Automatic Motion Blur in Premiere Pro

Motion Blur

Native motion blur in Premiere

I’ve kind of gotten tired of explaining to everyone that complains about Premiere Pro not having Motion Blur that Premiere actually does have native Motion Blur. You just need to make two settings in the Transform effect, and you have motion blur! Save that as a preset, and you can easily add motion blur to all your motion graphics from now on!

People tend to simulate motion blur in Premiere by adding the Directional Blur effect, and setting keyframes for Blur Length and Direction that correspond with the keyframes in Motion. That’s a lot of extra work that’s not really necessary, and the animations get harder to change and update.

Just use the Transform effect instead, and animate without thinking about Motion Blur. The Transform effect will add the correct amount of blur in the correct direction on every frame – automatically.

Settings in the Transform Effect

Settings in the Transform Effect

Here’s a short video tutorial I made on how to do this.

 

 

Update: After reading this post, Colin Smith at VideoRevealed made this little tutorial, where he shows a few different ways to use this method.

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23 Responses

  1. Eri says:

    I will complain no more. Promise. 🙂

    • It would be much better to just have a Motion Blur switch for the standard Motion settings, of course. 🙂

      • Lawry says:

        Exactly, however this is a great tip.

        But yes, it makes no sense that motion blur is “hidden” in such a way under a “duplicate” effect. On the other hand this opens up the possibility to have both motion with motion blur and motion without motionblur on one and same object.

  2. Rick says:

    Great tip!…I have to get your book.

  3. miky says:

    Hummm. Thanx for your tutorial, but I cannot find the mentionned “transform” effect or the shutter angle option. Pardon my iognorance, but where would that be? I’m trying to apply a motion blur to a rolling title…

  4. miky says:

    Ok, sorry. Just found it but it doesn’t seem to work on a crawling title. My video is 24p and a crawling title on that is just too jerky for my taste…

    • To get motion blur, you will have to move the title with the Transform effect in stead of doing it in the Title tool.

      • bhenry says:

        I too was having trouble getting the motion blur to show, but I was using the motion settings (first set of options in the effect controls) for my text layer, rather than the transform controls.

        Love the book by the way. I feel like I have learned so much in such a small window of time compared to other books. Fantastic, and thank you for writing it!

  5. Nelson says:

    I did everything you did and still dont have motion blur…. did you skip something? I’ve gone through this about 3 times already and still don’t know what Im doing wrong or what it is that you must have skipped over

  6. Dennis says:

    Oh Dang! That is so freaking simple!!!

    Thanks so much for the hint, I’ve been working with Adobe Premier professionally for YEARS now, and work interchangeably between AE and Premier. To make a simple effect like that with already existing tools is nice.

    Again, Thanks for uploading and making this video!

  7. Joe says:

    YEEEESSSSSS, you just changed my life.

  8. Randy Klinger says:

    Thnx for your hard work and posting! Game changer! Where’s your PayPal acnnt I want to buy you a case of beer!

  9. sunghun says:

    thanks man. you helped me a lot.

  10. Emily says:

    OMG thank you so much! I wasted so much time on simulating the blur! This is extremely helpful! Thank you thank you!

  11. Yemo says:

    this is by far not real motion blur! on a clip with speedramping you have no motion blur only on transform effects

    • Of course not. You’re totally misunderstanding the concept. The Transform effect can only add motion blur to clips that you move around with the Transform effect. A Speed Ramp does not move the clip at all, so it will not get any motion blur. This is totally different from plug-ins like ReelSmart Motion Blur, CC Force Motion Blur and Pixel Motion Blur which will do what you describe.

      • Sigh says:

        AND that is exactly what people are complaining about. If someone wants to simply perform motion blur via the transform effect, they would use AE instead.

      • Well, no – this is not what they complained about, which is why I made this video. They complained about the lack of Motion Blur in Premiere Pro. This video just shows that you can add Motion Blur in Premiere Pro. If you want to jump to After Effects just to move something, then that’s your choice. Some people would want to do it in Premiere, either because they don’t have After Effects, because they don’t know how to use After Effects, or because they don’t want to wait for AE to start. Doing it in Premiere Pro is not wrong, it’s one of many possible choices.

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