Whether you need to create a family video montage or run a YouTube channel, mastering video editing can be highly valuable. Yet, as rewarding as editing a video is, the nuances of this profession can also feel overwhelming, especially with all the video editing concepts you’ll need to overcome.
This guide aims to demystify at least one of these video editing concepts: keyframing.
So, stay around. We’ll teach you what keyframing is, discuss its use, and explore its benefits. Then, we’ll provide valuable tips and show you beginner-friendly yet powerful video editing software to help you get started and learn what a keyframe is in animation.
In this article
What Is a Keyframe?
“What is keyframing?” is one of the most common questions video editing beginners ask. While understanding this video editing concept can be easy, especially if you watch a keyframing tutorial, mastering keyframes can be incredibly challenging.
So, what is a keyframe exactly?
The term keyframe has roots in traditional animation, where animators would get a shot to animate and sit down to plan things out. Before drawing anything, they’d figure out the most critical moments in that shot and then try to represent them with a single drawing or a keyframe, hence the name.
Today, that concept is different. When computer-generated animation came along, the term keyframing changed its meaning and now represents a specific value of a particular object at one point. As such, a keyframe marks the start or end of one change within a clip, like an object’s position or opacity.
With that said, there are five basic keyframe types:
- Linear keyframes – Often considered the most basic type, linear keyframes use a uniform rate of change, seeming mechanical and abrupt. While they’re excellent for learning about and practicing keyframing, most editors prefer other types.
- Hold keyframes – This type of keyframe does what its name implies. It holds the layer on a specific keyframe, making it ideal for freeze-frame effects and footage.
- Bezier keyframes – These keyframing elements allow complete manual control, allowing video editors to adjust their element’s motion path or the value graph to precisely what they need.
- Auto Bezier – Unlike the regular Bezier keyframe, it automatically generates curves for the keyframes, as its name suggests. It creates fluid motions and smoothes out the rate of change, making a much more professional-looking transition.
- Continuous Bezier – Finally, this keyframe type lets users manually smooth out the rate of change between keyframes. It provides much more manual control over a particular change in the clip.
Not all of these keyframe types will be available in a video editing program, with many software solutions focusing only on linear, hold, and Bezier keyframes. Furthermore, while professionals primarily use them for motion graphics, you’ll likely use all these keyframe types as a video editor.
Video Tutorial - Mastering Keyframe Curves: Understanding Position Keyframes
How Do Keyframes Help in Video Editing?
Keyframes are pivotal in digital animation, as you can use them as reference points for changes to a particular object’s state or property. As such, they’re integral to any video editing project in this field, allowing users to perform numerous actions.
For example, setting keyframes for an object’s opacity allows you to create fade-in and fade-out transitions, smoothing the gaps between different scenes and making your videos more professional.
You can also use keyframes to adjust the strength of a particular video effect throughout the clip. For example, you could change the amount of background blur as the focus moves on your video’s subject or adjust colors as the clip plays out.
Suppose you also want to show a textual element and move it from one side of the screen to another. In that case, you’d use keyframes and set them at different points in time, allowing you to animate an object’s movement quickly and efficiently.
These are just a few examples of what keyframes can do, but many others exist. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to use keyframes strictly for video. They’re also helpful in adjusting audio levels, allowing editors to highlight parts with dialogue or create audio transitions with fade-ins and fade-outs.
Benefits of Using Keyframes in Video Editing
Whatever video project you’re working on, keyframes can make your video editing tasks much more manageable and seamless, as they provide numerous benefits. Some of these include the following:
- Faster animation processes – Since keyframes simplify complex animations, provide consistency, and reduce the need for frame-by-frame adjustments, they dramatically increase a video editor’s efficiency, allowing them to create exciting animations much quicker.
- Increased creative flexibility – As you use them for effects, transitions, animations, and audio adjustments, keyframes provide tremendous video editing flexibility, allowing you to unleash your full creativity and experiment with different animation styles.
- Precise element control – Whether you need to adjust an object’s position or opacity, scale an element, or adjust the strength of background blur, keyframes allow for exact adjustments, allowing you to fine-tune almost every aspect of a video.
- Dynamic video effects – Instead of constantly adding and adjusting new video effects for each scene or frame, you can use keyframes to animate these effects over time. It adds consistency and visual appeal and makes your clips much more professional.
