Guide · free tool included
Two built-in ways to steady a shot, automatic and by hand, plus the After Effects tools for the rolling-shutter lean and the blur that stabilising leaves behind.
Hundreds of points are tracked for you, and the original plays alongside. Nothing is uploaded.Pick the shot you would otherwise track by hand.
Works with MP4MOVWebMMKVand more
Stabilised on your device. Nothing is uploaded.
After Effects has two ways to stabilise footage. The automatic one is Warp Stabilizer: select the layer, then in the Effects & Presets panel open Distort and apply Warp Stabilizer; it analyses and steadies the layer in the background. The manual one is the point tracker: select the layer, choose Animation › Stabilize Motion, place a track point on a sharp, high-contrast detail, track it, and apply the result so the layer moves against the shake.
Use Warp Stabilizer first; it is quicker and handles most handheld shots. Reach for Stabilize Motion when Warp bends the picture, when the shot is a locked-off frame with a small jolt, or when you need keyframes you can edit. Warp Stabilizer’s settings are the same as in Premiere and are explained by symptom in the Warp Stabilizer guide; this page covers what only After Effects adds.
The manual route, for when you want control over exactly what is held still. It moves the layer, so the frame edges show afterwards; the last step deals with them.
Select the footage layer in the Timeline panel and choose Animation › Stabilize Motion, or click Stabilize Motion in the Tracker panel (open it from the Window menu). The layer opens in the Layer panel with a track point.
In the Tracker panel, tick Position, and Rotation or Scale if the shot tilts or breathes. Rotation and scale need a second track point, ideally on the same object or at the same distance, as far from the first as possible.
Go to the first frame you want to track. Drag each feature region onto a small, sharp, high-contrast detail that stays in shot and doesn’t move by itself (a window corner, not a leaf), and size the search region to cover how far it jumps between frames.
Click Analyze Forward (or Analyze Backward). If a point slips off its detail, stop, drag it back on that frame and continue.
Click Apply and choose X and Y in Motion Tracker Apply Options. The layer now moves against the shake, so scale it up slightly or put it in a smaller composition to keep the moving edges out of view.
The effect and its main settings match Premiere’s: Result, Smoothness, Method, Framing, Rolling Shutter Ripple and the rest, all explained in the Warp Stabilizer settings guide. After Effects adds a few things that make difficult shots easier.
| Warp Stabilizer | Stabilize Motion (Tracker) | |
|---|---|---|
| How it tracks | Automatically, with points all over the frame | One or two points you place by hand |
| Result | A smoothed or locked camera, slightly zoomed | A locked frame on the tracked detail; smoothing it means editing keyframes |
| Good at | Handheld walks, pans and general shake | Locked-off shots with a jolt, clips Warp bends, VFX plates |
| Weak at | Shots with strong depth or a large moving subject | Shots where the detail leaves the frame, or many minutes of footage |
| Edges | Hidden by its own crop and scale, or filled from nearby frames | Up to you: scale, crop or reframe the layer |
Phone, drone and many DSLR sensors read a frame from top to bottom, so fast movement makes verticals lean and shake look like jelly. Rolling Shutter Repair, in the Distort category, undoes that without stabilising the shot. Set Rolling Shutter Rate, the share of the frame time the sensor takes to read out, until leaning lines stand upright; Adobe’s guide suggests 50–70% for most DSLRs and close to 100% for iPhones. Scan Direction matters if the camera was turned or upside down. Under Advanced, Method chooses between Warp (tracked points) and Pixel Motion (optical flow).
Warp Stabilizer has its own reduction built in, but Adobe notes the separate effect has more controls. Apply it first, then stabilise, when the lean is strong. Rolling shutter, explained shows what causes it and how to spot it.
Stabilising holds the frame still but leaves the blur of the original shake in individual frames, so a steadied shot can pulse between sharp and soft. Effect › Blur & Sharpen › Camera-Shake Deblur rebuilds the blurred frames from the sharp ones either side. Blur Duration sets how many frames around each blurred one it looks at, and Deblur Method trades High Quality (slower) against Standard. No stabiliser on its own can do this, including the one on this page.
For a shot that just needs steadying, the stabiliser at the top of this page skips the tracking by hand: it tracks hundreds of points across every frame on your device, plans a smooth path, and shows the result Side by side with the original. Nothing is uploaded and nothing is installed.
| After Effects | Here |
|---|---|
| Warp Stabilizer defaults | The Recommended preset, under How was it filmed? |
| Stabilize Motion with Position, Rotation, Scale | Steady these: Left–right, Up–down, Rotation, Zoom |
| A locked track on one detail | Camera: Locked, or the Tripod preset |
| Deleting track points on a moving subject | Ignore an area (analyses the clip again) |
| Rolling Shutter Repair: Rolling Shutter Rate | Rolling shutter: Auto estimates it; Manual with Strength sets it |
| Scaling the layer to hide the edges | Framing and Zoom limit, or Full frame with filled Edges |
| Camera-Shake Deblur | No equivalent: blur in the frames stays |
Press Export video, choose MP4 if it is going back into a composition, press Export video again in the sheet, and import the file like any other footage. The frame size and frame rate stay as they were.
Select the layer and choose Animation › Stabilize Motion, or open the Tracker panel from the Window menu and click Stabilize Motion. Both start a tracker whose result moves the layer itself against the shake.
The core settings are the same. After Effects adds visible track points you can delete, the Objective options for reversing a stabilisation or moving another layer with the shake, and it ignores masks and effects on the layer unless you pre-compose.
Stabilising moves the layer to cancel the shake, which uncovers its edges. With Stabilize Motion, scale the layer up a little or crop the composition. With Warp Stabilizer, keep Framing on one of the crop options, or use Stabilize, Synthesize Edges.
No. It only straightens the lean and wobble a rolling-shutter sensor adds to movement. Stabilise afterwards with Warp Stabilizer or the tracker if the camera also shook.
Partly. Camera-Shake Deblur replaces blurred frames with picture rebuilt from sharp frames nearby. It works best when only some frames are blurred; it can’t sharpen a shot that is blurred throughout.
Try Warp Stabilizer first. Switch to Stabilize Motion when Warp bends the picture, when the shot should be completely still and has one clear detail to track, or when you need keyframes you can edit.