How to stabilise a shaky shot without cropping into it
Tell Vizard Agent to stabilise without zooming, cropping or blurring the sides. It checks which stabilisation options avoid enlarging the picture at all, fills the edges the shake exposes with a soft background rather than a mirrored one, and locks any section that still drifts against a reference frame taken from just before it.
What do you type into Vizard Agent?
Rule out the shortcuts by name and say what should stay in the centre. Asking only for stabilisation gets you the standard trade, a steadier but tighter shot, because that is what stabilisation normally means. "Keep the original proportions" and "keep the waterfall in the middle" are different requirements, and telling Vizard Agent both stops one being quietly traded for the other.
Prompt
What does Vizard Agent actually do?
Every stabiliser pays for steadiness with picture. It moves each frame to cancel the shake, which leaves gaps at the edges, and it hides those gaps by zooming in. Keeping the original framing means filling the edges another way and treating the worst seconds on their own. In the session behind this article it:
- Analysed the orientation and real frame size of a handheld shot taken from a moving boat, and checked which stabilisation modes and edge fills work without enlarging the picture.
- Rendered a no-zoom version with a gentle horizontal shift to hold the subject, and confirmed the original scale on frames.
- Replaced mirrored edges with a soft background, because a mirrored fill leaves a visible reflected sliver.
- Analysed the camera movement, measured the residual shake and rendered strong stabilisation with no zoom, crop, blur or trim.
- Built a dedicated lock for the worst seconds against a reference frame from just before them, then strengthened it until the drift stopped being visible.
- Offered a separate maximum version with a very light adaptive crop for the edge artefacts.
When does this not work well?
There is a limit to what can be corrected without giving something up. A violent shake needs more movement than the frame edges can cover, and past that point the honest options are a very light crop or a softer target. Rolling-shutter wobble is a different fault and harder to fix, and a moving subject with a moving camera can't both be locked.
Common questions
Will it zoom in? Not if you say not to. Vizard Agent uses modes that avoid it.
What happens at the edges? Vizard Agent fills them softly rather than mirroring the picture.
What if one section is worse? Vizard Agent locks that stretch to a reference frame from just before it.