Animate with keyframes

Keyframes are manual editing, so they are free and work offline in any project. This is the Mac and Windows app.

Start animating a setting

1. Select a clip and park the playhead where the change should begin.
2. In the Inspector, find the setting — on the Transform tab that is Position X, Position Y, Scale, Rotation, Opacity and the four crop edges; the Color and Effects tabs have their own — and click the stopwatch beside it. That drops the first keyframe at the playhead with the current value, and opens the keyframe lane under the timeline.
3. Move the playhead and change the value. Once a setting has keyframes, the diamond beside it adds a keyframe at the playhead, or removes the one that is there. It is filled on a keyframe and hollow between keyframes.

To take the animation off a setting, click its stopwatch while the lane is showing that setting, and confirm: the value becomes static.

Edit in the keyframe lane

The lane draws one setting at a time as a curve; pick which from its menu. Click the curve to add a keyframe, and drag a diamond to move it in time or change its value. With a diamond selected, the arrow keys nudge it, and Delete or Backspace removes it. Press ⇧K (Toggle keyframe lane) to show or hide the lane.

Shape the motion between keyframes

Select a keyframe and pick how the value travels from it to the next one: Lin (a straight line, the default), In, Out, In·Out (ease in, out or both), Hold (jump at the next keyframe) or Bez (your own curve, typed as four numbers).

Sound

To animate a clip’s volume, use Volume automation on the Audio tab: it opens the same lane on the clip’s gain. See mix audio with the mixer.

A limit in this version

A clip cannot have both keyframes and a speed change. To retime an animated clip, clear its keyframes first; to animate a retimed clip, set its speed back to 1×. See change a clip’s speed. ⌘Z undoes any keyframe change.