Keyframe Animation

The keyframe system lets you animate any numeric clip property — position, scale, rotation, opacity, speed, and effect parameters — over time. Values between keyframes are interpolated automatically using the easing mode you choose.

​

Animatable properties

​

Transform properties

​

Effect parameters

Any numeric parameter on a GPU effect can be keyframed. The property key follows the pattern effect.{effectId}.{paramName} — for example, effect.effect_123.shift for hue shift animation.

---

​

Adding your first keyframe

---

​

Editing keyframes

​

Moving keyframes

Drag a keyframe diamond horizontally to reposition it in time. Hold Shift while dragging for 10× slower fine-grained movement. Keyframes are clamped to the clip duration and cannot be placed outside it.

​

Changing a keyframe value

Position the playhead directly on a keyframe (the timecode display will snap to it), then adjust the property value in the Clip Properties panel. The keyframe updates in place.

​

Multi-select and batch move

Shift-click multiple keyframe diamonds to select them. Drag any selected keyframe to move the entire group by the same time delta, preserving relative spacing.

​

Copy and paste keyframes

Ctrl+C copies selected keyframes (not the clips they belong to). Ctrl+V pastes the keyframes at the playhead position on the currently selected clip. Pasted keyframes maintain their relative timing to each other.

​

Deleting keyframes

Select one or more keyframes and press Delete. Alternatively, right-click a keyframe and choose Delete. When you press Delete with keyframes selected, keyframes are deleted first — the clip itself is only deleted if no keyframes are selected.

​

Toggling keyframes off

Click the active diamond icon next to a property to turn keyframing off for that property. All keyframes for that property are removed and the property reverts to a static value equal to the last keyframe’s value.

​

Tick marks

Small amber diamond markers appear at the bottom edge of clip bars to show keyframe positions without requiring you to expand the track. These are visible at all zoom levels and give a quick overview of which parts of a clip are animated.

---

​

Easing modes

Five easing modes control how values are interpolated between keyframes: To change the easing mode of a keyframe, right-click the diamond and select the desired mode from the context menu. The diamond shape updates to reflect the chosen mode.

---

​

Bezier curve editor

​

Opening the curve editor

1. Expand the track to show property lanes.
2. Click the curve icon next to any property that has keyframes.
3. The curve editor opens below the property row. Only one curve editor can be open at a time.

Resize the curve editor by holding Shift and scrolling the mouse wheel over it.

​

Reading the editor

• The horizontal axis represents time, matching the timeline scroll position.
• The vertical axis represents the property value, scaled automatically to fit the visible range of keyframes.
• Bezier curves are drawn between each pair of consecutive keyframes.

​

Moving keyframes in the curve editor

​

Editing bezier handles

When a keyframe uses bezier easing, two handles appear:

• In-handle — controls the incoming curve (always at or before the keyframe in time).
• Out-handle — controls the outgoing curve (always at or after the keyframe in time).

---

​

Interpolation behavior

​

Between keyframes

1. Calculate normalized time t between the two keyframes (0 at the first, 1 at the second).
2. Apply the easing function to get an eased t.
3. Linearly interpolate the value: value = v1 + (v2 - v1) × easedT.

Bezier easing uses a cubic Bézier solver (Newton–Raphson, 10 iterations, ε = 0.0001) to convert time to the eased value.

​

Edge cases

​

Hold interpolation

To hold a value constant between two keyframes without any blending, set the first keyframe to ease-out with the handle pulled all the way to the right, and set the second keyframe to ease-in with the handle pulled all the way to the left. This effectively flattens the curve segment to a constant.

---

​

Speed keyframes

The Speed property is keyframeable like any other property. Animating speed lets you ramp smoothly from normal playback into slow motion or fast forward. Source time is computed as the integral of the speed curve over the clip’s timeline duration, so Masterselects handles smooth speed ramps and direction changes correctly — including negative speed values that play the source backwards. See Timeline — speed control for the full speed value reference table.

---

​

Related pages