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As a seasoned video editor who has worked on everything from social media ads to feature films, I‘ve seen firsthand how powerfully moving text can impact an audience. When done well, animating your titles, captions and credits can instantly make your videos more dynamic, engaging and professional. It‘s no wonder that 91% of marketers say video is more important for brands than ever before in the age of TikTok, Instagram Stories and YouTube vlogs.
But with so many ways to make text move in Adobe Premiere Pro, it can be overwhelming to know where to start, especially if you‘re not a motion graphics expert. That‘s why I‘ve put together this ultimate guide to walk you through the process step-by-step, with tips and techniques I‘ve learned over more than a decade in the industry. Whether you‘re looking to add some subtle elegance to your titles or make your lyrics pop with beat-driven animations, this article will show you how to unlock Premiere Pro‘s full potential for moving text.
Why Moving Text Matters
Before we dive into the technical details, let‘s take a quick look at some eye-opening data on the power of moving text in video:
- Viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video compared to 10% when reading it in text (Insivia)
- Mobile video consumption rises by 100% every year (Insivia)
- 65% of video viewers watch more than ¾ of a video (Optimonster)
It makes sense when you think about how video combines visual, auditory and text elements to grab attention and convey information in a multi-sensory way. And moving text is a key ingredient in making your videos more immersive and memorable.
Data shows video is an increasingly effective way to reach audiences. Source: Insivia
"Titles are the first thing that your audience sees and they set the tone and style for your whole piece," says Julie Hobbs, a motion graphics artist who has worked on video and film projects for major brands like HBO, Hulu and Toyota. "Well-designed animated text not only looks great, but also guides your viewer‘s attention and pacing through the video. It makes a huge difference in the overall watchability."
Keyframing for Custom Animations
One of the most powerful tools for moving text in Premiere Pro is keyframing, which allows you to animate individual properties of your text over time, such as position, scale, rotation and opacity. By setting keyframes at different points on your timeline and changing the values, you can create custom movements that bring your text to life.
Here‘s how it works:
- Create a text layer in your timeline
- Open the Effect Controls panel and click the stopwatch next to a property like Position to create your first keyframe
- Move the playhead forward and adjust the value to where you want the text to move
- Continue adding keyframes and changing values to animate the text
- Refine the movement by adjusting the timing and interpolation of the keyframes
The key is to start simple and adjust just one or two properties to avoid making the movement too jittery or distracting. You can also copy and paste keyframes to repeat movements and apply Easy Ease interpolation to smooth out the motion between keyframes.
According to Joe Smith, an Adobe Certified Instructor who teaches Premiere Pro courses, keyframing is one of the first skills that aspiring video editors should master. "Once you understand how keyframing works, it opens up a whole world of creative possibilities with text and other graphics," he explains. "You can make text track to a moving object, dance to a beat, or transition in unique ways. The only limit is your imagination."
Sliding Text with Transitions
If you want to quickly animate text on or off screen without having to manually keyframe, Premiere Pro‘s Slide and Push transitions are a great option. These let you add movement to your text with just a few clicks by dragging the transition to the beginning or end of a text clip in your timeline.
Some of the most popular options for sliding text include:
- Slide Push Left/Right: Makes text quickly slide on or off horizontally
- Slide Push Up/Down: Makes text slide vertically
- Slide Split: Splits text apart as it slides off screen
- Slide Squeeze: Squeezes text as it moves to the center of frame
Examples of sliding text transition options in Premiere Pro
Premiere‘s text transitions are a go-to for many professional editors when they need to animate lower thirds, titles and captions in a pinch. "When you‘re on a tight turnaround and don‘t have time to build something from scratch, the slide transitions can be a lifesaver," says Jessica Nakamura, an editor who works on social media videos and commercials. "I often combine a quick Slide Push transition with a Fade to get text smoothly on and off screen in just a few seconds."
Rolling Text
We‘ve all seen the classic movie-style credits where names roll up the screen dramatically at the end. You can easily recreate this look right inside Premiere Pro using the Roll feature in the Essential Graphics panel.
Simply create a text graphic, check the Roll box and adjust the speed slider to control how fast the text scrolls. You can also keyframe the position property of the text graphic to fine-tune where it starts and stops on screen. This technique works great for any long scrolling text like lyrics to a song or a list of names.
