Editor & Timeline

Animating overlays: Enter and Exit

How animations work in the editor. Per-element Enter and Exit, not per-clip transitions.

4 min read

The editor doesn't have a "transitions between clips" feature in the traditional video-editor sense. Video clips on the main track always cut hard from one to the next. The motion you see in a finished listing video (text fading in, an address bar sliding up, a shape revealing) comes from per-element animations on overlays.

Every text overlay, shape, and image overlay has two animation slots:

  • Enter Animation: how the element appears
  • Exit Animation: how it disappears

Both are picked from the same animation library and applied independently per element.

Where to find them

  1. Click any text, shape, or image overlay on the timeline to select it. The properties panel opens in the sidebar.
  2. Scroll to the Enter Animation and Exit Animation sections (collapsed by default; click the section header to expand).
  3. Each section is a 4-column grid of preview tiles. Click a tile to apply that animation to the selected element.

The picker shows a live preview on hover so you can sense the motion before committing.

What the library includes

About 35 named animations cover most needs. They roughly group into:

  • Subtle: Fade, Scale, Blur, Pulse, Expand
  • Directional: Slide Up / Down / Left, Diagonal Slide, Drop, Roll, Swing, Curtain
  • Energetic: Bounce, Slingshot, Snap Rotate, Shake, Glitch
  • Cinematic: Zoom Blur, Swipe Reveal, Float In, Fold
  • Playful: Wobble, Twist, Spiral, Zigzag, Elastic, Vortex
  • Standard rotations: Spin, Flip, Flip Y, Rotate In, Skew, Peek, Squeeze
  • None (pinned to the top of the picker): disables the animation slot

Text overlays also have a Typing animation that's text-specific (characters appear one at a time).

When to use which

Some rules of thumb that hold up across listing videos:

  • Address bars / persistent labels: Slide Up or Slide Down on enter, the same direction in reverse on exit, so the element travels off screen the way it came.
  • Featured-property highlights: Pulse or Float In to draw the eye without being noisy.
  • Brand logos: Fade or None. A spinning logo reads as amateurish on a real-estate listing.
  • Title cards: Fade or Scale on enter, Fade on exit. (Title cards are separate from text overlays. They're uploaded photos or short videos toggled in the project properties panel, but they have the same Enter / Exit animation slots, accessed from the title card's properties panel after selecting it on the timeline.)

Use the more energetic animations (Slingshot, Glitch, Shake) for social-media variants where the audience expects more motion. Skip them on the MLS-bound version.

The pace of animations matters as much as the choice. A bouncy Enter on every overlay reads as chaotic; a Fade on most overlays with one Slide Up on the address bar reads as designed. Restraint is the polish signal.

What about transitions between video clips?

Video clips on the main track cut hard. There's no per-clip-boundary fade or dissolve.

If you want a softer transition between two clips, the workaround is a shape overlay sitting across the boundary:

  1. Add a shape (e.g., a full-frame black or white rectangle) on the shape track.
  2. Position it so it spans the boundary: half on the outgoing clip, half on the incoming.
  3. Set its Enter Animation to Fade and Exit Animation to Fade.

The result reads as a cross-fade. Same trick with a colored shape gives you a branded wipe.

Cost

Animations don't cost credits. They're part of the canvas, not AI generation. Try as many as you want; swap freely. See How credits work for what does and doesn't cost credits.

Common questions

Can I set how long an animation lasts? Animation duration is fixed per template. Element duration (how long it sits on screen between Enter and Exit) is controlled by dragging the element's edges on the timeline.

Can I add animations to video clips? Not directly. The video track is the underlying footage and doesn't support per-element animations. Use the shape-overlay workaround above for fade-style transitions.

My templates already have Enter / Exit animations on their elements. That's intentional. Templates ship with animations pre-configured on each text and shape they include. You can change or remove individual animations the same way you'd change any template-added element: select it on the timeline and pick a different animation in its properties panel.

Does Enter / Exit timing depend on element duration? The animations run at the element's start and end. Longer elements spend more time idle in the middle; shorter elements may overlap the Enter and Exit phases.