- Smoother transitions – A single video can have over a dozen scenes, each shot in a different location or during a specific time of the day. Ensuring these scenes flow smoothly is possible with keyframes. As such, these video editing tools can further enhance consistency and add a professional layer to your clips.
You can also save customized keyframes, allowing you to use them across multiple video projects, which helps build brand images and makes your clips stand out.
Tips for Starting Your Keyframing Journey
Keyframes can be incredibly challenging to master, but you must start somewhere, right? That’s why we’ve included a dedicated article section with tips on starting your keyframing adventure, which can make the seemingly daunting keyframing technique much more understandable.
- Watch YouTube tutorials – Fortunately, we live in an era of information, with guides and tutorials for anything you can imagine only a few clicks away. Using them to learn keyframing techniques from established editing experts can drastically simplify the learning process.
- Understand the basics – Whether it’s from this guide, a dedicated online course, or your favorite YouTuber, learning about keyframes in general and their basic types and functions can create a strong foundation for more complex editing tasks that’ll come later.
- Start small – Learning keyframes by trying them yourself vastly differs from reading about or watching someone explain them. Thus, you should start as soon as possible and try basic animations, like moving a simple video object from one point to another.
- Practice keyframing – There’s a famous saying that practice makes perfect. It’s also valid for keyframing in video editing. By trying new keyframing effects, experimenting with different object properties, and practicing such transitions, you’ll improve your proficiency, which makes practice essential for learning about keyframes.
- Use premade templates – Most video editing tools offer keyframing presets, significantly decreasing the threshold of keyframe mastery. These presets let users quickly apply keyframes, which they can gradually customize to their needs.
Following these tips will make the process of mastering keyframes much faster, and you’ll soon have a solid foundation that can drastically improve your video editing skills.
A Beginner-Friendly Keyframing Tool You Should Try
While dozens of video editing tools are available online and offline, none are as beginner-friendly and easy to master as Wondershare Filmora Keyframing. Yet, despite having an incredibly intuitive user interface that anyone can effortlessly navigate, Filmora packs a heavy punch regarding the number of video editing tools and features, making it the perfect option to learn what keyframing is and how to use it.
Its rich library of video effects, transitions, animations, and templates will allow you to test the endless possibilities of keyframing. At the same time, Filmora’s AI-powered features, like AI Copilot, will make your video editing tasks a breeze and drastically reduce the time you need to apply and adjust keyframing techniques.
How to Use Wondershare Filmora to Add Keyframes
An easy-to-learn user interface in Filmora makes any video editing task a piece of cake. That’s why adding keyframes is also seamless, and the process for it looks something like this:
Step 1: Launch Wondershare Filmora and hit the New Project button.
Step 2: Head to Media > Project Media and click Import to add your clips, or select Global Media and use Filmora’s ready-to-use videos.
Step 3: Drag and drop the imported video onto the timeline and select it by clicking it.
Step 4: Once you select the video on the timeline, the right sidebar will change, and you’ll see the Video tab. Click the Keyframe Panel button in the bottom right corner of this sidebar.
Step 5: Add keyframes for scale, position, rotation, compositing, opacity, and other aspects and adjust them in the Keyframe Panel.
Step 6: Keyframes are also available for colors and audio, so click their respective tabs in the right-hand sidebar to add such keyframes.
Step 7: Optionally, go to Video > Animation to access Filmora’s preset keyframes, which you can drag and drop onto the timeline.
Step 8: Once you fine-tune everything, hit Export in the top right corner. Then, adjust the output settings and click Export again to save the video.
Conclusion
While challenging, becoming proficient in video editing is not impossible. Mastering keyframes can help you get there much quicker. After all, these powerful editing tools are crucial in creating quick animations and dynamic video effects. They can help you meticulously control every aspect of your clips, adjust colors and audio levels throughout the video, and create smooth transitions between scenes.
Whether you’re a beginner or a veteran video editor, Wondershare Filmora is an excellent place to start using keyframes. It offers a beginner-friendly interface and many helpful editing features, including AI tools.
Moreover, combining this effortlessly usable video editing software with YouTube tutorials, online courses on keyframing, and constant practice and presets will help you master keyframing techniques quickly and significantly improve your video editing skills.
