How to Make a Smooth Text Animation in Premiere Pro

Watch the tutorial

Step 1: Create your text and center it

Create a text layer with the Type tool and place it on the timeline. Then align the text to the center of the screen. You can hold Ctrl (Cmd on a Mac) while dragging to snap it to the center. Bold, clean fonts work best for this style, and the animation looks the same whatever word you use.

Step 2: Add Transform and keyframe Position and Opacity

Open the Effects panel, search for Transform and drag it from Video Effects > Distort onto the text layer. We use this one instead of the default Motion settings, because the Transform effect has its own Opacity and a Shutter Angle setting for motion blur.

Faster with BetterFX: skip the Effects panel. Press your BetterFX shortcut, type the first letters of Transform and press Enter to apply it to the selected clip. Get BetterFX

With the layer selected, go to Effect Controls and make sure you are at the start of the clip. Click the stopwatch next to Position to create a keyframe, then move the text down a bit. Do the same for Opacity: click its stopwatch and decrease it to 0.

Now move forward about one second and click the reset icon next to both Position and Opacity. That creates the second keyframes and returns the text to the center at full opacity. When you play it back, the text slides up and fades in.

Step 3: Ease the keyframes

Linear motion feels stiff, so let's smooth it out. Select all keyframes, right-click one of them, choose Temporal Interpolation and then Ease In. Right-click again, go to Temporal Interpolation and choose Ease Out.

To customize the speed further, click the arrow next to Position to expand its graph and click on one keyframe. Blue handles appear. Drag the handle all the way to the left. This makes the animation faster in the beginning and then slow down gently at the end. Do the same thing with the Opacity keyframes. For more background, read our guide to easing keyframes in Premiere Pro.

Smoother with EaseFlow: select the keyframes and apply a real easing curve in one click instead of dragging the Bezier handles by hand. See EaseFlow

Step 4: Add motion blur

To add motion blur to the animation, scroll down in the Transform settings, untick Use Composition's Shutter Angle and change the Shutter Angle to 360. The text now smears slightly while it moves, which makes the slide look much more natural.

Step 5: Split the text into letters with Crop

For the letter by letter version, count the characters in your word. The word in the video, Animation, has 9 letters, so it needs 9 text layers. Search for Crop in the Effects panel and apply it to the text layer. Then hold Alt (Option on a Mac), drag the layer up one track to duplicate it and keep duplicating until you have one layer for each letter.

Select the first layer, click the Crop effect in Effect Controls and blue handles appear in the Program Monitor. Drag them in until only the first character is visible. Select the second layer and isolate the second character the same way, and repeat for every letter.

Step 6: Offset the layers

Go to the start of the first text layer and move forward 2 frames by pressing the Right Arrow key twice. Align the second text layer to the playhead. Then move forward 2 frames again and snap the third layer to the playhead. Repeat this process with all layers. Each letter now starts slightly after the last one, and play it back to see the letters flow in one by one.

Tips

• Keep the offset small. Two frames between letters feels smooth. Bigger gaps start to look like a typewriter effect. For that style, see our typewriter text effect tutorial.
• Check the end of every layer. After shifting the layers, make sure they all run to the same end point so no letter disappears early.
• Save a preset. Once you like the animation, save it as a preset so you can drop it onto any title.

FAQ

How do I make text fade in and slide up in Premiere Pro?

Add the Transform effect, keyframe Position and Opacity at the start of the clip, then reset both values about a second later and ease the keyframes.

Why does my text animation look stiff?

The keyframes are probably still on linear interpolation. Select them, right-click and apply Ease In and Ease Out.

How do I add motion blur to text in Premiere Pro?

In the Transform effect, untick Use Composition's Shutter Angle and set Shutter Angle to 360.

Want this animation without building it yourself? Get the Smooth Text Animation Template and drop it onto any title.