| name | apple-keynote-motion |
| description | Define Apple-Keynote-style motion grammar for educational videos. Use when selecting builds, handoffs, object continuity, stage transitions, framed content motion, typography reveals, or smooth presenter-to-canvas movement for the Remotion/Hyperframes vlog pipeline. |
Apple Keynote Motion
Overview
Make clips feel like one continuous presentation, not a collage. Favor object continuity, precise builds, calm pacing, and clear attention control over flashy effects.
Principles
- Preserve object identity across changes. If an object continues across shots, move, scale, or refocus it instead of replacing it.
- Reveal one idea at a time. Build text, labels, highlights, and callouts in a deliberate order.
- Keep motion legible. Prefer short movements with soft acceleration, clean staging, and no unnecessary rotation.
- Use transitions to clarify relationships. Avoid decorative wipes that do not explain why the next view appears.
- Default to simple cuts, match moves, and source-aware scale changes between presenter and canvas. A separate transition atom is allowed only when it preserves an object or explains a relationship better than the cut.
- Only show motion when it has a learning job: orient the viewer, signal a hierarchy change, compare two states, transform an object, inspect a detail, or recap the idea.
- For React-in-motion and Hyperframes atoms, state the reason for each moving part before animating it. If the reason is only "make it dynamic," remove or replace it.
- Use motion to simplify the layout, not to justify a crowded one. If two states cannot fit cleanly at once, reveal them top-down or sequentially instead of forcing a side-by-side composition.
- Animate only polished components. A pointer line, endpoint, and target highlight must move as one aligned component; otherwise choose a simpler border, dim, or focus zoom.
- Let stillness work. Premium motion stops cleanly and leaves readable frames.
Motion Choices
- Use build-in when a new idea arrives.
- Use match move when the same object changes role, size, or location.
- Use focus zoom when the viewer must inspect a detail.
- Use frame expansion when a small video/content frame becomes the main canvas.
- Use presenter handoff when the presenter gives authority to the content.
- Use transition-shot only when the transition itself explains the concept.
Craft tells — premium vs amateur motion
These are the signals that separate professional tech-creator motion from generic output. They are why a move reads as designed rather than rendered.
- Easing is the #1 tell. Every move has slow-in/slow-out —
Easing.bezier or spring overshoot, never linear. A linear move is the clearest amateur signal.
- Sync is exact. The visual change lands ON the spoken word; a half-second lag between what's said and what's shown reads cheap and the viewer misses it.
- One thing at a time. Reveal/move one element per beat with real inspect-holds, not everything at once. Sequenced disclosure with matched object positions is what makes a diff readable.
- Holds are moving, not frozen. A settled state still breathes (a slow drift / parallax); a hard-frozen hold past ~0.4 s reads as a broken render.
- Restraint. One high-impact moment beats a scatter of micro-effects. No glitch/flash/whoosh catalog.
Before committing an elevated move, ground it in a concrete reference (yt-rag yt_tech_creator_craft / yt_ae_to_code_recreation, or shared/research/2026-creator-effects/) and name the move — see /render-lab-design-system "Elevated-beat moves".
Avoid
- Avoid unrelated bands, flashes, and wipes as default transitions.
- Avoid transition previews that introduce content before it is ready or cause visible flashing between video, React, and Hyperframes layers.
- Avoid excessive subtitle motion.
- Avoid changing palette, frame radius, or typography between clips.
- Avoid keeping the presenter tiny for long stretches when the presenter is important.
- Avoid interrupting content inspection with presenter motion.
Output
When used by a composer or shot writer, return a concise motion recommendation:
- motion type
- continuity object, if any
- build order
- timing notes
- transition ownership: Remotion-native, Hyperframes overlay, or full transition clip
Read references/motion-grammar.md when choosing a named pattern.