Warp Stabilizer: How to Fix a Shaky Video

If you’ve got a shaky video, Premiere^® Pro’s Warp Stabilizer is a solid option to help fix your clip. Here’s the rundown on how to use Warp Stabilizer in Premiere^® Pro.

Introduced in Adobe CS6, Warp Stabilizer is a motion stabilizer effect in Adobe^® Premiere^® Pro used to stabilize shaky footage. Editors use it to smooth out handheld shot footage or footage from a camera that didn't have effective built-in stabilization.

Here's how it works:

• Analyzes your footage. The Warp Stabilizer effect analyzes your footage frame-by-frame with multipoint tracking.

• Stabilization. Then, the tool uses the tracked points to estimate motion and stabilize the footage. If a point moves from one frame to the next, the stabilizer applies the opposite motion to keep the point steady.

• Cropping and auto-scaling. Stabilizing footage often results in the frame moving, which can lead to black borders around the edges of the video. To counter this, Warp Stabilizer automatically crops the edges and scales up the footage to maintain the original frame size.

Warp Stabilizer in Premiere^® Pro is a powerful tool, but it's not perfect and can produce odd results. If your footage has a lot of motion or if the background changes significantly throughout the clip, you’ll need to do a lot of tweaks. And be aware that it can introduce a "warping" effect, where the footage appears distorted or stretched, hence the name Warp Stabilizer.

But with careful use and settings adjustments, it can be a very effective tool for smoothing out shaky footage. Be sure to use our best warp stabilizer settings in the section below to get the best results.

Key settings to focus on include:

• Stabilization

• Smoothness

• Borders

• Crop less/smooth more

• Detailed analysis

• Rolling shutter ripple

Here are the most important settings to create the best results:

These settings allow you to adjust the stabilization process before rendering to create a better end-result. It includes four ‘methods’ which can dramatically alter the way clip looks in the end. They are:

• Subspace warp: this is the default setting in the effect. It works to warp parts of the frame for stabilization. However, this method can cause unwanted warping, so you may need to use one of the simpler edits below.

• Perspective: this method corner-pins a frame to stabilize it, and is the default from Subspace if there are not enough areas to track. However, this method can cause unwanted keystoning. If that’s the case, move down this list.

• Position, scale, and rotation: the stabilizer bases everything on position, scale, and rotation data.

• Position: last, this method based on position data only. It’s the most basic way to stabilize footage.

Smoothness settings are under the Stabilization options and govern the fluidity of the stabilized motion in a clip. It has two general settings and one to tweak the original motion of the shot.

• Smooth motion: this is the default setting that attempts to smooth out the original camera movements based on the Smoothness setting.

• No motion: this general function causes the program to remove all motion from a shot – in theory. When you choose this setting, you’ll auto-disable the Crop Less/Smooth More advanced option – see below. Only use this setting if your target object stays in the frame for the entire duration of the clip.

• Smoothness: this allows you to adjust how much of the camera’s original motion to stabilize. On the low end, the effect will try to stay with the original motion of the shot. You can turn it up, but remember, values over 100 require image cropping.

These settings tweak how the effect stabilizes the moving edges of a frame. There are four framing settings under this effect:

1. Stabilize Only

2. Stabilize, Crop

3. Stabilize, Drop, Auto-scale (default)

4. Stabilize, Synthesize Edges

Ultimately, you may need to play with all the framing settings to prevent black borders on your clip. But if there isn’t too much data to generate ‘Stabilize, Synthesize Edges’ typically works well. It causes the program to generate new edges for your footage from existing pixels.

However, you’ll need to render before viewing the complete edit. And you may need to adjust the Smoothness settings to get it just right. 5% is usually enough to balance everything out.

Crop less/smooth more adjusts the extent to which the effect will crop or scale your footage. This works to prevent the appearance of black borders or gaps because of stabilization. If you have a low value here, it will smooth the image, but you’ll see more of it. The best way to test this feature is to start at 50% and work your way down by increments of 10.

The detailed analysis setting controls the degree to which the effect will examine the motion of each pixel in your footage. This is useful for clips with rapid or intricate motion, or those with low contrast or noise. Try out different values to identify the optimal balance for your specific clip.

With this effect, the stabilizer will remove the ripples that occur within stabilized rolling shutter footage. The default setting is Automatic Reduction, but the Enhanced Reduction setting is particularly useful for anyone using a DSLR camera. Even if you don’t, it’s worth a shot! However, you can only use this setting under the Perspective or Subspace Warp Methods.

The order in which you apply effects will affect the final render

Whether you’re in Premiere^® Pro or After Effects^®, be sure to always use Warp Stabilizer to get your clip where you want it before adding more effects. For example, certain color effects will require reanalysis if you apply the effect afterwards, so always use it first.

Leverage the advanced options

Don’t stop at the basic settings before rendering your clip. Settings like Crop Less/Smooth More and Detailed Analysis enable you to perfect the motion and generate a professional-grade effect. However, this can also take up some extra time and increase the size of the project file.

You can use Warp Stabilizer in Proxy Workflow

By default, Premiere^® Pro displays a full-resolution file. To lower the size of your project, you can use Warp Stabilizer in the Proxy Workflow mode.

ReelSteady comes with advanced technical tools that allow for meticulous data tracking. This ensures the best possible stabilization for your footage. The tools are technical, but the plugin interface is simple, making it suitable for users of all experience levels – as long as you’re willing to pay the $399 price tag.

Apart from ReelSteady, Mercalli V6, developed by the Germany-based company ProDad, is another reliable stabilization option. It has powerful tools for achieving the stabilization you need, but at a lower cost. And it works with both After Effects^® and Premiere^® Pro, so you don’t have to transfer clips.

Although Warp Stabilizer renders excellent results, it requires analysis of your clip. If you try to do this with multiple clips, it can cause Premiere^® Pro to crash. If you want to stabilize multiple videos in the background or overnight, the Batch Analysis Plugin fulfills this need.