#FINAL CUT PRO ZOOM IN ON CLIP SERIES#

If your movement is a rotation around the center of your image and that doesn’t look right, try changing the Rotation Smooth setting.Īnd if the way your shot zooms in or out from the action isn’t looking stable, try changing the Scale Smooth setting.

If it is moving left, right, up or down that looks off, try changing the Translation Smooth setting. If that’s a difficult concept to get your head around, think about it this way:

#FINAL CUT PRO ZOOM IN ON CLIP SERIES#

The three settings - Translation, Rotation, and Scale – can best be thought of as a series of axes in 3D space. When you select Smoothcam, the following options appear in the Inspector: (A bad choice of words, I know, but you know what I mean…). SmoothCam is intended for moving/tracking shots where the camera itself is moving – like in my drive-by buffalo shooting. Luckily, you can just toggle Tripod Mode on and off and see which outcome you like better. Other times it ends up feeling a bit forced. Sometimes the effect is incredible, and the result is just perfect. Final Cut Pro will do whatever math is required to make sure of that. With Tripod Mode selected, the shot will not move. The reason it is grayed out in my example is that my camera is (intentionally) moving as I am driving by the buffalo scratching its neck on the poor Toyota.īut if I was trying to hold the camera absolutely still, just capturing whatever action was happening in front of it even if that included a pan or a zoom, Final Cut Pro would figure that out and give me the Tripod Mode option. If Tripod Mode is an option, it will not be grayed out like it is in the screenshot above. You have to decide when enough math is enough. Remember, there is a lot of fancy math behind this effect, but it is still just math. Generally speaking, the more the better, but only until you notice the picture starts to look a little distorted. The Smoothing setting is a measure of just how much stabilization you want Final Cut Pro to do. When you select InertiaCam the options below it will look like this: When InertiaCam is selected, Final Cut Pro figures out what that “dominant motion” is, then assumes any other movement is an instability you want to remove. For example, you are driving past a wild buffalo with the camera rolling. The InertiaCam method assumes your camera already has some intentional pan or rotation or zoom going on. What settings are below this depend on what Method you have chosen.įinal Cut Pro defaults to “automatic” which just means it chooses between the other two options, InertiaCam and SmoothCam depending on what it thinks will look best. Right below “Stabilization” in the Inspector is a setting labeled Method. Tweaking the Method Settingsįinal Cut Pro’s automatic stabilization is generally pretty good, but a little tweaking of its parameters can often improve the outcome. But by unchecking and rechecking the “Stabilization” box in the Inspector you can watch it with and without Final Cut Pro’s stabilization effect. When it is finished, you can play the clip and should notice the improvement. But as long as you see the words “analyzing for dominant motion” in the bottom left of your Viewer window (see the red arrow in the screenshot below), you will know Final Cut Pro is still working on it. Short clips will be analyzed quicker, longer clips not so quickly. Step 3: Click the checkbox next to “Stabilization”, as shown by the red arrow in the screenshot above.Īnd now Final Cut Pro gets to work. Step 2: Make sure you are on the Video properties tab in the Inspector as shown by the green arrow in the screenshot below. Step 1: Select the clip in your Timeline that you want to stabilize.

With those points in mind, here are the three steps to getting stable: Therefore, if there is part of your clip that has a lot or sudden camera movement, it may work better to split that part of the clip off and analyze it separately. Second, Final Cut Pro analyzes the entire clip to figure out what is intentional motion and what is just shaky camera work or an inconsequential bump that you want to smooth out. So, it can help to have your clips already trimmed to the length you want or – if you just want to stabilize a range within a clip – split the clip so you can stabilize just the part you want. Using Final Cut Pro’s stabilization tools is simple enough, but there are a few things to keep in mind before you start.įirst, when Final Cut Pro analyzes a clip for stabilization, it does it on the whole clip. Switch between stabilization Methods and adjust their settings as needed.Click on the clip and select Stabilization in the Inspector.Trim your clip to just what you want stabilized.

Final cut pro zoom in on clip