What is rolling shutter?
It’s the way most digital video sensors capture a frame: one row at a time, from top to bottom, instead of all at once. If the camera or the subject moves while the rows are being read, straight lines lean, bend or wobble.
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The rolling shutter effect, and how to fix it
Why upright lines lean in a fast pan and shake turns the picture to jelly, and how to straighten your own clip in the browser while you watch the before and after.
Drop a wobbly, leaning clip
It opens with the Jelly fix preset and the split view, so you can see the lines straighten. Nothing is uploaded.Pick the clip that leans or wobbles like jelly.
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Stabilised on your device. Nothing is uploaded.
Rolling shutter is the way most phone, drone and action-camera sensors record a frame: row by row from top to bottom, rather than all at once. The bottom of the picture is captured a moment after the top, so if the camera moves during that moment, upright lines lean in a pan and a fast shake makes the whole picture wobble like jelly. That wobble is often called the jello effect.
Because the distortion follows the camera’s own movement, it can be undone once that movement is known. The tool above measures it, works out how fast your sensor reads out, and shifts each row of every frame back into line while it steadies the shot. This page opens with the Jelly fix preset and the Split view, so you can drag the divider across a lamp post or a doorway and watch it stand up straight. If the frame moves as a whole rather than bending, that’s ordinary shake: start with fixing a shaky video instead.
How to fix rolling shutter in a video
Open the wobbly clip
Drop it on the box marked Drop a wobbly, leaning clip, press Ctrl+O (⌘+O on a Mac), or on a phone tap Choose a wobbly clip. It opens with Jelly fix, which turns on the Warp correction, and with Rolling shutter set to Auto.
Let it measure the readout
While it is Analysing motion…, the camera’s movement is measured from frame to frame. Auto then estimates how long your sensor takes to read a frame from that movement alone, with no camera data needed.
Compare across a straight line
In Split view, drag the divider over something that should be upright: a building edge, a pole, a door. On the left it leans or ripples; on the right it should stand straight.
Adjust it by eye if needed
If lines still lean, open More options, set Rolling shutter to Manual and raise Strength until they stop; if they lean the other way, lower it. Set Rolling shutter to Off to see the difference it makes.
Export video
Press Export video (Ctrl+Enter or ⌘+Enter), check the settings and press Export video again, then Download or Share the corrected copy. The sound is kept.
What rolling shutter looks like
Skew: leaning in a pan
Pan quickly past a building and its walls tilt, as if the whole street were leaning. Each row of the picture was taken slightly later than the one above, by which time the camera had turned a little further. The faster the pan, the bigger the lean.
Wobble: the jello effect
When the camera shakes quickly, the direction of the movement changes within a single frame, so the picture bends one way at the top and the other at the bottom. Played back, it ripples like jelly. Car mounts, handlebars and drones with an unbalanced propeller are the usual culprits.
Squash and stretch
Tilting the camera up or down quickly stretches or squashes the picture vertically, because the rows are recorded while the view slides past them.
Effects no software can undo
- Flash bands. A band of light crosses part of the picture when a camera flash or a strobe fires during a frame: some rows saw the flash and the rest didn’t.
- Bent propellers, guitar strings and golf clubs. These are fast-moving objects, not a moving camera, and every part of them moved differently.
- Vibration faster than a frame. A loose mount buzzing many times per frame leaves a fine ripple that only a better mount removes.
Rolling shutter vs global shutter
A global shutter exposes every pixel at the same instant, so moving scenes and a moving camera record without bending. A rolling shutter reads the rows one after another, which lets sensors be cheaper, more sensitive and better at high resolutions, and is why almost every phone uses one.
| Rolling shutter | Global shutter | |
|---|---|---|
| How the frame is recorded | Row by row, top to bottom | Every pixel at once |
| Found in | Phones, drones, action cameras and most stills and video cameras | Some cinema and sports cameras, and many industrial and scientific cameras |
| Fast pans | Upright lines lean | Upright lines stay upright |
| Fast shake or vibration | The picture wobbles like jelly | The picture shakes but keeps its shape |
| Flash or strobe | A band of light across part of the frame | The whole frame lights up evenly |
Readout speed varies from camera to camera and from mode to mode. Many cameras read faster at lower resolutions or with a cropped sensor area, so the same shake bends less in 1080p than in full-width 4K. A faster shutter speed reduces blur but not the lean, because the rows are still read out one after another.
