Today, I want to talk about a secret tool I use
to animate text and graphics in my videos.
And, the best part, is if you own a mac,
this tool is included, so it won’t cost you anything.
The tool I’m talking about is Apple KeyNote,
and in this video,
I’m going to show you how you can use Apple KeyNote
to animate text and graphics in your next video.
Hey guys, what’s up.
My name is Serge and welcome back to my channel.
If you’re new here, this channel features Final Cut Pro tutorials,
and other helpful tips
to help you tell a better story by making better videos.
With that out of the way,
let’s dive right in and see how we can use KeyNote for animation.
First. let’s take a look at how to animate text
for amazing looking titles.
Open up KeyNote and make a new presentation.
Choose a Basic White presentation,
and make sure the aspect ratio is set to wide to match your project.
Delete all the default elements for a clean slate.
Add a text box, and replace the text.
For this demo, let’s make an animated Subscribe title.
Type in your text,
and go to the Text tab on the right side of your screen.
Select your font,
make it nice and big,
and if you want to, change the color of your text.
Click anywhere outside the text box to de select the text,
click on it again to brig up the text box,
and center it in your frame.
It doesn’t have to be perfect,
you can always move and re size it later in your video.
Now, to animate it, go to the top right corner,
and click the Animate button.
Click Add an Effect,
and select one of the included animation presets.
To see what they look like,
just click on the Preview text on the right hand side.
For this example, I love the keyboard animation.
When you select it, you have a few more animation options.
You can choose the duration of your animation,
whether or not you display the cursor,
and even the direction of the animation.
Any time you make any changes,
you can preview what it looks like
by clicking the preview button.
Besides adding a build in animation,
you can also add an action animation, and a build out.
Let’s select Action and Add an effect.
Just like before, you can preview any animation
by clicking on the preview text on the right hand side.
Let’s use this cool pop effect for our example.
Select it, and if needed adjust the duration and scale.
For this example, I like how the default presets look,
so I’ll just leave it.
For the build out animation,
let’’s add an effect, and preview a few to see what they look like.
I like this trace effect, so let’s select it,
adjust our duration to slow it down a bit,
and change the direction to Left to Right.
To see what our full effect looks like,
click the build order button,
and set it to play one after another.
Select the middle animation,
and change the start option to After Build 1.
Repeat the same with the bottom animation.
To watch the entire animation,
select the top option and press the preview button.
I feel like this one needs a bit of a pause
between the Pop animation and the build out.
To add a pause,
select the bottom animation,
and set the delay to about 1 second.
Now, we need to export this file as a video clip.
Before we do, we need to remove the white background.
To do that, go to format,
and from the Current Fill dropdown menu,
select No Fill.
To export this file, go to the menu bar,
select File, Export To and Movie.
Since this is all only one slide,
the only adjustment we need to worry about
is the video resolution.
Set this to Custom,
match the resolution and frame rate to match your project,
and to keep the transparent background,
select Apple Pro Res 4444.
Click Next, give it a name,
select your save destination,
and click the export button.
Adding this to your project is very simple.
For my example, I’m going to use this in Final Cut Pro,
but the same thing can also be done in iMovie.
Open up your project, hit the import button,
and navigate to your exported movie clip.
Import this into Final Cut Pro, or iMovie.
Select your KeyNote clip,
and add this above your timeline.
If needed, you can use the transform tool to reposition,
and re size the text.
Since our background is transparent,
this clip behaves just like a normal title,
but looks a lot better!
The same method can be used to animate on screen graphics.
You do need to have a transparent background in your graphic.
There’s a few places you can get graphics online,
like Canva,
but I get all mine from Envato Elements.
Let’s use KeyNote to animate this fun little mail icon
I got from Envato Elements.
Duplicate your previous slide to keep all the properties from before,
and delete the text box.
Open a Finder window,
select your graphic and drag it into KeyNote.
Resize it, and personally, I always like to center my graphics.
Once again, go to Animate, select Build in, add an effect,
and choose an animation for your graphic.
Let’s use the Skid animation for this example.
For the Action animation let’s use Scale,
and for build out, let’s try Confetti.
Click the Build Order button,
change the middle and end start option to after build one and two,
and let’s add a 1 second delay to the bottom.
Export this slide as a movie file,
make sure to set it to Apple Pro Res 4444
and import this into your video editing software.
Add this above your timeline,
and instead of a boring plain graphic,
you have this cool little animation!
I really wish animations like this
were built into Final Cut Pro and iMovie,
but this is the next best thing.
Compared to some plugins, these might be a little basic,
but the price is right.
Another great app for animating text and graphics is Apple Motion.
A few weeks ago, I had a good friend of mine, Dylan Bates,
do a guest tutorial on this channel about animating text in Apple Motion.
There’s a ton of cool stuff you can do there.
If you’re interested, I’ll link it here,
and in the description below. Go check it out.
Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you back here next week.