Amateur Videographers Rejoice - YouTube now fixes shaky footage

The Gooderham & Worts building, Toronto

Among the mistakes made by amateur videographers, two are particularly annoying. YouTube has just come up with a free fix for one of them, the shaky clip that results from hand-holding the camera when it should be on a tripod or otherwise locked down. Last weekend I took my Kodak Zi8 to Toronto’s St. Lawrence Market. After carrying my groceries for a while I found that I couldn’t hold the pocket-sized camera steady with my overworked arm. Let’s take a look at what I got, then at what the YouTube stabilizer did with it.
Here is the original clip. And here is the stabilized version. You may notice that the processed clip has had some zoom-in applied to it. All the stabilizing software I've seen in the past ten years employs this approach. In the days of standard definition it often softened the image. With the detail inherent in high definition resolutions this is unlikely to occur unless the original clip is so shaky that only a high degree of zoom will fix it. If you want to give it a try, you'll find the editor here. You will of course need to have or upload at least one video in order to drag it into the editing window.
    And, for those of you who don't know what the other annoying mistake made by amateur shooters is, it's the fire hose approach. Swing the camera back and forth, never stop for long enough to actually capture a scene. Guaranteed to make viewers queasy.