Gimbal mount
Also known as: gimbal bracket, gimbal adapter
The bracket that attaches a camera to a motorised stabiliser, where balance rather than tightness decides whether the result works.
Updated
What it means
A gimbal mount is the interface between a camera and a motorised stabiliser. Unlike a fixed mount, where the only requirement is that nothing moves, this one has to let the motors hold the camera level.
That makes balance the critical property. A camera mounted off centre forces the motors to work continuously, which drains the Battery life of the unit, overheats it and still produces a worse result than a properly balanced setup.
It is a different mechanism from the stabilisation inside an action camera. A Gimbal moves the camera physically, where electronic correction crops and warps the image instead.
How it works in practice
Balancing before powering on is the whole discipline. The camera should sit still in any orientation with the motors off, and only then is it worth switching them on.
Rebalancing after any change matters too. Adding a filter, a microphone or even a different Lens protector shifts the centre of mass enough to matter.
Checking the mount is tight as well as balanced is the second half of the job, since a balanced camera that can still rotate slightly inside its bracket produces a drift the motors chase endlessly without ever catching.
What to watch out for
An unbalanced setup fails gradually rather than obviously. The footage looks acceptable, the battery runs down fast and the motors get hot, and the cause is rarely the first suspect.
Blocking an axis is the other common error. A hand, a strap or a bag against the frame fights the motors, and the result is worse than leaving the camera unstabilised.
Mechanical stabilisation is also fragile where action cameras are not, so a mount on anything that takes repeated impacts is the wrong tool and a Chest mount relying on electronic correction is the right one.
How RawClip handles it
Smooth gimbal footage is weighted as establishing and connective material, because that is the job it does best inside a sequence. It cuts well against mounted camera clips precisely because the two kinds of movement are so different from each other.