FASTEDIT

Premiere Pro, the boring half

Animated titles in Premiere Pro that stay editable

The hard part is not finding an animated title. It is finding one whose text you can still change after you place it, in your own words, without opening After Effects or re rendering anything.

Written for Premiere Pro 2020 (14.0) and newer, on Windows and macOS.

Why most title packs disappoint on the second use

A large share of animated title packs sold online are rendered video files with an alpha channel, or After Effects projects exported as movies. They look excellent in the preview, because the preview is the exact words that were rendered. Then you drop one on your timeline, and the words are still the ones from the preview.

At that point there are three bad options: use the pack's words, own After Effects and rebuild the title yourself, or go back to a plain text layer and animate it by hand. All three are the reason so many edits end up with the same default fade in.

The thing to check before downloading any pack

Ask one question: is the text a field I can type in after placing it, or is it baked into a render. Everything else about a title pack is taste. That one answer decides whether you can use it twice.

What Premiere gives you already

Essential Graphics and motion graphics templates

Premiere's own format for this is the motion graphics template, the .mogrt file. A good one exposes its text as an editable field in the Essential Graphics panel, so you place it and type your own words. Premiere ships with a set of them, and Adobe Stock has many more.

This is the right mechanism. The trouble is quality and quantity: the built in set is small and deliberately neutral, and browsing a stock library for one that matches your channel takes longer than the title is worth.

Animating a text layer by hand

Create a text layer, keyframe position, scale and opacity, and shape the easing in the graph editor. This gives you exactly what you want and takes fifteen to thirty minutes per title if you care about the easing. Worth it once, for a signature title you reuse. Not worth it per video.

What FastEdit adds

The titles

  • 22 animated templates
  • Text editable after placing
  • Placed on the timeline from the panel

The motion

  • 20 motion and text presets
  • Real easing curves, not linear keyframes
  • Applied to clips you already have

The 22 templates are motion graphics templates, which is the part that matters: you place one and the words are a field you type into, inside Premiere, with no round trip. Change your mind about the wording an hour later and it is a typing change.

The easing is the whole difference

Two titles with identical keyframe positions can feel completely different depending on how the value moves between them. Linear keyframes are what make an animation read as amateur: things in the physical world do not start and stop instantly. The presets ship with shaped curves for that reason, which is also why they hold up when you slow them down.

About After Effects

You do not need After Effects for the presets, the cuts, the guides or the captions. Some of the animated title templates render through Premiere's own headless After Effects, which is the same mechanism Premiere already uses for motion graphics templates in general. The panel marks those templates so you know which ones they are before you place them.

Placing one, step by step

  1. Put the playhead where the title should start.
  2. Open the FastEdit panel from Window, Extensions and go to Titles.
  3. Pick a template. The previews show the animation, not a still.
  4. Place it. It lands on the track above your footage.
  5. Select it and type your words in the Essential Graphics panel. Adjust the duration by trimming the clip like any other.

Two things that make any title look better

Common questions

Can I change the text after placing a title?

Yes. The 22 templates are motion graphics templates, so the words are an editable field in Premiere's Essential Graphics panel after you place them. That is the whole point of them.

Do I need After Effects installed?

Not for the presets, the cuts, the guides or the captions. Some animated title templates render through Premiere's own headless After Effects, which is what Premiere already uses for motion graphics templates, and the panel marks those templates so you know which ones they are.

Can I change the colours and the font?

Yes. They are ordinary Premiere graphics once placed, so type, colour, position and scale are all yours to change.

What happens to my titles if I stop paying?

They stay exactly as they are. Everything the panel makes is ordinary Premiere keyframes, clips and graphics, so nothing is removed from projects you already edited.

Will the titles be hidden by the TikTok or Reels interface?

Not if you keep them inside the safe zone the panel draws, which is measured from real phone screenshots rather than estimated. That is the usual cause of a title that looked fine on the monitor and is covered on the phone.

Place one on the edit you have open

Download the panel with a free account and see whether the text really is editable. It takes a minute.