iMovie ’09 Image Stabilization Examples

Nice before/after example from Beau Colburn, with footage from a Flip Mino HD. And here’s an example from Neven Mrgan. Update: And an example from Jason Snell here.

What I’ve found is that iMovie won’t apply any stabilization at all to a clip that contains any portions which are too shaky to stabilize. Like, say, a single clip where you shoot pointing north for a few seconds, then quickly whip the camera around to point south for another few seconds. But if you break that clip up into two separate clips — editing out the blurry “whipping around” frames — iMovie will then stabilize the separate clips. iMovie helpfully indicates the “too shaky” portions of a clip with red squiggly lines. Here’s the relevant portion from iMovie ’09’s help:

A red squiggly line underlines any video in the Project Browser or Event Browser that was too shaky to stabilize. To play a clip stabilized in a project, you must remove any parts underlined with a red squiggly line.

But I’ve found that iMovie will stabilize some clips which contain the red squiggles, if the squiggled segments are short.

★ Tuesday, 27 January 2009