I filmed something cool with my Samsung Galaxy S24 but it's too shaky. I'm using the free version of DaVinci Resolve and I don't know if there's a way to stabilize it without it looking too weird. Any suggestions?
On DaVinci Resolve you just go straight to the Fusion tab and look for "Stabilization" - it's super effective for shaky phone footage, but watch out not to push the sliders too far or it gets warped and weird. Personally I never go above 70-80% stabilization or else your video looks like it's in jelly, haha.
You're in luck, DaVinci Resolve has this really cool thing for that called "Stabilization" in the Fusion tab or straight in Cut/Edit depending on your version. Honestly it's pretty powerful, you go into the inspector and look for the stabilize section, then you adjust the intensity slowly like between 0.5 and 0.8 so it doesn't look too smoothed out or fake.
If you think it's too aggressive, you can also try "Motion Blur" on light to make it look more natural, that helps a lot.
Otherwise honestly for a pretty shaky phone video, it's already pretty decent as a free solution without needing external software.
I was using DaVinci Resolve too when I started filming my ice fishing trips, so I get it. The stabilization in there is really pretty good. What you gotta do is first import your video in the Edit tab, then you look for the clip in the timeline and right-click on it. You'll see "Stabilize" right there in the menu that pops up. Sometimes it takes a minute to analyze the video, like a few minutes if it's long, but that's fine you can do something else while you wait.
Once you've started the stabilization, the important thing is to not go overboard with the settings. Like if you crank the slider all the way up it's true it's gonna get super weird with lots of weird effects and some pretty strange distortions. I'd say start around 50-60% stabilization, then you watch the result in preview and you tweak it. Most of the time that's enough to get rid of the little shakes. If your phone really moved all over the place, well you gotta accept it's not magic, there's limits, but for moderate movements it works really well.
Oh and a tip someone gave me years ago: if you can film with better stability from the start that's even better. Like lean on something, use both hands, or even just put your phone in portrait mode instead of landscape that helps quite a bit. But anyway, you already got your video so with DaVinci you should manage fine.
DaVinci Resolve is really not bad for that 😊 I use the stabilizer in the Fusion tab or sometimes directly in the timeline depending on which version you have, and honestly it does a good job without making your video look weird if you take it easy with the settings.
After that you gotta test the adjustments a bit because too much stabilization can give a weird effect, but for normal shaky footage it's perfect.
Try it first with the default settings and see how it looks, you can always tweak it after!
The thing in Fusion works pretty well, but before you use it you should try zooming in a bit on your video in the timeline first - that gives you some room for stabilization without it cropping too much or looking weird. So what kind of content did you film anyway, was there a lot of movement like you walking around or is it more just static shakes?
The really important thing with stabilization in Resolve is not to push it to the max right off the bat. Everyone tells you to use Stabilization in Fusion, and yeah it works, but if you max out the sliders you're gonna end up with artificial-looking footage that looks weirdly zoomed in and the edges get clipped. I made that mistake once and it totally ruined a video. Start small, like around 40-50% stabilization, check the preview, then gradually increase it until you find the sweet spot.
What people often forget to mention is that the blurrier your video is to start with and the harder you stabilize, the more you'll lose in sharpness and detail. There's a limit to what you can actually recover. If the camera movement is really intense (like if you filmed while walking fast), accept that you might have to leave a slight shake rather than end up with garbage footage. Also try the "Perspective" option versus "Stabilize XY" - sometimes Perspective gives better results on shaky phone footage because it also handles small rotations.
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