Free Video Stabilization Software on Mac?
Recently I shot a video of my daughter's kindergarten concert, but I had to stand pretty far away to do so. I did so with my Fujifilm X-M1 and my Samyang 85mm f1.4 handheld standing and the result was excellent, except that because my camera nor my lens have any form of built-in image stabilization, the resultant video may cause motion sickness, puking and/or diarrhea.
Me being me, believed that there must be a way (and a free one) to overcome this issue with proper technology. I have heard of YouTube having stabilization as a feature when you upload your videos, BUT I didn't want to upload my 850MB full HD video using my Yes 4G internet quota (yes, yes, I'm still waiting for ABN to come to my apartment!).
After lots of investigation (i.e. Googling) and being disappointed with every single option costing lots of $$$, I stumbled upon the fact that iMovie has this very feature built in. Wow, how cool is that?
What the Help files did not mention was the fact that upon clicking on "Stabilize Shaky Video" it would take a looooooong time to complete it and there is no indication whatsoever about an estimated time of completion. My 2.5 minute long full HD video took me 45minutes to complete stabilization processing. The good news is, you can continue to edit your video while it does the stabilization work in the background.
But it all boils down to this question: does it work?
I am happy to report that it does indeed. Taking the default 33% stabilization setting has significantly improved my shaky video and instead of looking like me taking video of kids singing at an earthquake it is much more natural now. There are still movements on my video came from my breathing patterns instead of my jittery hands.
Well, while I am at iMovie, I added a simple transition effect and some text before I exported the video. The video came out to be 48% smaller than the original file (445MB vs 850MB) and looks great on my 42" LED Panasonic Viera TV. And so there you have it, free video stabilization on your Mac!
Me being me, believed that there must be a way (and a free one) to overcome this issue with proper technology. I have heard of YouTube having stabilization as a feature when you upload your videos, BUT I didn't want to upload my 850MB full HD video using my Yes 4G internet quota (yes, yes, I'm still waiting for ABN to come to my apartment!).
After lots of investigation (i.e. Googling) and being disappointed with every single option costing lots of $$$, I stumbled upon the fact that iMovie has this very feature built in. Wow, how cool is that?
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| Yay! No more jittery videos! |
Using iMovie 10.0 for video stabilization
So the answer to my topic title really depends on whether you got a MacBook preloaded with iMovie for free. Apple just announced recently that all new MacBooks are reloaded with iMovie and if you are one of those people then congrats to you. If not, it's USD14.99 and you can get it from the Mac App Store, but it's still the cheapest software based option I've seen so far.
I have the latest iMovie on my Macbook, but I realized that all the tutorials online were for iMovie '09/'11. Nonetheless, the Help files provided by Apple explains the whole process pretty well so you shouldn't have much problem with it.
But it all boils down to this question: does it work?
I am happy to report that it does indeed. Taking the default 33% stabilization setting has significantly improved my shaky video and instead of looking like me taking video of kids singing at an earthquake it is much more natural now. There are still movements on my video came from my breathing patterns instead of my jittery hands.
Well, while I am at iMovie, I added a simple transition effect and some text before I exported the video. The video came out to be 48% smaller than the original file (445MB vs 850MB) and looks great on my 42" LED Panasonic Viera TV. And so there you have it, free video stabilization on your Mac!
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