Shaky footage
Also known as: unstable footage, jittery clip
A clip that moves more than its subject does, where the frame jitters or hammers while the rider inside it stays more or less still.
Updated
What it means
Shake is movement that carries no information. A camera on a rough surface transmits every impact to the frame, and none of that motion tells a viewer anything about what the rider was doing.
Modern cameras hide a great deal of it. HyperSmooth and similar systems absorb vibration that would have been unwatchable a few years ago, which raised the threshold rather than removing the problem.
It is a different fault from a deliberate handheld feel. A small amount of operator movement reads as presence; a frame hammering at ten times a second reads as a mistake.
How it works in practice
Mount choice does more than any setting. A helmet moves less than a chest and far less than a handlebar, and matching the mount to the surface is more or less the whole of prevention.
Stabilisation in post is the second line. Gyroflow using recorded gyroscope data corrects far better than analysing the picture, and both approaches have to crop into the frame in order to do it.
A tilt or a pan amplifies it. Any deliberate movement on top of vibration compounds both, so a Tilt shot from a shaking position is worse than either problem alone.
What to watch out for
Slowing it down makes it worse. Half speed doubles the time the eye has to notice each wobble, which is why shaky material and slow motion are a consistently poor combination.
Stabilisation produces its own artefacts. Heavy correction warps straight lines and makes the edges of frame swim, and the result can read as stranger than the original shake ever did.
Beyond a point it belongs in Unusable footage. A clip that hammers through its best moment is not rescued by anything, and keeping it in a sequence damages the shots on either side of it.
How RawClip handles it
Stability is one of the measures scoring uses, so a hammering clip loses to steadier coverage of the same moment. Stabilisation is applied during assembly, which means moderate shake is smoothed rather than being a reason to discard a shot.