What is a locked-off shot?
A shot in which the camera doesn’t move: it is fixed on a tripod or a stand, so the framing stays the same from start to finish and only the subject moves. It’s also called a lock-off or a static shot.
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Make a handheld shot look locked off
Hold the frame still for the whole shot, as if the camera had been on a tripod, while everything in the scene keeps moving. Free, in your browser, with nothing uploaded.
Drop a shot that should stand still
It opens with the Tripod preset, which holds the frame in one place for the whole shot. Nothing is uploaded.Pick the clip you wish you’d filmed on a tripod.
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A locked-off shot is one where the camera doesn’t move at all: it sits on a tripod, the framing never changes, and only the people and things in the scene move. If you filmed it by hand, you can get very close afterwards. Rather than smoothing the camera’s path, the Tripod preset sets Camera to Locked, picks one position for the whole shot and moves every frame back onto it.
It works when the camera was meant to stay still and only drifted or trembled: an interview, a view, a product on a table, a street scene. A shot that pans or walks can’t be frozen, but it can be calmed with Smooth or turned into clean holds and glides with Cinematic, as the table below explains. For shake in general, start with fixing a shaky video.
How to make a handheld shot look locked off
Open the clip
Drop it on the box marked Drop a shot that should stand still, press Ctrl+O (⌘+O on a Mac), or on a phone tap Choose a handheld shot. It opens with Tripod, so Camera is already Locked.
Watch it hold
After Analysing motion…, play the clip. Set View to Original with Show crop on (under More options, or press C) to see the kept part of the picture moving against the drift, or use Split to compare.
Give it room if it creeps
If the frame still drifts slowly, the shake needs more zoom than Zoom limit allows: raise it, or set Framing to Full frame to keep the whole picture and fill the edges.
Keep any zoom you meant
If you zoomed in or out during the shot, open More options and turn off Zoom under Steady these, so the lock doesn’t fight it.
Export video
Press Export video (Ctrl+Enter or ⌘+Enter), check the settings and press Export video again, then Download or Share the still shot. The sound is kept.
What a locked-off shot is for
A still frame lets the viewer look at the scene instead of the camera. It is the standard for interviews and talking heads, wide establishing shots, product and recipe shots, and anything filmed to have titles or graphics placed on top of it later, because a graphic only sits convincingly on a picture that doesn’t move.
- Interviews and pieces to camera, where a drifting frame distracts from the speaker.
- Views and establishing shots: a skyline, a beach, a building, held long enough to take in.
- Shots for effects, such as a person appearing twice, a sky replacement or text that should stay pinned in place.
- Timelapses filmed by hand, together with the Timelapse preset’s heavy smoothing if a full lock is too much.
Locked, Cinematic or Smooth?
Camera decides how the steadied camera moves. All three remove shake; they differ in what they do with the movement you meant.
| Camera | What it does | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Locked | Like a tripod: the frame stays put for the whole shot. | Shots that should not move at all |
| Cinematic | Holds still, then glides in clean, straight moves. | Shots with a deliberate pan or reframe, made to look like a tripod head or a dolly |
| Smooth | Keeps your pans and walks, removes the jitter. | Walking, following action and anything that travels |
A cut in the clip starts a new shot, and each shot gets its own locked position, so a clip made of several handheld shots locks each one separately.
What a lock can and can’t hold
It needs zoom room
Holding one position means cancelling every bit of drift across the whole shot, not just the quick shake, so a lock usually needs more zoom than smoothing does. That is why Tripod allows a higher Zoom limit than Recommended. The longer the shot and the more the camera wandered, the more room it needs. When the drift is bigger than the limit allows, the frame follows the camera very slowly rather than showing empty edges.
It locks the background
The lock is measured from the picture as a whole, which is mostly background. A handheld camera also shifts position slightly, not just its angle, so objects close to the lens can still move a little against the distant background. Standing still and keeping the nearest objects a few metres away gives the cleanest lock.
It can’t lock a moving shot
If the camera walked, panned to follow someone or tilted up a building, there is no single position to hold. Use Cinematic for clean pans, or Smooth for travel.
The same lock in editing apps
Desktop editors have their own version of the lock, usually as one setting of their stabiliser:
- Premiere Pro and After Effects: set Warp Stabilizer’s Result to No Motion, or in After Effects track one detail with Stabilize Motion. See the Warp Stabilizer guide and stabilising in After Effects.
- DaVinci Resolve: tick Camera Lock in the stabilisation settings before you stabilise. See stabilising in DaVinci Resolve.
- Final Cut Pro: choose the InertiaCam method; when the analysis allows it, a Tripod Mode checkbox appears. See stabilising in Final Cut Pro.
- FFmpeg: add
tripod=1to vid.stab’s two passes, as in the FFmpeg guide. - Gyroflow: a fixed-camera smoothing option, for cameras that record gyro data.
Locked-off shot questions
How still can a handheld shot get?
Very still, if you stood still while filming. Locked cancels both the quick shake and the slow drift, so the background stays in place. Close objects can still move slightly because a hand-held camera also shifts position, and motion blur from the original shake stays in the frames.
Why does a locked shot zoom in more than a smoothed one?
A lock has to undo every movement across the whole shot, including slow drift that smoothing would leave alone, and the more the camera wandered, the larger the empty edge it would expose. So the Tripod preset starts with more room under Zoom limit. Set Framing to Full frame if you’d rather keep the whole picture.
What if I panned during the shot?
Then a full lock would fight the pan. Choose Cinematic instead: it holds still where you held still and turns the pan into one clean, straight move, so the result still looks like a camera on a tripod head.
Is this the same as Camera Lock in DaVinci Resolve?
It does the same job. Resolve’s Camera Lock, Warp Stabilizer’s No Motion and Final Cut Pro’s Tripod Mode all try to remove every camera movement, as Locked does here, without an editor to install or a timeline to set up.
Will the lock stop people or cars moving?
No. Only the camera is held still; everything in the scene moves exactly as it did. That’s the point of a locked-off shot. If a large moving subject fills much of the frame, Ignore an area keeps it out of the tracking so it doesn’t pull the lock.