Final Cut Pro is great, but it’s not perfect.
One major issue in Final Cut Pro in animating keyframes.
The tools included for it suck!
And in this video, we’re going to fix that.
Hey guys, what up.
My name is Serge, and if you’re new here, welcome to my channel.
First, let’s take a look at Final Cut Pro’s key framing problem.
This is most apparent when key framing the transform tool.
Let’s use it to animate a zoom in effect on our clip.
Place your playhead where you want the zoom effect to start,
select the transform tool, and add a keyframe.
Move a few frames ahead,
and use the transform tool to resize and reposition your clip.
Doing it this way get’s the job done,
but honestly, it looks like crap.
There’s a much better way of doing this effect,
but you do need to buy a plugin.
The plugin I’m talking about is called AddMotion from FXFactory.
This video isn’t sponsored,
I didn’t even get this plugin for free,
but it’s by far my favourite plugin for Final Cut Pro,
and probably the one I use the most.
To add a zoom effect to your clip using AddMotion,
go to your titles and generators browser,
and select the AddMotion category.
With your playhead where you want the effect to start,
select the Adjustment layer, and add it above your timeline.
Press Command 5 to open the effects browser,
select the AddMotion category,
and add the AddMotion effect to your adjustment layer.
Move your playhead a couple seconds into the clip,
and with the adjustment layer selected,
head up to the video inspector.
First thing we need to do here is zero out the A Position value.
This will be out starting point,
so you want the framing to be the same as your original clip.
Now, by default,
this effect moves your clip from Point A to Point B,
so let’s use the Point B controls
to set the final framing of our clip.
This is what our effect looks like now,
but you can make art look even better.
First, use the duration slide to adjust the speed of this effect.
Next, open the TakeOff dropdown menu,
and adjust the timing of the start of this effect.
You can make it Linear,
pop Back for a few frames at the start,
make the effect ease in,
ease in even slower with the Ease In squared option,
and much more.
For the landing type, you have even more options.
You can ease out this effect,
ease it out even slower with the Expo option,
you can make the landing elastic,
make it thud, and many more.
Normally when I use this effect for my tutorial videos,
I use the Ease square option for the takeoff,
and Expo for landing.
Here’s what this effect looks like using the transform tool,
and here’s the same clip using AddMotion.
Next, if you want to zoom out
and go back to your original framing,
its super easy to do.
Just move your playhead to where you want to zoom out of your clip,
and ripple trim the end of the adjustment layer to your playhead.
Hold down the option key,
and drag your adjustment layer to make a copy of it.
Snap the second adjustment layer to your playhead.
Go back to the video inspector,
and to reverse the movement, select B to A.
Add the included Motion Blur effect to your adjustment layers,
render out your clip,
for this fake camera zoom effect.
This alone makes this plugin worth the money,
but there’s more.
Besides the add motion effect we just seen,
this plugin also comes with Pop and Swing Effects.
These work great for animating graphics in your videos.
Just add an adjustment layer above your graphic,
add the effect to it and adjust the parameters.
With just a few simple steps,
you have this cool animation.
If we go back to the titles and generators browser,
the plugin also comes with three different text presets.
Add one of these above your timeline,
replace the text and adjust the available parameters
for a cool title effect like this,
or this, or even this.
Like I said at the start of this video,
the AddMotion plugin is by far
the best plugin I have for Final Cut Pro.
I use this in every single video I make.
I’ll leave a link to it in the video description.
It’s not even an affiliate link.
For a product like this, I have no problems promoting it for free.
I like it that much.
Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you back here next week.