The camera is a standard smartphone feature that everyone uses these days. I would even say that no other addition to the cell phone has made it so versatile. Android devices have taken the importance of the camera to heart and implemented features to significantly improve the user experience.
While the video functionality of smartphones continues to evolve, most do not have the power of video stabilization from the Android camera. Some Android devices have many video stabilization features that support high frame rates, 4K resolution and slow motion.
Why stabilize videos on your smartphone using Android video stabilization?
Video factors that influence quality include bit rate, FPS, and pixels, but its stabilization determines the usability of your footage. Despite the best smartphone cameras, your videos are likely filmed on the move, while racing or traveling. This can cause major stability issues and your clip may become blurry and useless. Optical image stabilization is an advanced solution to this problem added to Android video capture devices.
Although your smartphone can deliver grainy or shaky videos, this software technology softens optics to stabilize images and improve video quality. Android devices running 8, 9, and 10 have high-quality video stabilizers. These work very well on the latest Samsung, Oppo, Huawei Xiaomi and Nokia devices.
What alternatives exist to stabilize videos?
Only top and mid-range Android device brands have optical image stabilization (OIS) functions. Sometimes, instead of an optical image stabilizer, your Android smartphone may have an electronic image stabilization (EIS) function. If you don’t have both OIS and EIS, stabilizing the videos on your Android device will require a third-party download.
Professional video stabilization is a CPU intensive task and requires good expertise, so don’t expect these applications to fully solve the problem. Depending on the shake of your video, quality software applications will correct the problem, but only to a certain extent. That’s why it’s worth investing in the best third-party video stabilization app and hardware you can find.
Stabilization can also be performed on alternative applications integrated into your Android smartphone.
Smoother video stabilizer
Smoother video stabilizer is a great third-party alternative to integrated Android video stabilization. It is available for free download from the Google PlayStore. This application allows you to stabilize both the photos integrated into the application or the existing videos in your gallery.
Dubbed as a video converter, the video stabilizer also allows you to select the resolution you want your video output to be. However, it is always better to tone down grainy videos so as not to lose resolution during the stabilization process.
An easy to use application, Video Smoother Stabilizer has features that make downloading interesting. It allows you to keep the frame rate, orientation, original sound and resolution when you edit your video.
The smoother video stabilizer supports all smartphone video formats, including .avi, .gopro, .m4v, .mpg and .mpeg. Other unwanted effects on your videos can also be corrected by the app while stabilizing the shakes, including accidental vertical pan, horizontal rotation, and zoom.
Optimized algorithms allow Video Smoother Stabilizer to merge images and fill in the blanks that are common after the stabilization process. This app will make videos shot on Android smart devices look professional, without any evidence that they were run through the app.
Google Photos
By simply playing your shaky videos in Google Photos, a stabilization option will be automatically offered to you in the modification options of the application. An electronic background stabilizer does magic on the hard spots while playing video from your Android device.
If your video is already almost stable, passing it through the Google Photos stabilizer will result in a virtually stable and uniform video. This app also doesn’t take time to stabilize the video. It takes as long as the duration of your video.
Google Photos is generally not presented as the default app for iOS, but you can find it on Android and Google Pixel devices. If your phone does not have the app, you can download it for free from the Google PlayStore.
With this application, there is no need to install a third-party stabilizer, especially since Google applications are more or less native to devices running Android.
How to stabilize video
To stabilize videos using Google Photos, first open the app or install it for free.
- Move towards Albums and select the folder containing the video file you want to stabilize.
- When your video is selected, press the button labeled Adjustments at the bottom of your screen.
- The video will be loaded on the next screen. There you can select the option to stabilize it during rendering. A prompt will tell you that Google Photos has finished stabilizing your video.
- You must select to save and Copy to download the finished product in the gallery of your device. Otherwise, the stabilized version will not exist on your phone.
Google Photos will not stabilize your video if you exit the app prematurely before saving it. It also doesn’t work in the background.
Microsoft Hyperlapse for mobile video
A Microsoft product, Microsoft Hyperlapse Mobile is mainly used to create gaps in Android. This application can however also be used as a video stabilizer.
Microsoft HyperLapse is available for free from the Google PlayStore.
- After installing the app on your Android device, open the app and select Import. This allows you to select an existing video from your gallery. The app will also allow you to shoot videos directly.
- Once your clip is imported into Microsoft HyperLapse, adjust the video speed from 4X to 1X to avoid creating a hyper lapse video.
- Press the check mark icon to process the video via the stabilizer. This automatically saves it to the video or movies folder in the internal memory of your Android devices. Microsoft HyperLapse also gives you the ability to share video with other applications and users directly from the stabilization application.
HyperLapse provides high quality output, stabilizing more aggressively than Google Photos. An artificial distortion effect can however be noticed after very shaky videos have passed through the stabilizer.
Conclusion
If you don’t have a modern Android device capable of stabilizing your videos for you, one of the three alternative options should work fine. However, if you are using version 8 or higher of the Android software, you should have no problem filming consistent quality video.