How to tell when stabilisation is what is making your footage shaky
Tell Vizard Agent that the edit is shakier than the footage you supplied. That comparison is the diagnosis: stabilisation that is fighting rolling shutter or a moving subject adds a wobble of its own. It rebuilds from the untouched originals with no motion processing at all, finds the passages that were already steady, and trims the shaky parts out rather than correcting them.
What do you type into Vizard Agent?
Tell Vizard Agent it is worse than the source, in those words. "It is shaky" invites yet more stabilisation. "It is shakier than the footage I sent you" points squarely at the processing, which is very nearly the opposite instruction. Hand over both the processed cut and the original files, because the diagnosis is a comparison.
Prompt
What does Vizard Agent actually do?
Stabilisation is a correction, and a correction can lose. When it can't separate camera movement from subject movement, it invents a drift of its own. So Vizard Agent tries it properly, escalates it, and only then switches strategy: selecting stillness instead of repairing movement. Footage that resists repair usually holds a few steady seconds, which is all a short reel needs. In the session behind this article it:
- Measured the camera movement across a set of handheld clinic reels and prepared stabilisation for the shots that needed it.
- Tested a stronger, locked-off treatment and checked that pass for distortion.
- Stabilised the source segments before any cuts were made, and replaced segments that still needed too much correction.
- Compared the rebuilt reels against the untouched source, then found genuine camera holds in the original footage instead.
- Exported from the originals with no motion processing at all, and trimmed off a blurry opening and a shaky tail outright.
When does this not work well?
Selection needs something to select. Footage that moves continuously, like a walking shot or a handheld follow, contains no holds, so the choice is between a stabilised version with artefacts and the movement as it is. Steady holds are brief, so long shots and long durations run out of material. Where footage is only shaky, stabilisation is the lesser evil.
Common questions
Why does stabilisation add shake? It can misread subject movement as camera movement and correct for it.
Does cropping make it worse? It can, and Vizard Agent counts it as processing: reframing magnifies whatever movement is left.
Will the cut be shorter? Often. Steady holds are brief, and Vizard Agent will say how much it found.