Adobe Premiere Pro includes a stabilization effect that can help to improve your footage’s appearance. This effect works well for minimal to medium shakiness and can make your final piece look more polished. In this Premiere Pro tutorial, we’ll show you how to apply and use this stabilization effect during video editing.
How to Stabilize Shaky Video
To start editing, open Premiere and go to File > New Project. In the New Project dialog box, select Video from the Project Type drop-down menu and click OK. In the newly created project, you’ll see all of your video clips listed in the Media Browser. Select one of the clips and drag it into your timeline. Premiere will automatically import it into your project files as well. ..
- Choose the Warp Stabilizer tool from the main Premiere menu.
- Click on the clip you want to stabilize and then drag it to the desired position in your timeline.
- When you have dragged it to its desired position, release the mouse button and then click on the OK button to finish stabilizing the clip.
Premiere will analyze the video and stabilize it for you. You can then play it back in the Preview panel to see if you like the results. If something is off, there are a few ways you can edit this effect in the Effect Controls panel to make it look exactly the way you want.
How to Edit the Stabilization Effect
To change the stabilization effect, you can use the Effect Controls. These controls allow you to change the movement, method of stabilization, borders, scaling, and more.
To get a different stabilization effect, you can change the settings on your camera. ..
Stabilization Dropdown
The second option is Effect. This is where you choose the type of effect you want your video to have. You can choose from a variety of options, such as Fade In, Fade Out, or Change Background. ..
Next, you can adjust how smooth the motion is. If you want a bit more of a subtle stabilization effect, you can adjust this Smoothness effect to a lesser value.
The Warp Stabilizer effect can be used to stabilize a video or audio file by adjusting the amount of distortion it experiences. There are three main methods for using the Warp Stabilizer: Method 1, Method 2, and Method 3.
Stabilizing videos with only position data can be a more accurate way to create videos. ..
The Position, Scale, and Rotation method uses data from all three of these to stabilize your clip. This ensures that the video is in a consistent position and that it is rotated correctly.
The Perspective method will stabilize your video frame by cornering the frame of the shot to the center.
The Subspace Warp method stabilizes only a small percentage of the video, making it difficult to make the whole video more uniform.
If you want to create a more natural-looking video, use the right method for your clip. For example, if you’re using Warp Stabilization, don’t use it if the video still has too much movement and distracts from the subject. If you try all the methods available and the video clip still looks like this, it may be too shaky to save. ..
The Preserve Scale check box under Method will retain the scale of your original footage. Sometimes, using a specific Method will alter the scale of footage to get a better result. You can check off Preserve Scale, but it may cause the video to look off. But this depends on the clip itself.
Borders Dropdown
When using Warp stabilizer, Premiere will alter the borders of your video by cropping them to achieve better stabilization. However, if you notice black bars around your video, go to the Framing section to make adjustments.
If you have the Stabilize Only option selected, it’s the likely reason behind the black bars. Unfortunately, Premiere doesn’t scale the video to take them out, so you’ll still see them. ..
The Stabilize, Crop option can cause even more pronounced black bars. In addition to stabilization, it also crops the footage to get a more stable effect while not scaling the footage to hide the crop. ..
If you select Stabilize, Crop, Auto-Scale, Premiere will automatically scale the footage to remove the bars. However, this can result in a low-resolution video. ..
If you choose Stabilize, Synthesize Edges, Premiere will add pixels based on your video and remove the black bars. However, this option takes more processing power. However, know that choosing this option will disable the auto-scale section as well as Crop Less Smooth More.
The Auto-scale setting tells you how much your video has been scaled. You can open this dropdown to change the Maximum Scale level. You can also change the Action-Safe Margin, which will add a border to the video.
You can change the Additional Scale and scale the video even more if you wish.
Advanced Options
- Use a tripod for better stability.
- Shoot in RAW format to capture more data for later editing.
- Use a remote control to help you stay in control of your camera while shooting.
- Shoot in low light conditions to capture more detail and keep your camera from becoming too noisy. ..
If you turn this on, Premiere will do a more in-depth analysis to get you a better stabilization effect. However, this will use more processing power and cause longer render times.
If you choose the Synthesize Edges option under Framing, you can change the Input Range here to determine how much of the video Premiere will use to create new edges from. ..
Warning banner: While the video is being stabilized, you may not see the warning banner.
Get Smoother Shots Using Warp Stabilizer in Premiere
Adobe Premiere Pro CC is a powerful video editing software that can help with video stabilization if used correctly. It is simple to use and can save footage from being shaky. ..
