> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.moda.app/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Animation and video

> Animate designs on the Moda canvas with keyframes, then export MP4 or GIF.

Moda animates the designs you build on the canvas. Anything you can place — text, shapes, images, charts — can move, fade, scale, or rotate over time, and you can export the result as video.

This is animation, not video editing. Moda doesn't cut together footage you filmed; it puts your own design in motion.

## Start an animation

Choose **Animation** as the format in the homepage prompt bar, then pick the output size. You choose the size up front because an animation has one output size for the whole piece:

| Preset           | Size        | Typical use                    |
| ---------------- | ----------- | ------------------------------ |
| **Landscape**    | 1920 × 1080 | YouTube, presentations, embeds |
| **Portrait**     | 1080 × 1920 | Reels, TikTok, Stories         |
| **Square**       | 1080 × 1080 | Instagram and LinkedIn feeds   |
| **4K Landscape** | 3840 × 2160 | High-resolution delivery       |
| **4K Portrait**  | 2160 × 3840 | High-resolution vertical       |

Landscape is the default. You can change the size later from the **Animation size** control in the toolbar.

You can also ask the agent for one directly — *"animate this logo reveal for Instagram Stories"* — and it will pick the format and build the motion.

## Keyframes

A keyframe records a property's value at a moment in time. Set two, and Moda animates between them.

<Warning>
  **Keyframes require an animation canvas.** The diamond gutter and the timeline dock only appear when the canvas category is Animation. On a slides deck you get slide transitions instead; on a social post or other canvas you get the preset-based Animate panel. Neither offers per-property keyframes.
</Warning>

Each property in the Details panel has a **diamond** in its left gutter — the control that turns animation on for that property and adds keyframes. Changing a value on its own does *not* create a keyframe; you arm the property first.

<Steps>
  <Step title="Open the timeline">
    The timeline dock sits below the canvas. It shows one row per animated property.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Move the playhead to where the animation should start">
    Drag the playhead in the timeline dock.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Click the property's diamond to arm it">
    Select your layer, find the property in the Details panel, and click its diamond. That records your **first keyframe** at the playhead, holding the property's current value. The diamond goes from hollow light grey to keyed.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Move the playhead and add a second keyframe">
    Move the playhead to the end of the move, then click the diamond again to add a keyframe there.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Set the value for that keyframe">
    With the playhead on the new keyframe, edit the property. The value writes to that keyframe, and Moda animates between the two.
  </Step>
</Steps>

<Note>
  **If a value field looks locked, the playhead isn't on a keyframe.** Once a property is animated, its field is only editable when the playhead sits exactly on one of its keyframes — that's what stops an edit from silently overwriting an interpolated frame. Click the diamond to add a keyframe at the playhead, then edit.
</Note>

The diamond tells you where you are: hollow light grey means not animated, hollow dark grey means animated with the playhead between keys, and solid means the playhead is on a keyframe — clicking it then *removes* that keyframe. A property driven by an effect shows a muted diamond and is edited in the timeline instead.

In the timeline dock you can drag keyframe markers along a row to retime them.

### Easing

Easing controls how a value travels between two keyframes — whether it starts abruptly or glides in. Select a keyframe and pick from the easing menu:

* **Linear** — constant speed. Mechanical; good for continuous motion like a rotating loader.
* **Ease in / out / in & out** — the everyday choices. Natural-feeling starts and stops.
* **Cubic** and **quint** variants — the same shapes, more pronounced.
* **Back** — overshoots slightly before settling. Good for a playful entrance.
* **Bounce** — settles with a bounce.

If you're unsure, **Ease out** for things entering and **Ease in & out** for things moving between positions will cover most cases.

For a curve the presets don't cover, open the **easing curve editor** from the track in the timeline dock and drag the handles to author your own cubic curve. You can convert a named preset into a custom curve this way; once you do, the property reads **Custom** instead of a preset name.

## Multi-page animations and transitions

An animation can have several pages, played in order like scenes. Each page has its own duration and its own keyframes.

Between pages you can set a **scene transition**:

* **Dissolve** — cross-fade between scenes.
* **Push** — the outgoing scene is pushed off by the incoming one (left, right, up, or down).
* **Slide over** — the incoming scene slides across the top of the outgoing one.
* **None** — a hard cut.

Transitions apply when you play the animation through and when you export all pages as a single video.

## Export

Use **Download** in the toolbar:

| Format            | What it produces                                     | Frame rate                        |
| ----------------- | ---------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------- |
| **MP4**           | H.264 video                                          | 30 by default (24 / 30 / 60)      |
| **GIF**           | Animated image, no sound                             | 12 by default (10 / 12 / 15 / 24) |
| **WebP**          | Like GIF — smaller, and supports transparency        | 15 by default (10 / 12 / 15 / 24) |
| **Layers (.zip)** | Transparent layers for video editors and compositors | 30                                |

The frame-rate picker appears for **single-page MP4, GIF, and WebP**. Layers always renders at 30 FPS, and so does a full-video MP4 — see below.

**MP4 isn't two formats.** Whether you get one page or the whole piece is the **Pages** setting in the same dialog: **Single page**, or **All pages** (labelled **Main edit** when the edit timeline is on) to join every page with your scene transitions. A full-video export always renders at 30 FPS — the frame-rate picker doesn't apply to it.

Which to pick: **MP4** for anything going to a social platform or an embed — better quality, smaller file. **WebP** instead of GIF whenever the destination supports it; it's smaller and keeps transparency. **Layers (.zip)** when someone downstream is compositing in a real video editor.

### Length limits depend on the format

Each format has its own ceiling, and they're counted in frames rather than seconds — so your frame rate decides how much time you get.

* **MP4** encodes in your browser and **isn't capped**. A two-minute MP4 is fine. It only meets a limit if your browser can't encode it and the export falls back to Moda's servers.
* **GIF and WebP** encode on Moda's servers, capped at **2,000 frames**. That's about 166 seconds at 12 FPS, or 66 seconds at 30 FPS.
* **Layers (.zip)** has a different shape of limit entirely — see below.
* **Handing a render to Moda's servers** (available for single-page MP4 and GIF only, and not yet enabled for everyone) adds a **120-second** ceiling. WebP, Layers, and full-video MP4 have no such path, so it never applies to them.

If a GIF or WebP is refused, lower the frame rate or shorten the animation. On a single-page export both work — dropping GIF from 15 to 12 FPS buys you a quarter more length. On a full-video export the rate is fixed at 30 FPS, so shortening is the only option.

#### Layers is limited by element count, not just length

PNG-sequence Layers (the default) is assembled **in your browser**; choosing ProRes 4444 instead encodes on Moda's servers. Either way the budget is two numbers:

* **\~2,000 frames per element**, and
* **12,000 frames total** across every element on the page.

The second one bites first on a busy page: it's element count × frames, so eight animated elements at 1,600 frames each is 12,800 — over budget at about 53 seconds, even though no single element is near its own 2,000-frame cap. (Exactly 12,000 is still allowed; only more than that is refused.) So if a Layers export is refused, **reducing the number of animated elements** — group them, or remove some — helps as much as shortening the animation.

You can keep working while an export runs. A 4K export takes noticeably longer than 1080p.

<Note>
  **PowerPoint and Google Slides aren't offered for an animation canvas** — its export list is video formats only. If you need motion in a deck, export MP4 here and insert that video into the deck yourself.

  Separately: if you animate a *slides* canvas, PPTX and Google Slides export those slides as **static frames** — the motion doesn't carry across.
</Note>

## Tips

* **Animate fewer things than you think.** Two or three moving elements per scene reads as deliberate; everything moving at once reads as noise.
* **Keep entrances short.** 300–600 ms is enough for something to arrive. Long entrances make a piece feel sluggish on second viewing.
* **Give the viewer a beat to read.** If a scene contains text, let it hold still for a moment before the next transition.
* **Check it at final size.** Motion that looks smooth on a large canvas can feel frantic in a small feed placement.

## Troubleshooting

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="My export has no motion in it">
    Check that the keyframes are on the page you exported — a single-page export only includes that page. If you meant to export the whole piece, choose MP4 and set **Pages** to **All pages** (labelled **Main edit** when the edit timeline is on).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Playback stutters in the editor">
    Editor playback shares the GPU with everything else on the canvas, so a heavy design can drop frames while scrubbing. The export is rendered separately and won't have the same stutter — export a short test to confirm before troubleshooting further. If the editor is consistently slow, see [System requirements](/help/getting-started/system-requirements).
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="The GIF looks worse than the preview">
    GIF supports only 256 colors, so gradients and photographic content band visibly. This is a limitation of the format, not the export. Use MP4 wherever the destination allows video.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="The export was refused because the animation is too long">
    Which limit you hit depends on the format — see [Length limits depend on the format](#length-limits-depend-on-the-format).

    **GIF or WebP:** the cap is 2,000 frames. Lower the frame rate (15 → 12 FPS buys about a quarter more length) or shorten the animation.

    **Layers:** the cap is per element *and* across all elements (12,000 frames total), so a page with many animated elements can be refused even on a short animation. Reduce the number of elements as well as the length.

    **MP4:** normally uncapped, because it encodes in your browser. If a long MP4 was refused, your browser couldn't encode it and the export fell back to Moda's servers.

    On a full-video export the frame rate is fixed at 30 FPS, so shortening is the only remedy there.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="The exported video is longer or shorter than expected">
    Total length is the sum of your page durations plus transition time. Check each page's duration in the timeline — a page left at its default can quietly pad the end.
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

## Next steps

<Columns cols={2}>
  <Card title="Export formats" icon="file-export" href="/help/export/formats">
    Every format Moda exports, and what transfers.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Prompting the agent" icon="wand-magic-sparkles" href="/help/ai-agent/prompting">
    Get better results from the AI agent.
  </Card>
</Columns>