Adding Keyframes on the Timeline in Premiere Pro

Full Video Transcript

Hi, this is Margaret with Noble Desktop, and today we will be looking at the pen tool in Premiere Pro. So before we start, go to your wrench and make sure that all of these items are checked. I'm going to click on Option plus—the more times you click on the plus symbol, the larger your audio track will get. Option minus makes it smaller, Option plus makes it larger.

Creating Audio Fade-Ins with the Pen Tool

So let's say that I would like to fade in to this guitar playing auditorily. I'm going to press the pen tool right here—P for pen, or just click on the pen tool. Make one point there because that's my base level I want to return to, and then one point here, and then drag that all the way down.

So another way of getting a pin point on your timeline, even if you're in the selector tool, is to hold in the Command key and make a couple of clicks. That'll have the same effect as a pen tool. If you are on a PC, you would hold down the Control key. So we want this to be an extremely dramatic fade in.

Matching Video Opacity to Audio Fades

Now what might look great with this is if the video followed suit and faded in exactly the way the audio faded in. So I'd like my video track to get larger. I could double-click here, or I could say Command plus. And now here's your opacity line. Again, at the beginning of the lesson I mentioned to have this on—this is actually Show Video Keyframes.

So I'm going to make another point here. I'll do that Command-click again because it's easier. Make another point here and then just drag it down. But maybe I want to hear him a little bit before I see him, so I'll make this perhaps more of an abrupt fade in by just moving that over.

Adjusting Volume Levels Within a Clip

Maybe I have some narration right down here beneath this audio track, and I want a section of this music to get a little bit lower. So if I make two points again—maybe I'll make this time four points—and I'll just dip down a little bit here. So it gives you a lot of control on how you would like to have your audio volume levels heard.

Working with Keyframes in the Effects Control Panel

This volume level—I'm going to double-click on your clip and go to the Effects Control. It's also here under Audio, under Volume. And now if we have this over here, we're going to see those keyframes we just made. So I'm going to remove these attributes—Control-click, Remove Attributes. I've taken away all the pen points.

So if I chose instead to work with this audio clip in the Effects Control panel, I would double-click on it, Effects Control. I am working with levels. I might open this—here's that Toggle Animation, your first keyframe, which you only click once. I'm actually working backwards, so then I'm going to move my playhead towards the beginning and this time move that all the way down my level.

Adjusting Video Opacity in Effects Control

If I wanted to work in the Effects Control panel on the opacity of the video clip, double-click on the video clip, Effects Control, Opacity. Let's open that up. This is pre-checked because it was used before, so I'm going to make one point here. I already actually have a point there—I use that back arrow to get to it—and I'll make the opacity zero. I'd like it to start a little bit later, so I'm going to move my keyframe closer to the other keyframe. You can see it being reflected immediately on the timeline.

If you've enjoyed this lesson on using the pen tool in Premiere Pro, this has been Margaret from Noble Desktop.