# Keyframes, speed and motion > Making a value change over time with keyframes and easing, the graph editor, speed ramps, reverse, boomerang, freeze and stutter, and slow motion that stays fluid. https://driftedit.app/manual/keyframes/ A keyframe pins a value at a moment: the clip's scale at 100% here, 130% there. DriftEdit fills in every frame between them, so the picture grows smoothly. Almost every value in the inspector can be keyed: position, scale, rotation, the anchor point, opacity, crop, and the settings of every effect. ## Adding keyframes 1. Select a clip and move the playhead to where the change should start. 2. In the inspector, press the diamond beside the value (for example **Scale**). The diamond fills: a key is set at the playhead. 3. Move the playhead to where the change should end, and change the value. A second key is set by itself, because the value is already keyed. The keys show as diamonds on the clip in the timeline. Click one to jump to it; drag it along the clip to move it in time. Select a key and press `Delete` to remove it. Right-click a value's diamond in the inspector to delete every key of it at once; the value shown at the playhead stays. Each diamond sits higher or lower by its value: the clip's middle is the value at rest (100 % scale, 1× speed), more above it, less below. Drag a diamond up or down to change the value keyed there, as dragging its number in the inspector sideways would: scale, rotation, opacity, an effect's setting, and a key of speed. Speed keys show as diamonds too, on any clip, sound included. ![A clip with keyframes on the timeline and the inspector's diamonds](https://driftedit.app/manual/shots/keyframes-light.webp) *Keyframes on a clip* ## Easing How a value travels from one key to the next is its ease. In the **Animate** tab, choose it for each key: **Linear** for a steady change, **Ease in** to start slowly, **Ease out** to end slowly, **Ease in and out** for both, or **Hold** to jump at the next key. Easing is what makes a zoom feel natural instead of mechanical. ## The graph editor `Shift+G`, or **View**, **Graph editor**, shows the selected clip's keyed values as curves in the timeline's place. Drag a key up and down to change its value, or left and right to move it in time. Drag the handles between two keys to shape the ease as a curve of your own; the Animate tab then calls it **Curve**. Press `Shift+G` again to go back to the tracks. A double click on a clip with keyframes opens it here too. A double click on any sound clip, the song too, opens the graph editor as well; a keyed speed is a curve of its own there, **Speed**. ## Speed The **Speed** tab of a clip, or the speed button in the toolbar: - **Constant**: the whole clip faster or slower, such as 50% for slow motion or 200% to speed it up. - **Ramp**: the speed changes along the clip. Choose a preset (**Montage**, **Hero**, **Bullet**, **Jump cut**, **Flash in**, **Flash out**) or draw your own on the **Speed curve**: drag a point up or down to change the speed there, left or right to move it. - **Freeze**: the clip holds one frame for its whole length. **Freeze the frame at the playhead** makes one from the frame you are on. - **Reverse** (`Shift+R`): the clip plays backwards, its sound too. - **Rewind**: the clip plays forwards, then quickly back. - **Boomerang**: forwards to the middle, then back. - **Stutter**: from the playhead, an eighth of a beat repeated four times. Type a speed in the box beside the slider, or drag the number sideways. **Keep the pitch**, on unless you turn it off, keeps the sound at its own pitch at any speed; off, the pitch follows the speed, as on tape: slower is lower, faster is higher. Reversed sound always follows it; a ramped or keyed speed keeps the pitch too while it is on. Select several clips to change their speed together. Speed can be keyed like any other value: the diamond beside **Speed** puts a key at the playhead, and the speed glides from key to key; type or slide a speed elsewhere and a key is put there. The keys stay under **Constant**; **Ramp** is for its presets and its curve, drawn by hand. Keyed on the song, it keeps all its music, and the edit re-aligns to it, kick by kick. Change the song's speed and the whole edit follows it: every cut stays on its beat, and the transitions, keys, automation, kicks and markers after the song's start move with it, in one step. A shot shows more or less of its footage; one with too little left plays slower to fill its time. The song is auto mode's, or in an edit made by hand the longest sound that is not a video's. ## Slow motion that stays fluid Slowing a clip means each frame of the footage is shown for longer, which can look jerky. Two ways fix it: - **Frame blending** mixes the two neighbouring frames to make each frame between. Quick, a little soft. - **Smooth motion** draws the frames between the footage's own with an AI model on your device, so a clip slowed to a quarter still moves on every frame. Right-click slowed clips and choose **Smooth motion**, or apply it from Techniques. The clip keeps its own video; its Speed tab shows the rate and switches it off. The model is 11 MB, downloaded once. While the preview plays, the work waits and goes on when you pause; until it is done the clip plays slowed as it is. While the preview plays on proxies, slowed shots play without their smoothed frames, so it keeps up; paused, at full quality and in the export they are smooth. The smoothed video is kept on this device, every frame stored whole so none is a near copy of the one before: about 20 MB for each second of footage at 1080p. At export, **Smooth motion** can take the whole video to 60 frames a second (or 120 with Pro), never blending across a cut. ## Echo trails **Echo trails** draws copies of the clip as it was a moment before, each fainter than the last: the motion trail of a dancer or a car. Switch on **Trails** in the **Video** tab (or choose **Echo trails** in a clip's menu) and set the number of copies, the time between them and how quickly they fade. ## Motion on the viewer Select a picture, a title or an overlay and drag it in the viewer to move it, drag a corner to scale it, or drag its handle to turn it. With a key already on the value, moving it in the viewer sets a key at the playhead. Shift or Ctrl with a click adds another to the selection, and several selected move and scale together in one box. While you drag, the frame's middle and edges and the other clips' edges and middles hold it, with a guide drawn, so words placed one by one line up; Shift or Ctrl held keeps the move to one axis. **Arrange**, above the viewer, lines up, spreads or centres what is selected. ## Masks and blending A mask shows only part of a clip (in the **Video** tab): a rectangle, an ellipse or a split line, inside or outside, with a soft edge, every part keyable and placed on the viewer with handles. **Blend** lays a picture over the one under it as Multiply, Screen, Overlay, Add, Darken or Lighten: Screen for light leaks, Multiply for shadows and textures. > [!TIP] A zoom on every kick in one step > Right-click a picture track's head and choose **Add automation: Zoom**, then pulse it on the song's kicks. Or use **Impact on the kick** in Techniques, which does it on one clip with the editor's timing.