The video stabilization feature in DaVinci Resolve works by analyzing each frame of your footage and using motion tracking to create virtual points which are then used to adjust the position of each frame so that they match up with each other as closely as possible.
A special feature of DaVinci Resolve is that it allows you to stabilize the video both during video editing and during coloring. Let’s consider both ways.
Stabilize video in DaVinci Resolve edit tab
Step 1: Choose a frame
On the timeline, we select the frame that we want to eliminate shaking. Then select “Inspector” in the upper right corner of the interface. In the window that appears, select the “Video” tab. Among the tabs that will be below, choose “Stabilization”.
Step 2: Choose a stabilization method
DaVinci Resolve has three stabilization methods:
Perspective – analyzes and applies stabilization based on perspective, pan, tilt, zoom, and rotation (similar to the Warp Stabilizer plugin in Adobe Premiere Pro).
Similarity – analyzes and stabilizes the video based on pan, tilt, zoom, and rotation.
Translation – performs analysis and applies stabilization based on pan and tilt (i.e. only the X and Y axes).
Step 3: Additional stabilization settings
There are a few more options below, namely two checkboxes:
Zoom – significantly increases video zoom. Used when black edges are strongly visible due to stabilization (always selected by default).
Camera Lock – creates the effect of a video shot on a tripod. That is, the image after stabilization will look static.
Then several parameters can be adjusted, depending on how much you need to adjust the stabilization of the video.
Cropping Ratio – managing this parameter indicates how much the frame is allowed to be scaled to get rid of black edges.
Smooth – depending on how this parameter is set, stabilization smoothing will be applied. Tobito, thanks to this, you can get rid of the “hand tremor” effect.
Strength – this parameter controls how much stabilization will be applied.
Step 4: Apply stabilization!
After the selected settings (this is an important point!) press the “Stabilize” button so that stabilization is applied to the selected frame.
If you need to make corrections after stabilization, then you need to press the “Stabilize” button again. Otherwise, the changes will not be applied to the video.
Stabilize video in DaVinci Resolve color tab
Step 1: Select the Color tab
To perform stabilization in the color tab, you need to go to the “Tracker” tab. There, select the “Stabilization” tab.
Step 2: Adjust stabilization
Although the stabilization tab looks different from the previous one, the settings themselves remain unchanged. Therefore, we carry out all the same adjustments according to already familiar parameters.
Step 3: Stabilize video
After all settings, press the “Stabilize” button. After that, we will be able to look at the graph, which will show how the video was stabilized. This is quite helpful!
Conclusion
DaVinci Resolve is a powerful video editing software that offers many tools for post-production workflows. One of them is video stabilization. The software’s built-in video stabilization feature helps to smooth out shaky footage and give it a more professional look.
It does not matter in which window to perform stabilization. Do it in a convenient way!