When editing videos, you may find it relatively easy to paste certain effects and edits to your video clips. However, in doing so, you may find that you are not very clear on exactly how the effect is applied.
However, Adobe Premiere has a wide array of features to enable you to edit your video the way you want it. Keyframes are one of these features that allow you to make more precise and varied changes.
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Keyframes are pretty easy to use once you get the hang of them, and you will feel a lot more control when editing your project with effects.
What are keyframes in Adobe Premiere?
Keyframes are a feature that lets you change the properties of an effect or transition over time. This means you can change how fast or slow the effect or transition occurs, and you can change the time and place the clip starts or ends.
Keyframes are essentially the points in time that you set for these changes. So, for this you need at least two keyframes. One to start an effect or transition, and one to complete it.
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However, keyframes give you the ability to add as many points in between as you want. This means that you can edit the properties of the effects with any precision. You can create multiple start and end points to change the way an effect or transition is animated in your project.
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These properties include things like position, scale, opacity, and rotation. Depending on which effect, transition, or clip you choose, there will be different properties. Keyframes let you animate these properties to affect a clip, selected effect, or transition.
How to add keyframes in Premiere
It is relatively easy to learn how to use keyframes, and once you understand how they work, you can apply them immediately.
First you need to open the Effects Control Panel. You can find this by going to Window> Effect Controls. When you select a clip, you will see the Video Effects drop-down menu. These will be the attributes of the selected clip, such as position or scale.
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You will also see the effects you have applied to the clip in the dropdown. You can change different properties depending on the effect To the right of these lists will be a mini timeline showing the clip you have selected.
In this timeline, you can edit keyframes. As an example, let’s edit the ripple effect in a clip. After placing the effect on the clip and navigating to the effect controls, you should select the Wave Distortion drop-down list.
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Let’s say you want to animate the height of a wave. First, move your cursor over the mini timeline to where you want to place the first keyframe. Then change the value of the Wave Height attribute by clicking and dragging the numeric value next to it.
This is what the value will be when your cursor reaches that first keyframe. To set a keyframe, select the stopwatch to the left of the wave height.
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You should see a diamond shaped keyframe in the mini timeline. A diamond icon with two arrows on either side of it also appears next to the Wave height property. You can use this to add or remove keyframes, or to transition from one keyframe to another.
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There are now several ways to create keyframes. If you move to a new location on the timeline and make any changes to the wave height value, a keyframe is added. You can also click the Add / Remove Keyframe button to add a keyframe if you don’t have one selected in the timeline.
You will also see that there are gray dots below the keyframes in the timeline. You can click and drag them to change the keyframe value. You can also click and drag the keyframes themselves to reposition them.
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Premiere keyframe tips
If you want to smooth out the animation created by your keyframes, you can play with Velocity. This is how quickly or slowly the value of a property changes over time. Below the keyframes, there is a second line below the value line that you can click and drag to make multiple blue bars appear. If you click and drag the circles of these stripes, you can change the speed at a specific point.
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You should also keep in mind that when using keyframes, the more you add to your project, the more difficult it will be for your computer to process video. So when editing with keyframes, remember that less is more.
Pay attention to the given numerical values ??to keep things as clean as possible. Using values ??will help you determine if the animation will be fast or slow, and how quickly the change will occur. This will prevent your effects from getting too choppy.
If you want to completely remove all keyframes from the property, you can press the stopwatch button again to get rid of them.
When to use keyframes
Now that you know how to use keyframes in Premiere, you may be wondering when to use them in your editing process Keyframes are best used when you want to animate an effect in a specific way.
Premiere lets you edit almost every aspect of an effect‘s properties, so if you want a smoother, longer transition, or if you want video distortion to occur in a specific way, keyframes allow you to do so. Make sure you know exactly how you want to animate the effect, otherwise your keyframes may end up cluttered.
If you’re just getting started using keyframes in Adobe Premiere, practice using them with different effects to help you create fluid animations.
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