Pin the scale at the start, pin a bigger one at the end, then press play. Two values are what make a move; one cannot animate.
A video editor with keyframes lets a property hold two values at two moments and fill in everything between them. That one idea produces a slow push in, a title that drifts, and a shot that brightens as a scene turns. It runs in your browser, on clips and on whole tracks, stored as values and never rendered into the footage.
How to animate a clip in three steps
- 01
Set the starting value
Park the playhead where the move begins and pin the property as it is now.
- 02
Set the ending value
Move to where it should finish, change the value, and the move exists.
- 03
Export with it baked in
Render MP4 up to 4K locally, with the animation calculated on the way out.
What keyframe animation covers
Keyframes on clips and tracks are a Compose V2 capability, arriving per workspace.
Two values make a move
Pin a property at one moment and again at another and everything between is filled in. That is the whole mechanism, and it is why learning it once covers position, scale, rotation, opacity and colour in one idea.
Clips and tracks both
Animation applies to a single clip or to a whole track, so a treatment can run across a sequence instead of being rebuilt on each item in it. A fade across everything on a layer is set in one place.
Move in the frame
Position and scale animating together produce a push in, a slow drift, and a reframe that follows a subject who walks. All three are the same two-value idea applied to different properties.
Titles with motion
Text is a timeline item, so a headline animates like a clip. Re-writing the words afterwards leaves the motion intact, because the animation is attached to the item and not to the letters.
Colour over time
Grading values animate too, so a scene brightens as a curtain opens or cools across a cut. A change of light becomes part of the shot instead of a decision applied flatly to all of it.
Describe the move instead
Copilot reads the timeline and places keyframes on request, so a slow push in on this shot is a complete instruction. Whatever it sets comes back in one undo if the timing is wrong.
Some moves need a shot with room to move into, and cropped footage has none. Generate one framed wide enough to push in on in the same project, choosing from the whole model roster, and animate from there. Seedance 2.5 is one of the video models on that roster.
What a keyframe actually is
The word sounds like a feature and describes a method. A keyframe is a value with a time attached, and two of them on one property make a change the editor fills in:
- Scale, small then large, is a push in.
- Opacity, full then none, is a fade.
- Position, left then right, is a slide.
Once the mechanism is clear there is no list of effects to learn, only a question about which property should change and when. The one common mistake is setting a single keyframe and wondering why nothing moves: a value that never changes cannot animate, so a move always needs two.
Keyframe video editor, working the way a timeline works
Motion tools usually sit in a separate application with their own project file, which is why so many videos have either a cut or motion but rarely both thought about together.
Here the keyframes are on the same clips as the trims:
- Shorten a shot and its push in now happens faster, visibly, while you can still adjust.
- Swap the media under a clip and the animation you set stays on it.
- Keep your own keys. Shortcuts are remappable in saved sets that follow your account, more than one binding per action, so Premiere or Resolve muscle memory works from the first hour.
Neither of the first two is dramatic alone. Together they are the difference between animating at the end and adjusting the whole way through. If a move only ever needed a ramp and not a transform, a slow motion video maker is the simpler route, and values that change across a shot are not only geometric: color grading online animates the same way.
Animate text in video
Motion on a title does a specific job: it directs the eye to a word at the moment it matters. A headline that scales on its key word, a lower third that slides in as a name is said, a caption that fades as the speaker moves on.
The restraint is the craft. Text that moves constantly is harder to read than text that sits still, so the pattern that works is motion at the entrance, stillness while it is being read, motion at the exit. Because the animation lives on the item rather than in the picture, the words stay editable, which matters more than it sounds: a name spelled wrong is a text fix and not a rebuild of the move. Placing the words is covered on add text to video.
Ken Burns effect online
The slow drift across a photograph is the oldest use of keyframes there is, and it exists because a still on screen for six seconds is dead air. Scale the image past the frame, set a position at each end, and it moves. Two details make it read well:
- Start above one hundred percent so the image never shows an edge as it travels.
- Keep it slower than feels right while you are setting it, because a drift that is obvious at editing speed is distracting at full speed.
Direction is worth choosing too. Moving toward a face at the end of a shot lands somewhere; moving away leaves the viewer emptier than where they started.
Related video tools
Online video editor
The timeline the keyframes live on, alongside cutting and sound.
Add text to video
Place the title first; the motion is the second decision, not the first.
Online color grading tool
The colour values that can change across a shot instead of sitting flat.
Change video speed
When the move wanted is in time, not in the frame.
Resize video online
Animate position to follow a subject when the frame gets narrower.
Video collage maker
Insets that arrive and leave instead of sitting there all the way through.
AI slideshow maker
Stills given motion in sequence, this effect at scale.
AI animation generator
When the motion should be generated, not keyframed by hand.
