Video stabilization
Also known as: stabilisation, image stabilisation
Any technique that removes unwanted camera movement, whether mechanically while filming or by shifting frames afterwards in software.
Updated
What it means
Stabilisation is the umbrella over several quite different mechanisms. A gimbal holds the camera physically level, a lens or sensor shifts to cancel small movements, and software moves whole frames after the fact.
The distinction that matters is whether frame is given up. Mechanical stabilisation keeps the full picture, while electronic correction needs margin to move into and therefore gives up field of view.
On action footage the electronic kind dominates, because a sealed body cannot carry a gimbal. That is what HyperSmooth, RockSteady and their equivalents all are underneath the branding.
How it works in practice
Shooting wider than the intended delivery gives correction room to work. A narrow mode leaves nothing for the stabiliser to use, so the available margin is decided before filming rather than after.
Deciding in camera or afterwards is a real choice. Correcting live is convenient and permanent, while leaving it to software keeps the original available and needs the telemetry to do a good job.
Checking what the result looks like at full size matters, since artefacts from aggressive correction are invisible on a phone and obvious on anything larger. A Rough cut on a proper screen reveals them early.
What to watch out for
All electronic correction crops, and corrections stack, so a heavily processed clip can deliver far fewer pixels than the file suggests.
Over correction also produces its own artefacts: edges that breathe, straight lines that bend and a slightly rubbery quality to movement that reads as wrong without being obviously broken. Dewarping afterwards cannot undo any of it.
Perfectly steady footage is not always better either. Removing every trace of movement from a fast descent takes away the sense of speed, which is a loss no Pacing decision later recovers. Some movement is information rather than error.
How RawClip handles it
Clips are analysed as delivered, with whatever stabilisation the camera applied, and shakiness is weighted rather than treated as a fault. Action footage is expected to move, so a clip is only marked down when the movement makes it genuinely hard to follow rather than merely energetic. Energy and instability are not the same signal.