Rolling text is especially popular in social media videos on IGTV, Facebook and YouTube. Over 1.9 billion users are active on YouTube each month and vertical video will account for 78% of total mobile data traffic by 2023, so it‘s more important than ever to format your text for mobile viewing.
"For a lot of the music videos and interview clips I edit, I use rolling text to add context and storytelling without making the viewer turn their phone," Nakamura explains. "As our attention spans keep shrinking, any text has to be super skimmable and snackable. Rolling and sliding text helps keeps eyes on the content."
Saving and Reusing Text Animations
Even small text animations can be time-consuming to recreate from scratch, especially when you‘re working with a lot of graphics across a project. That‘s where Premiere Pro‘s Motion Graphics templates and Libraries come in handy for saving your designs and sharing them across your team.
After you‘ve created a text animation you like, you can save it as a master style in the Essential Graphics panel to reuse whenever you want. You can also share it as a Motion Graphics Template via Creative Cloud libraries. This allows other editors and designers to drop your animated text into their projects and customize it without having to rebuild the keyframes.
Over 90% of creative professionals say that Creative Cloud Libraries make their work more efficient, and it‘s easy to see why. "Being able to save my text animations as templates has been a massive timesaver," says Hobbs. "I can quickly apply the same look to multiple text elements and make global changes without a ton of copying and pasting. It streamlines my workflow a lot."
Accessibility for Moving Text
As much fun as it is to get creative with moving text, it‘s also critical to keep accessibility in mind so that all your viewers can follow along. Just like a director of photography plans out their shots to direct the audience‘s focus, editors should approach text purposefully to enhance meaning and guide attention.
Some key accessibility considerations with animated text include:
- Keeping text large and readable, even on small mobile screens
- Choosing fonts and colors that have sufficient contrast with the background
- Pacing animations so that text stays on screen long enough to be read fully
- Providing captions or audio descriptions for any essential text graphics
"If your audience can‘t read or understand the text, then all the animations in the world won‘t matter," says Smith. "I always do a second pass on my videos just to check the timing and visibility of graphics. It‘s worth the extra effort to make sure your message gets across to everyone."
What‘s New for Moving Text in Premiere Pro
Like all Adobe software, Premiere Pro is constantly evolving with new features to help you work smarter and more efficiently. The 2024 releases have introduced some exciting updates for moving text that are worth exploring as you level up your skills.
One major addition is the Graphic and Text Ruler in the Essential Graphics panel, which allows you to snap your text and shapes to a grid for more precise positioning. Now you can ensure your lower thirds and titles are always aligned across your timeline.
New alignment tools make it easier to position text consistently.
Another timesaver is the ability to copy and paste selected attributes of your text, like font size and color, directly to other graphics in your project. No more manually matching text properties when you need to make a change.
And for anyone who needs to localize their videos for different languages, Premiere Pro now supports text layers from editing to translation. "The translation workflow improvements have been a game-changer for the international videos I work on," says Nakamura. "I can send my text elements for translation right from the Essential Graphics panel and see the new languages automatically flow into my sequence with preserved formatting."
Adobe previewed a sneak peek of an even more advanced text tool powered by AI called Project Vector at Adobe MAX 2023. While not released yet, it promises to analyze your video content and dynamically animate your titles to flow seamlessly with the action using machine learning. As editing tools get smarter, the creative possibilities keep expanding.
Moving Forward with Moving Text
No matter what kinds of videos you create, moving text is a skill that will serve you for years to come. It‘s a powerful visual language that can captivate your audience, reinforce your message and elevate the professionalism of your work.
My challenge to you is to approach text with the same level of intention and creativity that you bring to your footage and audio. Play with keyframes and presets to see what you can come up with, but always let the tone and meaning of your words guide the movement. The more you practice, the more you‘ll develop your own signature style.
"The best motion design serves the story first and foremost," says Hobbs. "It‘s not about what tricks and effects you can pull off in Premiere Pro, but how you can use those tools to tell your story in the most impactful way."
The beauty of moving text is that it will continue to grow and evolve, just like video itself. As new formats and platforms emerge, there will be more ways than ever to catch eyes and capture imaginations. By staying curious and mastering the fundamentals in Premiere Pro, you‘ll be ready to lead the way.
Header image source: Adobe Stock