I’m going to show you how to add text in Premiere Pro as well as manipulate it (animate the text). Premiere Pro as you know is feature packed. There are several ways to create creative text effects. But as a starting point, let’s cover some basics only.
Learn more: Add text to videos online in seconds!
We’ll go through and add some text, style it. Then I’ll show you how to animate it using an example!
TL:DR; Add text in Premiere Pro and Animate it
- Select the TYPE Tool to add your text
- Use the Effects Control to style and transform it.
- Use keyframes to apply basic animations.
- Go into the Effects panel and get more creative with your animations.
Need more steps, continue reading for the details.
Add text in Premiere – Detailed Guide
Assuming you have your video layer ready to go in your project (in your timeline). I got one clip on the timeline right here and we can start by adding text by selecting the type tool inside of our panel right here.
Select the type tool by clicking on the ‘T’ icon or you can also use the keyboard shortcut t on your keyboard.
Once you have selected that we can go to our program monitor.
Click wherever you want to add the text and type it out.
Notice that the text clip is also added to your timeline. You can drag and resize this in the timeline as you would with any other clip or layer.
For example you can trim the start or end time by dragging the edges inwards.
Change the text styling
Select your text clip again. Make sure you enable the Effects Control and select the Text property.
Here you can change all the text properties. You can update these and more. For example:
- Typeface, font, colors
- Fill and background fill
- Position, rotation and opacity
As you will have noticed, you can change each of the properties as well as the transform properties using the Effects Control panel. But you can also enable the transform controls by press V on your keyboard.
Doing so you will see the transform box around your text. This lets you now move, change the size and rotate the text box itself using your mouse.
Watch the video
How to add and animate text in Premiere Pro
Okay, so that was the simple version of adding text to your videos in Premiere Pro. But most likely you’ll want to get at least a bit fancy with them. In this case, let’s go through and add a smooth animation to your text as well as some shapes to make your text stand out.
We’ll add some transitioning shapes as well as a text animation.
I’m assuming you’ve followed the above and you know how to add a basic text graphic on your video.
Once you’ve done that, make sure you go into the Essential Graphics panel and choose new text.
Type inside of that and Center it in the screen using these alignment buttons.
Add a rectangle that will wipe across the text also. To do that, go into New Layer and select a rectangle.
Select the selection tool, and make sure the Anchor Point is on the right side of the shape.
Click and drag this across.
TIP
If you find that you’re not snapping to the edge of the shape, you can just hold down the command or control key, and that will turn on snapping.
Add shapes
We’ll create another rectangle to add to our animation. This one will act as a mask though to cover up the text.
Go into the Essential Graphics panel. At the very bottom you can turn on the mask with shape.
Click on Invert.
Click the left edge of this shape and drag it out so it covers up the text.
Now let’s go ahead and animate the rectangle here. You also need the mask to move with it at the same time.
Select the mask layer and pin it to the rectangle.
Turn on keyframes for this position just by clicking the keyframe icon.
Move the play head forward a few seconds, drag the rectangles across the screen and to the left of your text.
Rewind and play your video back. You will see the animation.
But it looks a little bit abrupt at the very end, so let’s smooth that out.
Select the text graphic and Go up to Effect Controls.
Open the settings for the rectangle shape.
Select the keyframes for the position settings. Right click them > Temporal Interpolation and set ease-in. Repeat and set ease-out also.
Now if you were to play back your video, it would look much smoother.
So there you go!
Now, there are a million ways to add effects to your text. Here’s a another basic text animation that you can practice with: