Video

Video in PopCraft is a fill: any rectangle (or shape) can show a video the way it shows an image. The file is kept in the file's own media store, so it works offline and syncs with the file.

How to

Put a clip in a design

1. Pick the image and video tool and click on the canvas to place a video at its own size, or drag to fill a box. Or select a shape, open its fill, choose Video as the fill type and click Upload video.
2. In the fill, set how it plays:

1. 1.Pick the image and video tool and click the canvas0:00
2. 2.It is a layer on the timeline: press Space0:02

Description

An empty canvas in Animate. The image and video tool places a clip picked from the computer at its own size; it becomes a video layer with a bar on the timeline, and Space plays it.

Edit a clip on the timeline

In Animate, a video layer inside a frame is a clip: its row on the timeline is a bar with a filmstrip of the source, and right under it a Sound row with its sound as a waveform, linked to the picture.

The sound row has an audio clip's handles: the corner dots drag its fades, the line keys its volume. Every gesture is one undo step.

With the layer selected, the fill's Video section has the same settings as fields: Start, Length, In (the source second it starts on), Speed (0.25× to 4×, the sound stretched with its pitch kept), Loop, Poster, the transition in and its length, and the sound's Volume, Pan, Fade in, Fade out, fade shape (Linear or Equal power) and Detach audio.

Transitions between clips

Put the next clip on a layer above the one before it and pick its transition in. A cross-dissolve or a dip is centred on the cut: the two clips are extended into each other as far as their sources allow, and their sounds cross over the same stretch with equal-power fades, so the level holds.

Detach the sound (J and L cuts)

Detach audio puts the clip's sound on the frame's own Audio lanes, at the foot of the timeline, exactly where it was heard. It then has edges of its own: start it before the picture (a J cut) or let it run on after it (an L cut), split it, crossfade it with another clip, and key its level, as on a composition's audio lanes. Link audio back makes a lane clip of the video's own file its linked sound again, at the offset it's heard at. You can also import audio files onto a frame's lanes.

Make a scene from a generated clip

With a composition open, choose AI → Generate video… (or type "Generate video" in the command palette), describe the shot and click Generate. When it's ready, it becomes a new scene at the end of the composition: a frame the size of the stage, with the video filling it and a timeline as long as the clip. Trim it, reorder it and add transitions like any scene.

Outside a composition, the clip lands as a video layer where its placeholder was. Start from the selection animates a picture you already have. All the models, durations, aspect ratios, resolutions and costs are in Generating video.

Reference

• On the timeline and in exports, a video plays in step with the playhead: frame t of the timeline shows the source at In + (t − its start) × Speed (wrapped when it loops, holding its last frame when it doesn't). Exports render it frame by frame, so it's exact to the frame.
• A video's sound is an audio clip like any other: it plays through the same audio clock as the audio lanes (the picture follows what you hear), goes in the MP4 and WebM export's mix, and plays in a composition through its scenes. When you present in a separate window, the sound plays in that window, so sharing it in a call carries the sound.
• Files made before clips had sound settings keep their Muted setting as the linked sound's mute.
• Lottie can't carry video: a video blocks a Lottie export and the dialog names the layer.
• Generating video needs a connection and a signed-in account, and uses AI credits. The agent can do it too (generate_video).