How the fix works here
The analysis measures how the camera moved between every pair of frames. From that, the speed of the camera during each frame is known, and with the readout time, so is the distortion: how far each row was displaced and rotated relative to the middle of the frame. The renderer moves every row back by exactly that amount on your graphics chip while it draws the steadied frame.
- Auto tries a range of readout times and keeps the one that makes the tracked points fit a single, undistorted camera movement best. Where the motion makes it clear, it also works out which way the sensor scans, so portrait phone clips and rotated cameras are corrected along the right direction. Where a clip shows too little to measure it, Auto leans towards a typical value instead; the figure beside Rolling shutter shows what it used.
- Manual with Strength lets you set the readout yourself, from 0% (no correction) upwards. Raise it until upright lines stop leaning.
- Warp under Correction bends small regions of the picture independently, which takes out the leftover ripple that a whole-frame correction can’t. It is part of Jelly fix and Maximum. Avoid it on fisheye action-camera footage: with no lens profile to straighten the fisheye’s curve first, bending the picture can add a wobble of its own.
Every preset except Timelapse starts with Rolling shutter on Auto, so any clip you steady here gets the fix. Timelapses are the exception: their frames are taken seconds apart, so the movement between them says nothing about how the camera moved while each one was being read.
How to avoid rolling shutter when filming
- Pan more slowly, especially past tall straight lines such as buildings and trees.
- Keep the phone’s or camera’s own stabilisation on: it calms the fast shake that causes wobble.
- Hold the camera with both hands, close to your body, rather than at arm’s length.
- On drones, keep the propellers balanced and undamaged and the gimbal dampers in good condition.
- On cars and bikes, use a mount with rubber damping, or film from a hand-held position braced against the body.
- If your camera offers it, film in a mode with a faster readout (often a lower resolution or a cropped mode) when the shot will move fast.
Fixing rolling shutter in other apps
Most editing apps have a rolling-shutter setting, usually next to their stabiliser:
- Final Cut Pro: a Rolling Shutter checkbox in the Video inspector, next to Stabilization. See stabilising in Final Cut Pro.
- iMovie on a Mac: a fix-rolling-shutter option alongside the stabilise checkbox. See stabilising in iMovie.
- Premiere Pro and After Effects: Warp Stabilizer’s Rolling Shutter Ripple setting (Automatic Reduction or Enhanced Reduction), and in both a separate Rolling Shutter Repair effect. See the Warp Stabilizer guide and stabilising in After Effects.
- Gyroflow: a frame readout time setting, filled in automatically for cameras it knows.
- Deshaker for VirtualDub: a rolling-shutter option with an amount you set.
Rolling shutter questions
What’s the difference between a global and a rolling shutter?
A global shutter records every pixel at the same instant, so motion never bends the picture. A rolling shutter reads the rows in turn, which is cheaper and works well at high resolutions, but distorts fast movement. Nearly every phone, drone and action camera uses a rolling shutter.
Can you fix rolling shutter after filming?
Mostly, when it comes from the camera moving. Knowing how the camera moved and how fast the sensor reads out, the distortion can be calculated and reversed row by row, which is what Rolling shutter does here. Distortion of fast-moving objects, flash bands and vibration faster than a frame can’t be undone.
What does Rolling Shutter Repair do?
It’s an After Effects effect, also available in Premiere Pro, that straightens rolling-shutter distortion without stabilising the shot. You set a Rolling Shutter Rate and a Scan Direction; here, Auto estimates the equivalent for you and steadies the clip at the same time.
Why does my drone footage look like jelly?
Vibration from the motors and propellers shakes the camera faster than the sensor can read a frame, so each frame is bent a different way. Balanced propellers and good dampers prevent most of it; Jelly fix removes much of what remains, although a very fine buzz can stay.
Does a faster shutter speed stop rolling shutter?
No. Shutter speed sets how long each row is exposed, not how long the sensor takes to read all of them, so the lean stays the same. A faster shutter does reduce motion blur, which makes the corrected footage look sharper.
Why is there a bright band across my video when a flash went off?
The flash fired while the sensor was part-way through reading the frame, so only some rows caught it. It’s a rolling-shutter effect, but it isn’t movement, and no stabiliser can remove it.