In this video tutorial you’ll learn how to make a quick timeline animation effect in Adobe Premiere Pro. Usually when it comes to creating animation effects in adobe programs, the first one’s you think of are After Effects or Adobe Animate, but if you’re not familiar with those programs they can be kind of intimidating to use.
Hey there! My name is Scott and I wanted to show you how to create a simple timeline animation using Premiere. I had to actually create this for a project I was working on the other day and I thought this would make a great tutorial. So with that, let’s get into it!
I’ve got my generic stock image here of a headless businessman, and I’ve already put that on my timeline. So I’m ready to get started creating the animation.
So the first thing we’re going to do is create a color matte. By going to go into File at the top, select color matte. It has the same size as our video, select ok. And then we choose black, and then just name it color matte black. Next we’ll take the color matte and drag and drop that onto the timeline on top of the photo.
After that we’ll go to the effects panel, and your effects panel may be in a different location depending on how you have your workspace set up in Premiere. If you don’t see the effects panel go to top bar and click window, you’ll see a list of panels and scroll down to find effects. If it doesn’t have a check mark, that means the panel is hidden, otherwise it should be showing up in your workspace.
Ok so next were gonna go to the effects panel and use the write on effect, just select the write on and drag and drop onto the color matte on the timeline. First thing you’ll notice is a tiny dot in the middle of the color matte on the screen. Let’s change the brush size to 8, now the dot is larger. Let’s change the hardness to 100 percent, and were gonna change the stroke length to 85.
Next were gonna move the dot to the far left corner of the screen. Using the brush position option, the numbers on the left will move the dot up and down and the numbers to the right will move the dot side to side. The next step is to click on the stop watch icon next to brush position, and that creates this keyframe right at the edge of the frame there. It looks like a little diamond shape.
So now we’re gonna go to our timeline and let me zoom in a bit. We’re gonna place the playhead at about 2 seconds. And we’re going to go up to brush position, and type in 600 in the left set of numbers. And that creates our first step, so you can see the little timeline animation starting to form.So going back to our keyframes, we’re gonna zoom in. Selecting the last keyframe, now we’re going to move the playhead over one frame to the right, I’m just pressing the right arrow key once on my keyboard to nudge the playhead to the right.
Then we’re gonna hit this circle button next to the right set of numbers, this adds a new keyframe. So now you see there’s two diamond shape keyframes on the timeline. Now, we’re going to hit the right arrow key once more, and move the playhead over ten frames.
Next, we’re going to change the right set of numbers from 920, to 820. And we should see the first point come up on our animation. The next step is to duplicate the color matte and we can do that by holding down the option key, while selecting the color matte and then dragging it upwards. Then I’m gonna highlight the two lower layers below and disable those by right clicking and unchecking enable. This is so I don’t accidentally alter them or anything.
Next, with the top layer highlighted we’ll go back to our keyframes, and select the last three key frames, but not the first keyframe. Let’s go ahead and delete the selected keyframes. That should leave us with a little dot in the corner. Going back to our main timeline, let’s put the playhead at about half a second. Next in the brush position we’ll type in 100 on the right set of numbers.
Then we’re gonna repeat the same process as we did before with the arrow keys. So we’ll select the new keyframe, and then using the right arrow key move over one frame. Now hit the circle icon, to add a new keyframe, and then using the arrow keys were going to move ten frames to the right. Hit the circle icon again to add a new keyframe, and we’ll change the right set of numbers to 820.
So now we’ll repeat that entire process again by copying this color matte by holding down the option key and dragging upwards onto a new layer. I’m gonna disable the layer we just worked on. Same as before, we’ll go back to our keyframes selecting the last three frames and then deleting them. Then we’ll go to our timeline and move the playhead to just over 1 second. Next we’ll go back to the brush position and type in 350 into the left set of numbers. Then once again, we’ll use the arrow keys to move over one frame to the right. Hit add new keyframe, and move over ten frames. Then we’ll add a new keyframe, and change the left set of numbers to 820.
Ok so the next step is key out the black background of our color matte. So in the effects panel, type in color key. Drop that effect onto the first layer. Using the eye dropper, just click on the black of the color matte to match the colors.Next we’ll change the color torrence to 45 and edge thin to 1. Next we’ll copy the color key effect from our first layer and paste that into our other color matte layers.
So now if we enable all of our layers, we should see the full timeline animation play back. Next we’ll want to add in the years. So using the text tool, I will type in 2020. In the text window, you can change any of the settings like the font style and size. I already have it set to 70, so I think that’s good.
Next I’m going to change some of the position and anchor point numbers for our text to kind of pop up when they appear. The number settings I’m about to give you really apply to video size settings of 1920×1080. so if you’re working on a video that’s say smaller, like 720p, you may need to play around with the position and anchor settings to get it work right.
Ok so with that, in the text window we’re going to change the position setting to 68.6 and 776.4. Then going to our anchor point just below, we’ll change that to 53.5 and -24.4. Next, scrolling up to the graphics window were gonna change some of the settings as well. Let’s change the position to 1859 and 255. Then change the anchor point to 949, and 505.
Ok so now we can start adding keyframes to animate this a little bit. On the timeline, make sure your playhead is at the very beginning of your text layer. Going down to the video window, using the scale tool we’re going to hit the stop watch icon next to it, and we’ll change it to 0. Next using our arrow keys were gonna go five frames to the right. Hit the add new keyframe button and type in 100. So now we can you play back, the text kind of pops up.
Now we can reposition the text using the position tool in the video window to where we want it. So now I’ll just drag this text to the end of the timeline. Next were gonna do simular to what we did with the color matte, in terms of the repeating the same process over. Let’s make a copy of our text, by holding down the option key and dragging the text layer up.
Double clicking inside of the text, I’m gonna change the number to 2019. Next I’ll move the year over, using the position tool in the video window. Again we’ll copy the text layer and change that to 2018. And then we’ll move that over as well. And we have all of our years popping up at the same time. Which is cool but we want to adjust the timing so they pop up as the timeline reaches them.
So using my arrow keys I’m going to find the exact point the timeline stops on the first year. Then I’ll just highlight the 2018 layer and drag it over to where my playhead is at. Then we’ll just repeat that process for 2019 and 2020. So our animation is almost complete, but I’m noticing that it’s kind of hard to see it because of the brightness of the image behind it.
So what I’ll do is highlight all of my layers except the image, and were gonna make a nested sequence. And what that does is, if you’re familiar with photoshop, it’s basically like merging all of these layers into one. And you can still go in and edit each individual layer if you need to but double clicking the nested sequence. So I’ll call mine timeline animation, and now we have a nested sequence in green.
I’m gonna move the nested layer up one layer, and then grab my color matte and drag and drop that onto my timeline. Next I’ll change the color matte opacity to 25 percent. And then I’ll move it down to the text, and in my effects panel ill search for edge feather. Drag and drop that onto the color matte, and then change the feather settings to 100. And then you can adjust this to however dark you’d like to appear with the opacity settings, I think I’ll leave mine as is. But I’ll move my nested sequence layer down a little bit, and then with the color matte it creates sort of like a vignette effect to the video.
Then the very last thing I want to do is, you see how the dot starts at the beginning of the video? Well we can fix that by double clicking our nested sequence. And then using the right arrow key, go over one frame. Highlight the color matte layers and then nudge them over to the playhead. Going back to our sequence, everything should play how we want it. And there you go!
So that’s it for this tutorial! My question for you guys is, what kind of projects you might use this timeline animation for? Let me know in the comments below. Also, let me know what other tutorials you might like to see as well?
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Scott Edward Fowler 