Video content dominates the internet—whether it's for social media, education, personal projects, or promotional videos, it's one of the most popular forms of content today. In this dynamic space, adding animations can take your videos to the next level.

If Adobe Premiere Pro is part of your editing toolkit, you're in luck! We've introduced LottieFiles for Premiere Pro, giving you access to a vast library of smooth, customizable, and ready-to-use animations for any video project.

In this blog, we'll show you how to integrate these animations into your Premiere Pro workflow seamlessly.

How to add animations within Premiere Pro with LottieFiles

Step 1: Install the plugin and open the extension

  • Download the Plugin: You can find the plugin on Adobe Exchange or download it directly as a ZXP file.
  • Open the Plugin: In Premiere Pro, go to Windows > Extensions > LottieFiles for Premiere Pro to activate the plugin.

Step 2: Choose your animation

  • Explore Tab: After installation, the plugin opens to the Explore tab where you can explore over 500,000 free and premium animations, organized by Featured, Popular, and Recent categories. You can also filter to show only free or premium options. Remember to save your chosen animation to your private workspace before using it.
  • Workspace: If you want to use an animation saved in your workspace, navigate to the Workspaces tab. This area houses animations created by your team or imported from tools like Adobe AE, Figma, or Lottie Creator.

Step 3: Customize Your Animation

Once you have your animation ready, you'll find a section with options to further customize it. Here’s a breakdown of what you can do for each available setting:

  • Color Palette: Enhance your animations by applying your brand colors. Click the color palette icon, select from existing palettes or create a new one, and apply your colors.
[VISUAL]
  • File Type Selection: Choose between MP4 or transparent MOV files. For ease of use, especially with videos requiring transparency (like overlays), enable the transparent background option under the MOV settings. The option of transparent MOV means you also don’t require or green-screen or chroma key.
  • Frame Rate (FPS): Adjust the frame rate to ensure smooth playback. Use the 'Match Source' button to reset to the original frame rate if necessary.
  • Animation Size: Customize the size of your animation to fit your project needs, choosing from small, medium, large, or a custom dimension.

Step 4: Insert Your Animation into Premiere Pro

Once satisfied with the customization, add your animation to the project library. Drag and drop the animation onto your timeline where needed.

Step 5: Further Edits

If needed, further tweak your animation using Premiere Pro’s extensive editing features to achieve the desired effect in your video project.

How or where can you use animations within a video?

The question isn’t where you can use it—it’s where you can’t! You can apply Lottie animations to virtually any video project you're working on or planning to create in Premiere Pro, seamlessly integrating them into any part of your edit.

For instance:

  • The intro and outro of your YouTube video content
  • Kinetic typography within your social media
  • Special effects on your advertisements
  • Abstract animation for things which are hard to explain on your course
  • Branding elements like logos in promotional marketing efforts and video

Helpful read

Before you start your animation journey in Premiere Pro, here are some useful reads:

  1. ​​How to Use Animation Effectively in E-learning Courses
  2. 6 Essential Pre-production Stages of Animation
  3. 7 Best Practices for Optimizing Animated Video for Search Engines
  4. How to Animate Your Stories with Lottie: Tips and Tricks

And that's it! With this guide, you're ready to add more depth to your video projects with animations. Keep exploring new ways to communicate your ideas through motion—the key is to experiment, explore, and, most importantly, have fun!