Getting started: from a template to a file on your timeline
Nothing here needs to be learned before you can use it. The path from opening the library to having a file you can drop on your video is five steps, and only one of them has a decision in it.
1. Pick something that is already close
The library holds 326 finished animations, sorted by what they do rather than by what they look like — channel bars, subscribe prompts, lower thirds, location callouts, sponsor cards. Play one by hovering it, and open the one that is nearest to what you want.
Starting from a template is not a shortcut past learning the editor. It is how anybody works: the timing in these is the part that takes longest to get right, and it is the part you get for free.
2. Put your channel on it
Most designs have a place for a channel name, a handle and a mark. The Channel panel fills all of them at once rather than asking you to find each layer — you type your name and handle once and every layer that takes one gets it.
If a template has nothing that takes a channel name, the panel says so instead of pretending. Some graphics — a location callout, a price card — are not about your channel at all.
3. Change what you actually want to change
Select a layer on the canvas and its properties appear on the right: text, colour, size, corner radius, shadow, and for a glass panel how much it blurs what is behind it. Change what you like.
What is worth leaving alone at first is the timing. The entrances in these are built to land in a particular order, and pulling one beat usually means restacking the rest. Change the words and the colours, watch it play, and come back to the timing when you know what you want from it.
4. Export for the editor you use
The export dialog asks where the graphic is going rather than which codec you want, because the codec follows from the answer. After Effects, Premiere, Resolve and Final Cut get ProRes 4444 with a real alpha channel; CapCut, Canva and the phone editors get a green-screen MP4, because most of them cannot read alpha video at all.
It also says why, under the choice. If you are not sure which your editor is, green screen works in every one of them.
5. Put it on a track above your footage
In your own editor, drop the file on a layer above the video and move it to the moment you want. A transparent file needs nothing else. A green-screen file needs a chroma-key effect on the clip, which every editor that needs one also has.
That is the whole loop. The project stays in your library, so changing a word next month and exporting again is opening it and pressing export.
Questions
- Do I need an account to look around?
- No. The library, the editor and previewing are open to everybody. An account is needed when you take a template into the editor as a project of your own, because a project has to belong to somebody.
- What does it cost?
- Building and previewing are free, including every template and every tool. Exporting one finished graphic costs $5 once and unlocks that project for good; the Creator plan covers 100 exports a month and Studio 200.
- Can I change a graphic after exporting it?
- Yes, and exporting it again costs nothing extra. The unlock is per project rather than per render, so a re-export after you change a word next season is the same purchase.
- Do I need to know animation to use this?
- No. Every template arrives finished and timed; changing the text and the colours is enough to make one yours. The keyframes are there when you want them and out of the way when you do not.