Animate any clip property over time — position, scale, rotation, opacity, colour, filters — with keyframes and easing curves. Each property has its own independent track of keys, so you can fade opacity on a different rhythm than a slow zoom, ease a rotation with a bounce while the scale stays smooth, and so on.
Open the keyframe panel
Select a clip in the timeline → the KEYFRAMES section appears in the right-side property panel. Click Enable Keyframes (or apply a preset) to start animating.
How it works
- The Property select at the top chooses which property’s track you’re editing; the mini-timeline shows only that track’s diamonds.
- Add Property creates a new track (seeded with keys at 0% and 100%).
- + Add inserts a key into the current track at the largest gap, pre-filled with the track’s interpolated value at that spot.
- Each key has its own value and easing. Transform Origin is set once per layer.
- A track with a single key holds its value constant for the whole clip — handy for a fixed offset or tint that other tracks animate around.
- The trash button next to the Property select — or the small trash on the track row you’re editing — removes the whole track; the × next to a key removes just that key (removing the last key removes the track).
Keyframes on the timeline
Keyframes also appear as diamond markers directly on the clip in the timeline, so you can retime an animation without opening the panel:
- Drag a marker left or right to retime the keyframe inside the clip.
- Click a marker to select and edit that keyframe.
- Right-click a marker (or the clip) to add or delete a key at that spot.
- Press K / L to jump the playhead to the previous / next keyframe of the selected layer.
A small pill under the keyframe line names the property whose keys are shown (e.g. scale ▾). Click it to switch which track’s diamonds are displayed — dragging, right-click add/delete, and K/L all operate on the viewed track.
The marker lane
A lane at the foot of the track stack carries the layer and timeline markers that fall inside this clip, mapped into its 0–100% space. Teal pins pointing up are this layer’s own markers — drag one to move it, right-click it for color / name / remove, or right-click empty lane space for Add marker. Dimmed pins pointing down are project timeline markers, shown for reference only.
Every marker in that lane is a snap target for keyframe dragging — drag a diamond near one and it locks onto it exactly, alongside the clip ends, the playhead and the other keys. Alt/Option bypasses snapping, as everywhere else.
Easing and the graph editor
Between two keys the value interpolates with the easing set on the earlier key: Linear, Smooth, AE In / AE Smooth / AE Out (the After Effects-style curves shared with MotionFast), Natural / Slow Down / Overshoot / Impulse / Swing (the expressive curves from the template catalogue), the Sine/Cubic/Expo/Circ/Back families, Bounce Out, Elastic, and Power1–4. Every segment of every track has its own easing.
The graph icon on the property row opens the Graph Editor — an After Effects-style curve where you drag bezier handles into hand-shaped easings, set Hold keys, retime a whole selection of keys at once, and open the full keyframe-editor window.
Expressions (ƒx)
Hover a property row and a small ƒx button appears next to its name (it stays lit violet while an expression is active). An expression is an After Effects-style rule applied to the whole track — your keyframes are never rewritten, and turning it off restores the plain motion instantly.
- Elastic — the move itself becomes springy: it shoots past the target and wobbles into place as one continuous motion.
- Bounce — the move falls onto its target like a dropped ball and rebounds in decaying hops, settling exactly on the key.
- Wiggle — continuous smooth jitter around the keyed value, like AE’s
wiggle(). - Custom — write your own formula, drive a property from the clock, loop your keyframes with
loopOut(), or read another layer’s animation (including layers inside a sequence).
See Keyframe Expressions for every option and the full expression language.
Paint properties animate too
The Text Color and Background rows on text layers (plus Outline Color and Highlight Color), and a shape’s Color/Gradient rows, carry the same stopwatch — click it and the paint becomes a track, seeded with the current value. A key can hold a full gradient: between keys the editor blends gradients stop-by-stop, and solid ↔ gradient tweens fade smoothly. While a paint is keyframed its static picker greys out and the values are edited on the keys.
Animatable properties
- Transform — opacity, scale, rotate, rotateX/Y, translateX/Y/Z, xPercent/yPercent, letterSpacing, clipPath
- Color — text/tint colour, background colour (with alpha)
- Filters — blur, brightness, hue-rotate, saturate, grayscale, sepia
- Effects — the animatable Layer Effects: 3D Depth’s Strength and Focus Plane, and Running Glow’s Effect Amount, Edge Level, Glow Level, Glow Radius and Sweep Angle. Stackable Overlay Effects on regular and adjustment layers also expose Mix and numeric parameters
- Camera — on a camera layer the same editor animates Zoom, Pan X/Y, Roll, Dolly and Tilt X/Y instead
Presets
The Presets button opens a search-first browser of ready-made animations — slides, zooms, hero moves, and a whole UI-motion section (Button Press, Spring In, Jelly Shake, Heartbeat, …) that lands with real overshoot and a damped settle. Filter by type, walk the list with ↑/↓, and press Enter to add.
A preset doesn’t take over the whole layer: the window lets you choose where the animation starts and how long it runs — it defaults to the playhead, and the green block on the layer strip can be dragged and resized. The Intro / Outro switch runs any preset backwards as an exit (the window jumps to the end of the layer), and keyframes outside the window are kept — so an entrance at the head and an exit at the tail live together on one layer. Each preset expands into per-property tracks you can retime or re-ease independently.
Rig layers together
The pick-whip beside Presets parents any layer to another on the same timeline: the parent’s position, rotation and scale carry the child — opacity, filters, effects, colours, masks and timing all stay the child’s own. Additive (default) keeps the child’s own transform as an offset from the parent, exactly as in After Effects; Full Copy hands the parent’s transform over outright. Layers can be chained, parenting survives save/reload and copy/paste, and it undoes as one step.
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