Guide · free tool included
Turn on the stabiliser in the Video inspector, choose between InertiaCam and SmoothCam, find Tripod Mode, and fix the jelly of a rolling shutter, with the black-bar problem solved.
Compare it Side by side with the original, then bring the steady copy back into your library. Nothing is uploaded.Pick the clip you are editing in Final Cut Pro.
Works with MP4MOVWebMMKVand more
Stabilised on your device. Nothing is uploaded.
To stabilise a clip in Final Cut Pro, select it in the timeline, open the inspector (Command-4) and click the Video button at the top. Scroll down to the Stabilization and Rolling Shutter sections and select the Stabilization checkbox. Its checkbox turns blue while Final Cut Pro analyses the clip, and the Method pop-up stays on Automatic, which picks InertiaCam or SmoothCam for you. Play the clip to check it.
If the picture also leans or wobbles in fast moves, select the Rolling Shutter checkbox as well. Both corrections work on whole clips, not on a range, so blade the shaky section off first if the rest of the clip is fine. The steps below follow Apple’s guide for Final Cut Pro 12.4.
Stabilization and Rolling Shutter apply to whole clips. If only part of a clip is shaky, cut it with the Blade tool so the correction covers just that piece.
Select the clip, choose Window › Show in Workspace › Inspector (or press Command-4), then click the Video button at the top of the inspector.
Scroll to the Stabilization section and select its checkbox. It turns blue and Final Cut Pro analyses the clip to choose the best method.
Leave Method on Automatic, or pick InertiaCam and drag Smoothing, or SmoothCam and set Translation Smooth, Rotation Smooth and Scale Smooth. A value of 0.0 turns that part off.
If verticals lean or the frame wobbles like jelly, select the Rolling Shutter checkbox and pick a stronger amount from its pop-up menu if the effect remains.
Higher values compensate for more camera movement, and so crop more. Apple suggests experimenting: for horizontal, vertical and rotational shake, for instance, set Translation Smooth and Rotation Smooth above 0.
Tripod Mode makes the shot look as if the camera were on a tripod. It only appears with InertiaCam, and only when Final Cut Pro’s analysis decides the clip suits it, so a walking shot or a big pan won’t offer it. If the checkbox is missing, the clip moves too much to be locked; a steady but moving result from SmoothCam is the alternative. Making handheld footage look locked off explains the limits of any tripod effect.
When a clip moves too much, stabilising it can leave black bars at the edges. Apple’s guide offers three fixes:
The Rolling Shutter correction deals with a different fault. Most video sensors expose the picture line by line, so fast camera moves make the picture look wobbly or skewed. Selecting the checkbox reduces that distortion; it doesn’t steady the shot, and the two corrections can be used together. The rolling shutter effect shows what it looks like and why it happens.
The stabiliser at the top of this page is an alternative when you are away from your Mac, when you want to see the original and the result side by side as you change things, or when Tripod Mode won’t appear. It runs in the browser and the clip is never uploaded.
| Final Cut Pro | Here |
|---|---|
| Method: Automatic | The Suggested card under How was it filmed?, picked from the measured shake |
| InertiaCam with Smoothing | Camera: Smooth with Smoothness |
| Tripod Mode | Camera: Locked, or the Tripod preset, offered for any clip |
| SmoothCam: Translation Smooth | Steady these: Left–right and Up–down |
| SmoothCam: Rotation Smooth | Steady these: Rotation |
| SmoothCam: Scale Smooth at 0.0 | Steady these: turn off Zoom |
| Rolling Shutter and its amount | Rolling shutter: Auto, or Manual with Strength |
| Cropping away black bars | Framing (Crop to fit, Smart zoom) and Zoom limit, or Full frame with filled Edges |
| Excessive Shake tags | The Motion graph, which shows the original and the steadied camera path over time |
Press Export video, choose MP4 and press Export video again in the sheet. The Codec list shows only what your browser can encode; H.264 is the safe choice for any editor. The frame size and frame rate stay the same, so the clip slots back into your project.
It reduces the skew and wobble that appear when a camera with a line-by-line sensor moves fast: leaning verticals in a pan, or a jelly-like ripple from shake. It doesn’t stabilise the shot; turn on Stabilization for that.
It appears only when Method is InertiaCam and only if the analysis finds the clip suitable. Clips with a lot of movement don’t get it.
The stabiliser moves each frame to cancel the shake, and when the shake is large the moved frame no longer covers the screen. Lower the smoothing values, trim the shakiest parts, or crop the picture.
Not with a range selection: the corrections apply to whole clips. Blade the clip at the start and end of the shaky part and stabilise that piece alone.
InertiaCam suits shots with deliberate pans and zooms and can offer Tripod Mode. SmoothCam gives finer control, with a separate slider for each kind of movement. Automatic chooses between them and is the right first try.
It has more control: a choice of method, separate sliders and Tripod Mode. iMovie for Mac has one strength slider and a rolling-shutter fix; the iMovie guide shows where they are.