How to use Kdenlive's effects: transform, blur, crop, rotate...
793In this one we'll see how to animate objects, such as Images, text, and titles. As with the previous tutorial, all files used here will be available through the link in the description below !
Support the channel on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment
Follow me on Twitter : http://twitter.com/thelinuxEXP
Link to the tutorial project sources: https://my.pcloud.com/publink/show?code=kZ1Pna7ZgV8WovWlAebL1dkuyVLCJpdp6J7y
TRANSFORM
The transform effect is your go-to tool to animate these things. It can be used to adjust the scale of any element, its position on the screen, and even its dimensions, to stretch or shrink it. It also supports keyframes.
Let's see how to animate the appearing of a video clip.
First, we'll drag a background clip to the timeline. This will be used to have something interesting to look at while our video clip is appearing.
Now, we'll try to make our video clip appear from the left side of the screen, while growing in size before occupying the whole screen.
We'll drag our second clip to another track in the timeline.
Now, we'll search for the transform effect in the effects pane, and drag it to that second clip.
Let's select the starting position with the first keyframe, and place our clip outside of the screen by dragging the handle that appears in the middle. This means it'll start hidden. Let's also change it's scale to 50%. We'll then add a second keyframe with the + button in the transform effect settings, and place the clip in the middle with the position buttons.
Now, let's add a rubberbanding effect, with which the clip will seem to bounce a little at the end of its movement. To do this, we'll click on our second keyframe, and select the "smooth" acceleration instead of the linear one.
Let's also add a third keyframe just a bit after our second one, with the exact same properties.
BLUR
While not strictly an animation, the blur effect can be used to make things a bit more interesting. If we take our example above, our background video can be a little distracting. We could add a blur effect to the background clip.
Let's browse for "blur" in the effects panel, and drag that effect onto our clip. We can then play with the values to adjust it to where we want it to be. The blur effect supports keyframes as well. Interesting thing to note is that you can also add a keyframe by double clicking in the monitor, and a keyframe will be added where your playhead is located.
ROTATE
This effect allows to rotate a clip on its X, Y, or even Z axis, which makes it seem like it's moving. Since it supports keyframes, we can use it to simulate movement.
Let's take for example a webpage we'd like to have scrolling on the screen, but with a titled axis, instead of staying boring and flat.
We'll drag a background clip, since our webpage image will not use 100% of the available screen space once it's rotated, and drag our webpage on another track on top of it.
If we want to add a bit of movement, we could make it tilt towards the screen, as it scrolls to the bottom. Let's drag the rotate effect.
On our first rotate keyframe, we'll leave everything as-is, to keep the page flat.
We'll then add a second keyframe at the end, with a "rotate Z" value of 120 to indicate we want the page to turn towards the screen, and I'll add a little bit of X rotation, to make it look like the page is turning towards us. Let's preview it.
Now, if I want to add some page scrolling, I can combine this with a transform effect. I'll start with normal proportions, then create a keyframe to make it zoom towards the top of the page using the position buttons and a value of 200% zoom, and I'll create one last keyframe at the end of the clip, with a 200% zoom value as well, and a position anchored at the bottom.
CROP
I sometimes use it to make a floating window above a specific background.
Let's drag a background video on the lower track, and my footage of Firefox on an upper track. You see that this second clip hides everything. What I want is to remove all the space around the Firefox window. I'll just drag the "edge crop" effect to that clip.
I'll drag the sliders to about their right position, and then adjust using numbers to get an exact crop on the parts above, below, right and left of the window. Now the portion of the screen I'm showing is a bit too big, so I can add a transform effect on top of that to reduce its size.
SAVE
You can actually save any effect with its values for re-use in later projects. To do this, just click the little menu icon in the effect itself, on the effects panel, and choose "save effect". Give it a comprehensible name, so that you can find it again afterwards.
Now, every time you want to apply this specific effect, you can just browse the effects panel, click on the little star, and you'll see all your custom effects. Just drag it to the clip you want to apply it to, and you're done !