SOLVED: How to achieve Smooth Keyframes (Easy Ease Keyframes) in Final Cut Pro without a plugin in 2025 - Tutorial

Last year I asked how to Smooth Keyframes (Easy Ease Keyframes) in Final Cut Pro. The conclusion at the time was that you needed a third-party plugin to properly achieve smooth keyframes in FCP. However, I just discovered a built-in solution that actually works as quite a nice workaround that is built right into Final Cut Pro. Unfortunately Apple doesn't allow me to respond with this solution to my old thread ( Smooth Keyframes (Easy Ease Keyframes) in… - Apple Community ), so I'm posting this here for reference for anyone looking for a free solution to this problem in the future.

::: Tutorial - How to achieve Smooth Keyframes (Easy Ease Keyframes) in Final Cut Pro :::

In this example, I want to animate the smiley going from the left of the screen to right and also growing in size over time. I want the animation to have smooth keyframes.

1 - Import the object (in this case, the smiley) onto the timeline.

2 - Reduce its size so it has room to move in the viewer.

3 - Right-click on it and make it a Compound Clip.

4 - Select the newly created Compound Clip and click "Crop" in the Viewer's Drop-down.

5 - Click on "Ken Burns".

6 - Position the large green starting box so the smiley is to the far left inside of it (this indicates the framing for the smileys starting position and scale).

7 - Position the red smaller ending box so the smiley is to the far right inside of it (this indicates the framing for the smileys ending position and scale).

8 - Right-click on the red and green boxes, and select the easing type for the position and scale you want (in this case: "Ease In And Out").

9 - Click "Done" in the viewer.

Now you'll have the smiley going from the left of the screen to the right of the screen while also growing in size - and the best part is that it will be nicely animated with eased keyframes!

I know this isn't a perfect solution and it's technically not keyframing, but look at this as a temporary workaround for animating position and scale with eased in-and-out animations until Apple properly implement eased keyframing into Final Cut Pro! Hopefully it helps someone!