In this weeks episode of Short Cuts, we’re giving you the key to keyframes in Lightworks!
Keyframes are an important tool for making the start, end, or middle of an effect, change, or transition. There are audio and video versions, but today we’re just covering the video version.
For Keyframes in Lightworks, head to the VFX panel, and apply any effect to your clip. I recommend using 2D DVE to experiment with, as it’s fairly simple effect that just controls size and position.
To get started with keyframes in Lightworks, you just want to hit the stopwatch next to the effect you want to use them. For this test, click it next to ‘Master’ under scale.
Once you’ve done so, head to the ‘graphs’ tab inside VFX, and you’ll see your keyframe on the line. Move your red timeline bar along 3 times and click the plus each time to add a new keyframe.
All of these keyframes will be at the original settings of the footage. Click on the second keyframe and drag it up. You’ll see this zooms in the footage, as these keyframes control the master scale of the clip. Drag your red line back to the start and hit play. You’ll see that everything is normal until the first keyframe, and from there it will ramp up the zoom in until you reach the second keyframe.
At this point, it will start to zoom back out, as the third keyframe is still set to the original settings. Drag that keyframe up to the same height as the second keyframe, and then drag your red line back to the start and hit play. You’ll see that it stays normal until the 1st keyframe, zooms in from the 1st to the 2nd, holds there from the 2nd to the 3rd, and then zooms back out between the 3rd and the 4th.
If you move the 2nd and 3rd keyframes close together or further apart, you’ll see this increases or decreases the length of time it stays frozen at that level of being zoomed in. Likewise, if you increase or decrease the distance between the 1st and 2nd keyframes, you’ll see the length of time it takes to zoom in or out increases or decreases accordingly.
It’s a complex tool to explain in words, so please give the Short Cuts video a watch to see it in action.
