PDF Animator

Animates PDF documents by dynamically rendering the PDF content at the desired size in order to maintain the highest possible quality. This plugin excels at rendering documents dense with text and graphics at larger sizes.

Compatibility

PDF Animator is compatible with Final Cut Pro, Motion, Premiere Pro and After Effects.

Parameters

Presets

Presets contain a snapshot of your effect configuration. 4 built-in presets are available.

When you save parameter configuration to a file on disk, this file can later be loaded to recreate the same effect configuration. Presets generated in one video application can be used by the same plug-in running in a different video application.

Working with the Presets Menu

PDF Animator

Setup

Enable this parameter to select parameters for the start and end of the animation. Turn this off to render the final output.

PDF File

Reads a PDF document file from the given location.

Page Number

When the input file contains more than one page, you can use this slider to pick the specific page to be rendered.

Page Region

Allows you to pick a specific region of the PDF document to be rendered. This information is often available only for PDF files created for printing.

Animation

Style

The following options are available:

  • Manual (one region) — A single region of the PDF file is displayed. If you wish to animate it, you need to do so by manually keyframing the Center, Scale and Angle parameters.
  • Automatic (two regions) (default) — Define two regions in the PDF file, and animate in between them, automatically. Separate Start and End locations are available, as are separate Scale and Angle parameters to control the size and angle of each region.

Timing

The following options are available:

  • Defined by clip (default) — Select a range of the clip where the animation begins and ends.
  • Defined in seconds — Define the animation range through a start time and duration, expressed in seconds.
  • Progress via keyframes — Control the animation manually, by keyframing a single parameter.

Range (clip)

Set between 0% and 100% by default.

The slider lets you pick a range between 0% and 100%. Click the numeric controls to type a value in.

This range defines the beginning and end of the animation, relative to the clip. On its default settings of 0% to 100%, the animation progresses from the start of the clip to its end. As another example, setting a range between 20% and 80% on a 5 second clip implies that the animation begins when the clip has been playing for one second, and will last 3 seconds.

This parameter is only available when the animation Timing is set to be Defined by clip.

Range (secs)

Set between 0s and 3s by default.

The slider lets you pick a range between 0s and 10s. Click the numeric controls to type a value in.

This range defines the beginning and end of the animation in seconds. On its default settings, the animation starts with the clip, and lasts 3 seconds.

This parameter is only available when the animation Timing is set to be Defined in seconds.

Interpolation

The following options are available:

  • Linear
  • Ease In
  • Ease Out
  • Ease In/Out — default
Lets you assign an animation curve, as a way of creating a smoother, more naturally looking motion. This parameter is only available when the animation is set to progress automatically.

Progress

Manually control animation progress from beginning to end. It is necessary to create keyframes for this parameter using the video app’s own keyframe UI.

Style

Colorize

Enable to have the opaque contents of the PDF graphic be replaced by a single color.

This option is helpful when your PDF file contains black or mostly dark content designed for print, and you wish to assign a bright color more suitable for video.

Fill Color

Set to
white by default.
The color used to fill PDF graphic when the Colorize option is on.

Drop Shadow

Enable this parameter to add a drop shadow to the output.

No shadow (left), small (center) and large drop shadows (right)

No shadow (left), small (center) and large drop shadows (right)

The Shadow Color, Shadow Radius, Shadow Offset X/Y parameters let you specify the appearance and location of the shadow, relative to the elements that cast the shadow. These parameters are not available when Drop Shadow is off.

Motion Blur

Motion Blur

Enables motion blur at different quality settings. The higher the quality, the more samples are used. Multiple samples are blended together to produce a single frame of output.

  • Off (default) — Output frames are rendered without motion blur. This is the fastest setting.
  • Low
    Combine 4 samples to produce each output frame.
  • Medium
    Combine 8 samples to produce each output frame.
  • High
    Combine 16 samples to produce each output frame. This is the slowest, highest quality setting.

Multiple samples are combined to produce a single output frame with motion blur

Shutter Angle and Offset

The Shutter Angle slider controls the size (aperture) of the shutter used to simulate motion blur. The size of the shutter determines how long light is allowed to pass through the lens. The angle is set to 180° by default. A shutter angle of 360° means that samples are collected for the entire duration of the frame.
Setting a value of zero means that you want the shutter to collect light only once, which is equivalent to turning motion blur off.

The Shutter Offset slider controls the moment in time when the shutter opens and closes, relative to the duration of the frame. The offset is set to 0 by default. An offset of zero means the shutter is perfectly centered over the moment in time when the frame occurs. The shutter is therefore open an equal amount of time before and after the current frame occurs.

The Shutter Angle and Shutter Offset parameters are only available when motion blur is enabled.