Motion Array’s Stretch plugin for Premiere Pro is a great way to create cool distortion effects on your project video — from throwing in the appearance of a tech glitch to distorting a character, a stretch effect can really spice up your creative content. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use the Stretch plugin inside of Premiere Pro CC. So, let’s dive in!
Using the Premiere Pro Stretch Plugin
Step 1: Download & Install the Plugin
First things, first. You’ve gotta download the plugin. And guess what?! All Motion Array plugins are included in your paid membership. Pretty sweet, hey!
Once you’ve downloaded and installed our Stretch effect plugin, you can find it right inside your effects panel. If you’re not quite sure how to download and install our plugins, check out our video walking you through that process.
Step 2: Log into Your Motion Array Account in Premiere Pro
To use the Stretch Plugin, you’ll need to be signed in to your Motion Array account. When you pull the effect in and try to use it, you’ll notice that it has a red X over top of it when you play it back.
From there you simply have to highlight the piece of footage with the plugin and click on Bounce. Once you’re there go to your Effects Control panel and find the box that looks like a computer monitor with an arrow pointing to it.
When you click it you can sign in to your Motion Array account, and as long as you have an active, paid Motion Array subscription, this plugin will be active. Once it’s active, you can begin playing around to get the particular effects that you want.
Step 3: How to Control the Stretch Effect
Once you’ve set it up, you will find it within its own Motion Array folder under Effects. Once you find the stretch effect, then you can simply drag and drop it onto your footage.
This effect works by taking a particular portion of the screen and using that as a starting point to basically stretch and then offset the remainder of the footage depending on a variety of parameters. The parameters that you can control are Length, Width, Direction, Center, and an On/Off check for Displacement.
- Length is the parameter that changes the length of the actual stretching portion of this effect. Changing the length will directly increase or decrease the length of the stretched portion of the video, which will subsequently end up moving the displaced section over. Stretching your footage a large amount will leave you with streaks that are colored in a way that’s consistent with the rest of your footage.
- Width allows you to make the region of the video where the stretch effect is wider by increasing the parameter in with control. Similarly, you could make it incredibly narrow by decreasing the width.
- Direction is simply the angle at which you see the effect stretch your footage. By default, your Direction is set to 45-degrees, but you can rotate it to any direction you want. Choose variants of 0, 90, 180, or 270 degrees to create perfectly vertical or horizontal effects. Otherwise, you can choose any amount or angle in between.
- Center is the placement where the effect starts from, but it’s also where the effect is drawing the stretch effect data from—any stretch portions will appear how they do because they are being stretched from the imaginary center line.
- To see exactly where your center mark is, click on the parameter to highlight it and a blue target will pop up to show you.
- To move the Center effect or choose a different point where the stretch data is being taken from, move the first parameter to move the point horizontally and change the second set to move your parameter vertically.
- The Displacement Checkmark lets you decide whether you want the effect to be simply stretching or if you want the Displacement of the rest of the panel to be enabled.
Step 4: Activate a Keyframing Parameter
Not only do the effect controls detail how the Stretch effect will look on your video clip, but each of these can be keyframed to animate in any way that you want.
Activate a keyframing parameter by clicking the Stopwatch icon in the Effects Control panel beside the specific parameter you want to keyframe to make it blue. From here, any two changes you make will have the difference between them iterate over time — this will give you another level of control to be able to make some really cool effects. You can also stack these effects on top of each other and they’ll interact. Stacking multiple of these effects can result in giving you some incredibly complex looks.
If you want to take this a step further for even more control, you can place an adjustment layer overtop of your clip. This allows you to take control of timing and opacity. Make the effect partially transparent or rapidly turn it on and off for some trippy visuals!
This effect is really just an extension of your creativity, so test it out. Have some fun with it and see what you come up with!
We hope you found the tutorial on how to use Motion Array’s Stretch plugins helpful. Looking for more great plugins? We also have tons of amazing Premiere Pro effects plugins and transitions plugins to explore!
