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Stabilization is working only on proxy media / Not working on Original and after the export

I'm currently working with an A7siii footage shot on 60fps. During the project, I edit everything with the proxy function selected and upon completion, I switch it to Optimised/Original. The stabilization in the Proxy mode works perfectly fine and the footage looks extremely smooth. But before exporting, when I switch to Optimised/Orginal mode to export, the footage becomes shaky again and it's as if the stabilization isn't there at all. 

It's quite annoying because I can see my footage be really smooth when Proxy is selected but in the optimized mode and/or after export, the footage isn't stable at all.


Please help out. I read that a lot of other FCPx users were facing this issue, if a solution has been found please let me know. Thank you.

Posted on Feb 22, 2023 5:35 AM

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Posted on Feb 23, 2023 12:15 AM

I may have found a solution. I was reading for solutions on other threads and one person recommended that I optimise my footage to ProRes because apparently sometimes on a Sony A7siii or even other Sony models that record 60fps in 4K, the orientation sensor and the metadata recorded when shooting vertically confused FCP to the point where no stabilisation would occur.


Once the footage was transcoded to ProRes, the problem seems to have gone away immediately in playback itself.

I then exported the project and the footage is smooth as butter, no jarring issues anymore.



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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Feb 23, 2023 12:15 AM in response to Tom Wolsky

I may have found a solution. I was reading for solutions on other threads and one person recommended that I optimise my footage to ProRes because apparently sometimes on a Sony A7siii or even other Sony models that record 60fps in 4K, the orientation sensor and the metadata recorded when shooting vertically confused FCP to the point where no stabilisation would occur.


Once the footage was transcoded to ProRes, the problem seems to have gone away immediately in playback itself.

I then exported the project and the footage is smooth as butter, no jarring issues anymore.



Feb 22, 2023 11:24 AM in response to Tom Wolsky

I’m using FCPx version 10.6.5, Ventura 13.2.1 on a MacBook Pro.

Original media is 4K 60fps 10 bit from A7siii and proxy settings are essentially all in the software itself.

I don’t create a proxy in the camera, instead I prefer to create the proxy in the software itself. So once the original media has been imported into FCPx, I click on Proxy preferred/Proxy in the Transcode Media option.

Ive been reading and trying a bunch of things that have been mentioned in similar threads like mine, but nothing seems to work. As soon as I click on Optimised media/original media to export, the stabilisation is completely gone (while the stabilisation box is ticked).

Feb 22, 2023 11:59 AM in response to nihaal18

I have an A7SIII and just tested this on FCP 10.6.5 and Ventura 13.2.1 on an M1 Ultra Mac Studio. The FCP stabilization seems to work fine in both proxy mode and original media mode.


Keep in mind there are separate render files for proxy vs original media mode. If you want the best indication within FCP about the stabilization effect, do a CTRL+R to render the timeline to cache (this assumes background rendering is off). That must be done separately in proxy mode vs original media mode.


If exporting, that should not be required to obtain stabilized material. However there are two phases to stabilization, the analysis phase and render phase. In some cases if the analysis phase gets stuck it might export that without stabilization. If you render the clip or timeline to cache with CTRL+R and carefully observe if the "render dots" all vanish above the timeline, it should be OK.


You do not have to separately stabilize the clips in proxy vs original media mode. Applying stabilization in one mode should apply it in the other mode. However when first applying stabilization it's good to observe the viewer and wait until the message "Analyzing for dominant motion" goes away before rendering that to cache with CTRL+R.


Note if you are concerned about stabilization, the A7SIII records gyro stabilization data which can in some cases be used by Sony's free Catalyst Browse utility to stabilize the material. This normally requires the A7SIII IBIS and lens optical stabilization be off. However at 60 fps and 1/120th shutter speed it is very effective. There is a new FCP plugin available on the Apple App Store called GyroFlow Toolbox which can use Sony gyro stabilization in FCP. I have not yet tried this myself.


Sony gyro stabilization typically works much better at 60 fps and 1/120th shutter speed, but you are already shooting at that. I suggest you also evaluate Sony's gyro stabilization. You can combine that with FCP's NLE stabilization.

Feb 22, 2023 10:33 PM in response to Tom Wolsky

The shooting codec was XAVC S 4K and the export I'm looking at is H.264


Attaching a link for a few of my clips via a WeTransfer link (https://we.tl/t-t1MVGhawyJ), hopefully this should suffice.

Appreciate all the help, I really need to find the solution for this problem. I've tried rendering the clips in question (Control + R) as suggested in another comment but my footage still seems to look shaky.

Feb 22, 2023 11:21 PM in response to joema

I did this as well. The render dots disappeared post rendering yet my Original media was shaky while stabilisation was selected.


The gyro stabilisation is an option I can consider but I'd like to find the solution within the software itself to understand if this is a software issue, codec issue, camera issue or something else entirely. A lot of people seem to be facing this issue and I've been seeing this on multiple threads. No concrete solution yet though.


Feb 23, 2023 7:02 AM in response to Tom Wolsky

Precisely. That seems to be the case. It’s about time FCP improves its stabilisation quality. They’re far behind Premier Pro’s Warp Stabiliser and DaVinci’s stabilisation options.

All the more for footage shot on 9:16 aspect ratio. A new market seems to have emerged for it, and FCP cannot afford to take their sweet time to improve this.

I have some how manager to find a temporary solution for it, however, I’d expect FCP to fix this altogether.

Stabilization is working only on proxy media / Not working on Original and after the export

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