Warp Stabilizer Causing Massive Jitter with Progressive Footage in Interlaced Timeline

[Peter Reef]

Hi everyone,

I'm experiencing a frustrating issue with Warp Stabilizer in Premiere Pro and hoping someone has found a reliable workaround.

The Problem

When I apply Warp Stabilizer to progressive footage placed in an interlaced timeline, it introduces severe jitter that makes the footage unusable. The stabilization works fine when I use a progressive timeline, but my workflow requires an interlaced timeline for final delivery.

Current Workaround (Too Cumbersome)

Right now, I have to:

1. Create a separate progressive timeline

2. Apply Warp Stabilizer there

3. Export the stabilized footage

4. Re-import it into my interlaced timeline

This workflow is extremely time-consuming, especially when dealing with multiple clips that need stabilization.

What I've Tried

• Different Warp Stabilizer settings (method, smoothness, etc.)

• Various export codecs for the workaround

• Adjusting field order settings

System Info

• Adobe Premiere Pro 25.3.0

• Progressive source footage (usually 50p 1080p/4K)

• Interlaced timeline required for broadcast delivery HD 50i

Questions for the Community

1. Has anyone found a way to make Warp Stabilizer work properly with progressive footage in interlaced timelines?

2. Are there specific settings or field order configurations that help reduce the jitter?

3. Would using After Effects' Warp Stabilizer via Dynamic Link be more reliable?

4. Is this a known bug that Adobe is planning to address?

This seems like it should be a basic compatibility issue that Adobe could resolve, but I haven't seen any official acknowledgment of the problem.

[Sumeet Kumar Choubey]

Hi Peter Reef,

Welcome to the community! Have you tried applying Warp Stabilizer to the progressive media in a progressive sequence & then nesting that stabilized clip to be used further in any other sequence?

Thanks,

Sumeet

[Peter Reef]

Hi Sumeet, thanks for your help. I didnt, currently I need to rerender all clips as i have to finish today, I can try later. But does this really save time? Doesnt it degrade performance massively to have nested uhd timelines with warp stabilizer applied in an interlaced timeline? Warp stabilizer already causes lots of issues when rendering right now so I am afraid this will worsen the issue. I am dealing with about 30 stabilized clips in a 30 min project.

[R Neil Haugen]

The basic nature of interlaced is it splits the image into two horizontally, right? Odd lines typically display first, then even lines next. There are essentially two frames per "frame" ... one with  only odd lines, one with only even lines.

Warp is a massive resource hog, as out of a mass of computed data, it has to recreate each frame.

Now, you are asking it to create two frames for each frame, and it simply can't do it in time, correctly. Ain't gonna work.

I'm a practical worker. Warp is the THE heaviest effect out there, even more demanding than Neat video noise remover. Leaving Warp on a clip, applying other effects, then later trying to export the whole thing ... yea, you're like going to get problems.

There is a simple solution. Apply Warp, and when it's a good result, do a full render & replace to a proper intermediate codec!

Now you have a good, righteous clip to work with. And if you need, you can go back, restore unrenedere, re-Warp.

But ... you now can treat that clip like any other, get good playback, add effects, get no issuse at export.

That would fix your problem quickly.

[Peter Reef]

Thanks Neil. thats right. What I did now: I copied all clips over to an uhd 50p sequence, then rendered them out one by one as premiere has no ability to render individual clips, and then imported them back. I tried "render and replace" as a way to batch export clips but strangely it took ages to render and replace one single clip in the uhd timeline, while exporting was fast. 

You are right, render and replace first is always my way to work with denoiser effects. although premiere has some flaws - log footage sometimes gets screwed up, you have to set every single clip manually to reg709 first, then render and then set it back and so on... its a massive pain. 

Right now i am stuck again with the next well known bug: premiere does not use all my preview files, even using prores hq as preview and export format. so instead of five minutes export time, the 30 min timeline takes about an hour.. and after reviewing every single change takes as long as well.

