Steady app for iPhone calms shaky video while you shoot

One of the most vexing aspects of shooting hand-held video is the twitchy, jumpy footage it often produces. Poor image stabilization, or none at all, will ruin a shoot by making the results impossible to watch.

Stupeflix’s Steady for iPhone, released today, lets you shoot stable video in square or 16:9 recording formats while walking, running, riding a bike or any other moving activity via a simple set of controls within the app. Point, choose flash or no flash, and front or back camera, and then hit the big red button to start recording. That’s it.

While you can always run video through image editing software that will provide some image stabilization, it’s always better to have footage shot correctly first rather than fixed later.

In addition, Steady offers slo-mo recording, even on iPhone 5 or 5C. You can set the slo-mo starting and ending points, preview your work immediately, and save your footage to the camera roll.

Steady — which simulates the effect of video shot with a dolly, drone or Steadicam operator, reframes your shots in real-time to produce smooth, more cinematic camera movements. You can actually see this process as it’s happening.

Using the iPhone’s gyroscope, Steady knows where the camera is pointing while you record, and compensates for all the steps and shakes that happen during the process.

Videos are re-rendered with embedded stabilization and slo-mo effects, so that you can share them on services like Vine, Instagram and WhatsApp. Saving Steady videos to the camera roll lets you share them in any way you want, but it’s especially useful for Vine, Instagram and WhatsApp because the video has stabilization and slo-mo baked in.

Slo-mo video shot with the native iPhone 5s camera will not show the effect on those services because the way the iPhone’s slo-mo feature works.

The best results come from shooting outside or in well-lit environments and focusing on a subject while moving the camera. Slo-mo captures 120fps on an iPhone 5S and 60fps on a 5 or 5C — the feature is not supported on a 4s.

Steady — which comes in 15 languages — is available now on the App Store for $1.99.

➤ Steady