How to stabilize your videos with Google Photos

Martin Brinkmann
Apr 17, 2017
Updated • Apr 7, 2019
Music and Video
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12

Google Photos is Google's official photo management, storing and sharing solution for Android and iOS mobile operating systems.

The company completed the roll out of a new video feature recently that lets you stabilize videos that you captured using the device, or that you have stored locally on it instead.

All modern phones come with capabilities to record videos. The capabilities improve with every smartphone generation, for instance when it comes to the recording resolution.

Since you capture the videos while the phone is in your hand usually, you may have experienced shaky videos at times. Video stabilization is a technology that reduces the "shakiness" of videos automatically. In technical terms, it describes techniques that reduce blurring associated with the motion of  a camera during exposure.

Google Photos video stabilization

google photos stabilize

Google Photo's new stabilize feature supports videos that you have recorded with any camera. The only requirement is that the video is available on the device you run Google Photos on.

The processing itself happens locally, and all you need is the Google Photos app for your device.

Once installed, open Google Photos and tap on the video that you want to stabilize. The video should open up in fullscreen.

Locate the toolbar at the bottom, and tap on the edit link there. The edit link is the second icon from left at the time of writing next to the share link.

This opens a new screen, and two new video editing options at the bottom of the screen. Select stabilize to start the video stabilization process (you may also rotate the video, useful if you have recorded it upside down for instance).

The stabilization process runs locally. It may take a while to complete as the process depends largely on the processing power of the device, and the length and quality of the video.

A preview of the video is loaded once the stabilization completes. You may play the video at this time to judge for yourself how well the stabilization worked. There is unfortunately no option to display the original and stabilized videos side by side as it would improve that significantly.

You may save the video in processed form on the device with a tap on the save link, or close it instead. The processed video is trashed in this case.

Here is a quick video that demonstrates the feature. It shows an original video and a stabilized processed copy of it side by side.

Closing Words

I tested the video stabilization functionality of Google Photos with a handful of shaky videos, and the stabilization improved all of them significantly. You should not expect wonders though. If you look closely, you will still notice that the video is not fully stabilized. All in all though, it should be a lot better than the original video.

Now You: Do you process images or videos that you take with your smartphone?

Summary
How to stabilize your videos with Google Photos
Article Name
How to stabilize your videos with Google Photos
Description
We take a look at the video stabilization feature of Google Photos, and explain how you can use it to stabilize any video that is on your smartphone.
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. Anonymous said on August 1, 2010 at 12:43 pm
    Reply

    Why not make use of the mplayer.conf?

  2. Mike J said on August 1, 2010 at 2:58 pm
    Reply

    Huh, I have never even seen this “font cache” pane; videos play at once for me, using VLC & XP SP3.

    1. Martin said on August 1, 2010 at 3:39 pm
      Reply

      Mike, in theory this should have only been displayed once to you, at the very first video that you played with VLC. The time this window is displayed depends largely on the number of fonts in your font directory.

      1. Mike J said on August 2, 2010 at 2:30 pm
        Reply

        huh, I lucked out for a change?? Amazing!!
        Apparently VLC keeps this info through version updates, but I didn’t see this message after a fresh OS install about 8 weeks ago, & a new VLC.

  3. myo said on August 1, 2010 at 5:52 pm
    Reply

    yes, yes, i have the same problem. sometimes, VLC crashes when it is playing .mov file.

  4. Kishore said on August 13, 2010 at 2:55 pm
    Reply

    Error:
    Buidling font Cache pop-up

    Solution:

    Open VLC player.

    On Menu Bar:

    Tools
    Preferences

    (at bottom – left side)
    Show settings — ALL

    Open: Video
    Click: Subtitles/OSD (This is now highlited, not opened)
    Text rendering module – change this to “Dummy font renderer function”

    Save
    Exit

    Re-open – done.
    Progam will no longer look outside self for fonts

    Source – WorthyTricks.co.cc

    1. Martin said on August 13, 2010 at 3:10 pm
      Reply

      Great tip, thanks a lot Kishore.

  5. javier said on August 14, 2010 at 1:50 pm
    Reply

    @Kishore, I’ll try your tips, but does this mean it will no longer show subtitles either?
    I do use subtitles, but the fontcache dialog box pops up (almost) everytime I play a file.

    Could this be related to the fonts I have installed? Or if I add/remove fonts to my system?

    I’ll try to do a fresh install also, if your tips does no work. I’ll post back here later…

    /thanks
    /j

  6. Kishore said on August 15, 2010 at 12:38 pm
    Reply

    @ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,

  7. Kishore said on August 15, 2010 at 12:39 pm
    Reply

    @ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,Dont worry, VLC is currently sorting out this issue and the next version will be out soon.

    No probs @ Martin !! Its my pleasure

  8. Ted said on October 22, 2010 at 3:57 am
    Reply

    Try running LC with administrator privileges. That seemed to fix it for me

  9. Evan said on December 8, 2013 at 1:48 am
    Reply

    I am using SMplayer 0.8.6 (64-bit) (Portable Edition) on Windows 7 x64. Even with the -nofontconfig parameter in place SMplayer still scans the fonts. Also, I have enabled normal subtitles and it is still scanning fonts before playing a video. Also, it does this every time the player opens a video after a system restart (only the fist video played).

  10. Mike Williams said on September 6, 2023 at 1:26 pm
    Reply

    Does that mean that only instrumental versions of songs will be available for non-paying users?

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