Given that I’m using Apple’s iMovie software for my Emerging Tech Talk video podcast, I was intrigued by the idea of the new “image stabilization” feature in iMovie ’09. The concept is simple enough – iMovie simply compares one frame to the next, finds the matching patterns and adjusts the frames so that the patterns line up from one frame to the next. This will either remove or reduce the “shake” that happens when you are recording with a handheld camera.
After recently purchasing Apple’s iLife ’09 (admittedly primarily for the iPhoto improvements), I thought I’d give the iMovie stabilization a test. I chose one of my Emerging Tech Talk videos that I recorded with my little JVC camera down at ITEXPO earlier this year:
I just recorded this with Transnexus CEO Jim Dalton out in the hallway outside the conference rooms. I was holding my JVC camera in my hand and trying to brace it against my body to keep it stable.
I honestly didn’t really realize how much the image was moving around until I watched it carefully afterwards.
Now here is the version after iMovie ’09 image stablization:
What do you think? I thought the stabilization turned out rather well.
From a workflow point-of-view, performing the image stabilization was just another step in the iMovie ’09 post-production process. I selected the video clip (the entire segment is one “clip” in iMovie), clicked on the “gear” icon, chose “Clip Adjustments”, clicked the checkbox next to “Smooth clip motion”, pressed “Done”… and waited. It did take several minutes on my MacBook Pro… I’m not sure exactly how long, but it was a number of minutes.
I’ve not yet imported any video from my camera since moving to iMovie ’09, but it appears that there is a checkbox during the import that you could check so that movies go through the stabilization process during import. Obviously this will lengthen the import process, but would then get you on your way to editing with a smoothed out image.
I’ll have to try it out on some other clips, but so far it looks like it could be a useful tool for working with movie clips shot with a handheld camera.
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video, imovie, apple, mac, macosx, ilife, imovie09, imagestabilization
First heard you mention this in a recent episode of FIR, and I plan to give it a try in iMovie for my next hand-held video. I do notice — and had read elsewhere — that there’s some loss of quality when you go to image stabilization, and the image is zoomed in slightly. You just have to make sure you don’t frame the shot of your interviewee too tightly, and in this case, you didn’t.
Thanks for sharing this, Dan!
BP