit. But notice here with this still shot I also get Tripod Mode. So I can turn this on and then it is going to hold the shot almost completely steady. Look how perfect this looks. It really does look like I had the camera on a tripod. 

So Video Stabilization should be another tool in your toolbox if you're putting together clips into a final movie. You should look at the different shots you've got. A lot of them may not need this or you may not even want it in all of your shots but some of them may benefit from a little bit or a lot of video stabilization. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.