Tutorial: Creating a Moving Timelapse Effect in Adobe Premiere Pro CC

Adding Keyframes

Next we'll add keyframes to the clip to mimic the slider/jib effect. With the clip selected, navigate to the Effect Controls tab in the Source Monitor, and click the Motion disclosure triangle to access the Motion effect. Make sure that your playhead is at the beginning of the timeline and select the Watch icon next to position to add a keyframe at that point (Figure 1, below).

Figure 5. Adding the first keyframe.

This action has enabled us to create keyframes, allowing us to animate the clip over time. In this example, I'm going to adjust the position values so the clip moves from the upper left to the bottom right. You can drag each of these values or manually enter them in the Position controls. We have the extra space in the video that we need to do this because our source clip is larger than the 1080 settings we used to create this sequence.

After we've chosen our starting position, we can move the playhead to the end of the timeline and set the position where we want our clip to end, which will be the bottom right. Since we enabled keyframing by clicking the watch icon, Premiere Pro has added another keyframe at this point in the timeline.

After we add the new position values at the end of the clip, we can preview the effect. It looks pretty good, but we need to add some Easy Ease effects to make the move looks a bit more organic. You can do this by right-clicking on the keyframe and choosing Temporal Interpolation > Ease Out option (Figure 6, below) for the first keyframe, followed by the Ease In option for the second keyframe.

Figure 6. Choosing the Ease Out option for the first keyframe to ensure a smooth beginning for the effect.

You can see the effect we created at the 2:33 mark in the tutorial clip below.

And there you have it: a really cool trick if you're shooting a lot of timelapses.