Selecting a Stabilizer Method

 
 
 

Use the stabilizer to remove unwanted shaky motion and to smooth the camera motion. It can separately smooth motion with respect to translation, rotation and scaling in an image sequence to produce a stabilized image.

Stabilizing a clip is divided into two parts. First, the movie is scanned frame by frame, while the motion within the movie is tracked, and the related tracked motion data is recorded. With trackers installed, you can play the stabilized clip.

The first step to stabilizing a clip is to select an appropriate stabilization method.

Stabilization Methods

Auto Stabilize

  • No way to add manual trackers.
  • Requires the least work to stabilize a clip.
  • Can stabilize simple 2D motion, scaling and rotation, and perspective transformation.
  • Tries to do best effort.
  • Can smooth or pin the detected motion.
  • Can remove jitter but keeps camera motion.
  • Can adapt resolution and advanced padding options.

Where possible, start with this stabilization method.

Stabilizer

  • Requires you to add manual trackers.
  • Enable simple padding and texture repeat options.
  • Can only stabilize simple 2D motion.

2D Transform

  • Can stabilize simple 2D motion, scaling and rotation.
  • Can adapt resolution and advanced padding options.
NoteTo access any of the above stabilizers:
  1. Select the Transform tab in the Tools tab.
  2. Enable the preferred stabilizer (Auto Stabilize, Stabilizer, or 2D Transform).
  3. Pick the clip, then click on an empty part of the Thumbnail view.

    You are in the selected stabilizer editor.

Workflow

Step1: Consider your goal and select a method of stabilizing the clip.

Goal: To Stabilize Simple 2D motion (click here).

  • Auto Stablize
  • Stablizer
  • 2D Transform

Goal: To Stabilize Motion or Scaling or Rotation (click here).

  • Auto Stabilize
  • 2D Transform

Goal: To Stabilize a Perspective Transformation (click here).

  • Auto Stabilize

Step 2: Determine the quality of the result of the stabilization method. Change stabilization method if necessary.

Depending on the goal of the stabilization, not all methods may be available. For example, if doing perspective transformation, Auto Stabilize is the only option available.

  1. If Auto Stabilize does not provide adequate results, then use Stabilizer.
  2. If Stabilizer does not provide adequate results, then use 2D Transform.