The basics of keyframing animation

- [Instructor] Keyframing is the process that Premiere Elements uses for creating animations. Now, keyframing can be used to create motion paths as a pan and zoom around a photo. It can also be used to set an effect to change its settings over time. It can be used, for instance, in a 3D effect to create an animation where your video maybe spins around in space. In this session we're gonna look at the basic principles of keyframing by creating a simple pan and zoom. I want you to understand the basics. In the next video we'll look at some more advanced uses of keyframing.

Now I have a slideshow here on my timeline. If I were to right click on the photo here on my timeline, and select Show Properties, you'd see that the photo, I have res-ed it down, I have sized it down to 2000 by 1600 pixels. My video frame, my project settings are for a 1280 by 720 project. So 1280 pixels by 720 means that the video frame is just a little smaller than the picture. To get the best results for a slide show, or any set of still photos that you're gonna use a pan and zoom on, you want to have your photo just a little larger than your video frame.

You can see that this photo actually fits inside the video frame even though it's larger than the video frame. The reason why is because the program has scaled it down to the frame size. In fact, if I right click on it, go to Clip, you see that Scale to Frame Size is checked. I'm gonna uncheck it and you see the picture is actually much bigger. It actually extends beyond the edge of my video frame. That's a good thing. That means I have some extra resolution to do a pan and zoom. If you don't wanna do that individually for each photo, you can go to your Preferences.

On a Mac, they're off the left. On a PC, they're under the Edit menu. Select Preferences, General. You'll see the option, default scale to frame size. Uncheck that and click OK. Then any future photos you bring in will no longer be artificially squeezed down to the size of your video frame. But anyway, we have it turned off now for this photo, so I select it on the timeline. I'm going to go over to the toolbar on the right, and select Applied Effects.

That's this little pencil button, click on that. Applied Effects is where you make adjustments to any effect you've added to your photo, your audio, or your video. But no effects have been added to this photo yet. For every video and photo though, the characteristics of Motion and Opacity are available. If we toggle open Motion, you'll see that we have options for Scale, Position and Rotation. I'm going to scale this down. If I scale this down to about 65%, you'll see the photo fits very nicely within the video frame.

So that's what I'm going to go for. That'll be the end shot in my pan and zoom. To create the animation, to open the keyframe control area, I go up to the top right here of the Applied Effects panel, and click on the little stopwatch. When I do that, it opens up the keyframe controller. I'll place the CTI, the playhead, at the beginning, and now here's where I add my initial view of the photo. I'm gonna start with a closeup of Jean-Michel. We'll start at about say 90%.

So I'm changing that, I could change it with the slider. I could also, let me show you somethin' here. I'm gonna Control + Z, Command + Z to undo that. In some cases, grab the corner of the photo and drag it in, and that's another way to scale right on the monitor. But let's Control + Z, Command + Z to where we were. We're gonna do it with numbers here. 65%, I'm gonna change that up to about 90%. Okay, and I'm going to position it. I could position it by changing these numbers here. I'm going to actually just drag on the monitor to get a closeup of Jean-Michel, very nice.

This will be my starting point and now that Position and Scale, or those settings, are applied right now to the entire photo. I want to keyframe them, that means I wanna create little position points where those settings are applied, and then I'm gonna have different settings someplace else. Let me show you what I mean by that. I'm going to turn on keyframing by clicking on this little stopwatch that says toggle animation. I could also turn on keyframing, as you can see on the left here, for any individual characteristic.

But I'm going to turn it on here for the entire set of motion, characteristics or attributes. Notice it creates these little diamonds right here on the timeline. So this keyframe represents the current position and the current scale of this photo. Now if I move the playhead to the end, and change these, I don't have to add new keyframes. They'll be added automatically as I change, for instance, scale to 65%, and then drag the photo over here so that it's showing what I want to see as my final frame here in my motion path.

You notice that my position numbers automatically change. So you can make your changes by changing the numbers, by moving the sliders, or simply by sometimes dragging right on the monitor itself. So this is my motion path. Premiere Elements is going to create the animation between these two points. If I drag the playhead through, you can see, here it is, this is our opening position, and this is our closing position, and we have created using keyframes, the animation between those two points.

Let's go ahead and close this little window just by clicking on the Applied Effects button again. Back here on the timeline, position the playhead right here at the beginning of that particular photo. Then click on Play. There's our motion path. Very, very nice. Keyframing has many, many applications in Premiere Elements. In fact, you'll find keyframing at work in programs like Premiere Pro, After Effects, Final Cut, Sony Vegas, whatever. With it, you can produce all kinds of cool video and even audio effects.

Mastering keyframes is the key, really, to getting to some of the deeper controls here in the program, and creating some really cool animations.