So again: Render and replace is not always an option in premiere because of log colour management flaws - even though the "colour aware effects" is turned on - and NOT using render files but previews is not an option as well. I wonder how people can finish in time.. Maybe I have to wait all night for everything to finish and all versions to export.. 

[Peter Reef]

Thanks Neil. I managed to render everything overnight. I did a render and replace on everything now and its not indroducing colour fringe for bcc sharpen effect. So this could be a workflow.

Still I dont know how to get my workflow right:

I would need to "render and replace" my log footage as is and then apply colour correction as the last step. 

But that seems very cumbersome, i would have to change colour settings on my source clips first, then render and replace, then set it back to slog3, then apply CC..

Otherwise I would bake in a rec709 conversion and grade that.. not a good idea.

How do you do this?

Often you notice that some stabilization is needed during the grade, which means:

Cutting out the grade, then performing these steps, then reapply the grade to the rendered clip or even: adding an adjustment layer, set it to the length on the clip in the timeline above the clip, copying over the grade then render then perform all the steps above.

Is there any fast workflow to work with render and replace on log footage quickly? 

[R Neil Haugen]

When you need a ton of things, sorting out a workable process can be rough. Yep.

I don't consider normalization as part of the grading process, so we might work differently that way. It's to normalize, in my mind, not to finish. In other words, get the clip to a pretty neutral state contrast/sat/blacks/whites/tonal curve and basic white balance.  Which is mostly handled for me by their delightful new algorithms and tonemapping.  Part of the"onboarding" process for me.

So then I would do the Warp, R&R, then plop that clip on a timeline and do whatever else.

But every flippin' one of us works differently ... every one of us.

[Peter Reef]

Thanks. So you are using auto color as a starting point. thats interesting! I tried it once and it always set the colour tone of every single clip individually - which caused the clips of a single scene not to match anymore. Did this feature improve?

You mean you normalize first, then warp stabilize an then grade on top using the baked in look? couldnt that degrade quality?

[R Neil Haugen]

NO!

I didn't mention auto color at all. I've never found that useful.

It's color management 101 ... normalization of log media to linear "screen" space. The "gray" or "thin" look of straight log media.

Which can be done with the old LUT method, manually, or now, by the amazing mathematical algoritmic process. Much safer than a transform/normalization LUT.

I vastly prefer the algorithms, both in Premiere and Resolve, when possible. Both apps cover all the log media I deal with.  And in my testing, any log media they don't have a specific algo for, in their list, testing the others listed normally finds one that works very well for the media involved.

Normalization, in most colorist's trade workflows, isn't part of the "look" process. Though for some, the final Look plays a major role in what they want to normalize to.

[R Neil Haugen]

And I presume you do know about Premiere's extensive CM controls, found in the Lumetri panel's Settings tab ... the tab named Settngs?

[Peter Reef]

I do know the settings tab, but when no sequence is selected all "working color space" options are greyed out. So I can only select the media colour space s-log3 for my clips but NOT the output color space rec709. Thats why its all displayed as extended range in project thumbnail view. loading a clip in source window while a timeline whith rec709 settings is there displays it correctly.

 

[Peter Reef]

started a new post for it:
https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-discussions/slog3-thumbnails-display-in-extended-dynamic...

[Peter Reef]

Ah, I thought you meant auto-algorythms. 😉

[Peter Reef]

Just to be clear: Do you normalize a clip, apply warp and then render and replace thus baking in the look - and then grade on top of that? Dont you loose the advantage of LOG on the final grade this way? I know, the baked in look could be close to the final output but still..

[R Neil Haugen]

A good quality normalization will not lose any image data. Which is one reason I prefer their tonemapping algorithmsover LUTs. 

And rendered to say ProRes 422 or higher you go several generations before losing anything . 

[Peter Reef]

I thought about crushing the blacks a bit too much and then render and replace and trying to recover them from the rendered file. but I guess thats what you menat with "quality normalization". 😉

[R Neil Haugen]

Yup. The algorithms will neither crush nor clip.