Why stabilize a phone

- Hey there, I'm Robbie Carman. - And I'm Rich Harrington. - And welcome back to Corporate Video Weekly. And Rich, this week, we're going to talk about the importance of stabilizing a phone when you want to shoot video. - Yeah, and we're specifically talking about shooting live video for streaming purposes and while you can get away with shaky video and fixing it in post later, you don't really have that option when shooting live. There are both aesthetic and technical benefits to having a stable shot when you are going to be doing a live stream. And Rob, live streaming has gotten so easy these days.

It's built into virtually every social media app. - I mean, from Facebook and Instagram to YouTube to you know, Snapchat, I mean, yeah, everybody can live stream and it has really big benefits in helping you communicate your messages to your customers, being able to say, hey, this is going on right now, come down to our store and check this out. - [Rich] We're here on location and if they wanted to promote a special or a new unveiling of a flavor or they wanted to do a big outreach to the local community, well they could do that right here on location to their social media followers. - And unlike the traditional delay of record, edit, then post, this is instantaneous.

And Rich, I think the biggest thing about stabilizing video is that for me, it's about delivering professional results, right? Nothing screams amateur hour more than you know, kind of the video shaking all over screen. And stabilizing your video from a sort of aesthetic point of view, is really going to make your live stream seem more professional. - Well, and if you're holding that camera out there, eventually, your hand's going to get tired. - Yep. - And you may not feel tired, but even now it's starting to shake because, well, not enough sleep, you had some coffee and it's just not good reference, but if we put this into a simple holder, now all of a sudden, it's transferred and I've got some stability.

It's going through my whole body here. I can even two-hand this and now I've got lots of support. - Yeah, I wanted to talk about the various methods of stabilization, but I think the other thing that you hinted on earlier when we first started talking is a technical reason for stabilizing your video. If your video is moving around all the time or your camera is moving and you're shaking, that is technically harder for the live streaming service to compress and accurately deliver to the end user. There's more bandwidth needed, there's more compression needed, and the overall quality of that video, when your end user sees it, is probably going to be lower because the compression engine's having to work harder.

- Yeah, this means more battery consumption, lower quality to the audio because some of the picture quality's going to suck it up, and you'll see more breakups or delays in the overall quality. So it's pretty important that you get this right. So Rob, you have a simple unit there. - I do. - I do, you know, these are just available at a regular store like a Best Buy, a big box electronics store. - Absolutely. - 30, 40 bucks, you've got something that makes it simple. - Yeah, these really simple devices, and again, we'll talk about more complex ones as we go on this week, just literally take your hand off the device itself, give you sort of a holding point like this one, I can actually put all my fingers in there.

You have a finger through that one. It gives you a little more surface area to hold on to. It has a nice frame here, so instead of holding the actual camera itself or the phone itself, you've got a nice sort of stable point. Supplement that with holding your wrist or keeping it against your body. There's a lot of ways that you can stabilize it. - Of course, while these hand rigs are going to be great and it's going to give you a nice stable shot, nothing beats a real tripod. So up next, we'll talk about how in the world do you take something like a phone and attach it to a professional video or photo tripod?