Apply and adjust animations

You can animate any visual in your scene—no matter what plan you’re on. Use presets or create custom animations to adjust position, size, cropping, rotation, or opacity. Animations also work on text and captions, so you can control how they enter, move, or appear on screen.

Adjusting animations in bulk

At this time, Descript does not support the application or bulk adjustment of animations. Please feel free to leave feedback for this feature request here.

How to add or remove an animation

Select the visual in the scene editor that you want to apply the animation to.
Select the + button in the Animation section of the Layers panel to add your animation.

There are a few animation presets you can choose from for animating in or out of a layer. They are as follows:

Blur:	Fade from or to a blurred layer
Spin:	Spin the layer into or out of view.
Wipe:	Wipe the layer to reveal or hide it.
Appear:	Text fades in word by word (text only).
Fade:	Fade to or from black.
Reveal:	Text slides in from an invisible frame, this includes a directional setting so you can determine if the text is revealed from the left, right, top or bottom (text only).
Scale:	Animate the scale of a layer.
Slide:	Slide a layer from any chosen direction into or out of view. This could be used to make rolling credits when applied to a text layer.
Zoom and pan:	Zooms in and pans as adjusted (not supported on text).
Ken Burns	It allows for enhanced control over smooth, directional zooms and pans.

If you want to remove the animation, click the minus button next to the animation.

Animation Presets and Script Media/Tracks

In/out presets are designed for b-roll layers with defined start and end points. Script layers are continuous and don’t support these presets—you’ll need to use custom animations instead.

Customizing an animation

Animations cannot overlap

You can have multiple animations back-to-back, but animations cannot overlap on the same clip or layer.

How to adjust your animation's length and properties

Choose a visual from the scene editor. If you haven't already, add an animation to your visual.
Activate the animation mode by selecting Edit keyframes in timeline next to your animation in the Properties panel. Note that when you add an animation, Descript will automatically enable animation mode.
To adjust the duration of the animation, click and drag either keyframe from the Timeline.
Select the start or end keyframe.
There are two ways to adjust the layer:
- Directly in the Scene Editor - resize the layer by dragging and adjusting the shape.
- Or, use the the Layer panel. With the layer seleted, navigate to the Size and position section. Edit the numeric values in each field to modify the layer at that keyframe.
Repeat steps 4 and 5 for the other keyframe, if needed.
- Or visually on the scene editor by clicking and dragging the layer.
To exit animation mode, press Esc, click off the element, or re-click Edit keyframes in timeline.

With Appear and Reveal presets you can target most animations by word, line, or paragraph. For example:

By word: Each word in the text will animate separately.
By line: Each line of text will animate as a unit.
By paragraph: The entire paragraph will animate together.

Easing is applied per word, line, or paragraph, while the overall animation follows a linear easing curve.

Keyframes

Once you've added an animation to a visual layer, you’ll customize the animation's duration and properties using keyframes. Each animation has two keyframes that set your visual layer's start and end property values.

Custom Animation curves

Animation curves control how fast or slow the animation moves at different moments. These changes in speed help the animation appear more natural. You can pick a specific curve in the Version history icon.png Animation settings. The curve you choose will determine how the animation speeds up or slows down: