Bad video stabilization after iMovie '11 Export

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Bad video stabilization after iMovie '11 Export

Hi everybody,

I just finished my little iMovie project. It contains a lot of clips which are corrected by iMovie's video stabilization, and it looks pretty nice and smooth in the preview window. Unfortunately, the exported video looks somehow shaky and jumpy (but only the corrected scenes). See an example here:

http://youtu.be/ZfkTyceRWqE

The source clips were recorded on a Panasonic HX-WA20 Camcorder in 1080-30p. I copied the files on my Mac and imported the clips in iMovie in 30fps NTSC. I tried to export it with QuickTime in nearby all possible configurations (and all possible frame rates), but the result was still the same. Do you have a hint on how I could solve this problem?

My Mac:

iMac, 2,8 GHz Inel Core 2 Duo

2GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

OSX 10.7.5 with iMovie '11 (9.0.8)

iMovie '11, Mac OS X (10.7.5)

Posted on Feb 10, 2013 12:58 PM

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Answer 1

Feb 10, 2013 2:13 PM in response to biedert

If you right-click on the Event name or on one of the Event clips, does it offer to Optimize the video? If so, optimize it and that will take care of hte problem.

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Answer 2

biedert Author

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Feb 11, 2013 4:07 AM in response to AppleMan1958

Thanks for your reply! Actually, this option is given, but ony "Large -- 960x540" (I think the footage is larger). Nevertheless, the effect is unfortunately still the same. Any other suggestions?

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Answer 3

Feb 11, 2013 5:45 AM in response to biedert

I'm having the same issue too. Please help!

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Answer 4

biedert Author

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Feb 11, 2013 8:00 AM in response to Fidy Yuan

At least I'm not the only one with this problem. I'll let you know when I found a solution.

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Answer 5

biedert Author

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Feb 11, 2013 10:48 AM in response to biedert

Ok, I just tried to re-import the footage with different settings, but the result was the same. I forgot to mention, that all of my clips are slowed down to about 85%, which kindo of improves the stabilization effect (at least in the preview). Could this be the reasen why the preview looks better than the exported video (maybe because of a different frame rate)?

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Answer 6

biedert Author

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Feb 12, 2013 9:54 AM in response to biedert

Nobody?

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Answer 7

Feb 12, 2013 10:20 AM in response to biedert

I really wish I knew as well. There's a lot of other topics just like this but no one has gotten an answer yet. :/

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Answer 8

biedert Author

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Feb 12, 2013 12:51 PM in response to biedert

I think I'm giving up. I guess all that we can do is either wait for iMovie 13/14 to come out and hope that they fixed this issue, or to record the preview window with a screen cature software 😉

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Answer 9

Feb 14, 2013 10:28 AM in response to biedert

I've given up on it too. I'm uploading all my videos to youtube, stabilizing them and then downloading them. That's the best video stabilizer i've seen

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Answer 10

biedert Author

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Feb 14, 2013 10:48 AM in response to Fidy Yuan

Sounds like a plan. Didn't think of that option... To give it a last try, I'm going to download the free trial of Final Cut Pro. Hopefully, this will have a stabilization algorithm that works for me. I'll let you know if it did. If not, I think I'm also going with the YouTube solution.

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Answer 11

biedert Author

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Feb 14, 2013 11:51 AM in response to biedert

Thank god it looks like it's working!!! It tested the clip I posted obove and the exported video looks MUCH better! I think even better then in the preview window of iMovie! Now I'm going to export my iMovie project es a Final Cut XML, import it to Final Cut and see if it works with all of my clips. Final cut looks really nice, I'm already thinking about buying the full version (even though it's pretty expensive).

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Answer 12

May 25, 2013 7:33 PM in response to biedert

For me, iMovie 11 (9.0.8) stabilizes my 1080p MP4 clips ONLY AFTER I have CULLED (deleted) some footage from each clip (pretty strange, I know). I select some footage at the beginning or end of a clip, click delete key, then choose "Move Rejected Clips to Trash" from the File menu. Whether I imported the clips with or without optimization (the latter creates larger AIC footage) seems irrelevant to my success. By the way: To date, my basic process set my new $450 Sonyt DSC-HX300 to shoot MP4 (instead of AVCHD) at 1440 x 1080 (only some cameras can do this; 1440 is not noticeably different than 1920 x 1080, but files are smaller). AVCHD just required extra steps with Video Hub to work. iMovie isn't recognizing my camera properly, so I use this kludge: Connect camera to a Mac with USB cable (the rest of this explanation is the kludge). Find the footage in one of the mounted folders (ctrl-right-click to open them) and drag the clips to a non-iMovie folder, along with associated the THM files. Open all the THM files in a text editor, bulk remove colons, and then - one THM file at a time - copy the date and paste to re-label the associated MP4 video clip putting AM or PM to replace the space between date and time. Once named with their dates, I import (move) the files into iMovie, not bothering to optimize. The only remaining problem is getting rid of the jello effect from the camera's rolling shutter. iMovie 11 does not reduce my Sony's jello effect at all. Didn't work for a semi-pro videocamera (HDV-V1U) that I used to use.

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