PowerFX

Docs

From a template to a finished video.

How to use the templates in PowerScreen, how to change them, and how to make your own in the PowerFX app.

Using templates

Four steps, most of them typing.

  1. 1

    Find a template

    Browse the library by kind: titles and lower thirds, callouts, transitions, overlays, social and looks. Every template has a moving preview, so you see what it does before you use it.

  2. 2

    Put it on the timeline

    In PowerScreen, place the template on a track above your recording, where you want it to appear. It is a clip like any other: trim it, move it, cut it.

  3. 3

    Change what it says

    Select the clip and open Effect Controls. The template's controls are listed there: its text, its colours, and any sizes, positions and switches its designer exposed. The animation keeps its timing whatever you type.

  4. 4

    Export as usual

    Templates render with the rest of the sequence, at the sequence's size and frame rate, so there is nothing extra to do when you export.

Making your own

A template is a composition with controls.

  1. 1

    Build a composition

    In the PowerFX app, make a composition with the text, shape and footage layers your graphic needs, and animate them with keyframes, effects and expressions.

  2. 2

    Choose its controls

    Choose Composition ▸ Open in Essential Graphics, then, for each property a user of the template should be able to change, select it and choose Animation ▸ Add Property to Essential Graphics. Give each control a clear name.

  3. 3

    Save it as a template

    Choose File ▸ Export ▸ Essential Graphics Template… to save a template with its controls. The footage and images it uses are packed into the file with it.

  4. 4

    Or render it

    To use a graphic outside PowerScreen, add the composition to the render queue (Composition ▸ Add to Render Queue) and render it to H.264, HEVC or ProRes, with an alpha channel when you want to lay it over other footage.

Worth knowing

Small things that help.

Open a template to change more
Open any PowerFX template in the app to change more than its controls: the timing, the layout, the effects.
Expressions keep it moving
A background or a loop driven by expressions keeps going however long you make the clip.
Transparent where it should be
Titles, lower thirds and callouts have a transparent background, so they sit over whatever is below them.
One style across a video
Templates within a pack share their fonts, colours and motion, so a title, its lower thirds and its end card belong together.