Motion timing editor that plugs into existing video project files

The specific frustration that keeps resurfacing is not the absence of animation — it's the absence of multi-element animation timing control. Users say they 'can't manage the timings of animation when having more than one in the same scene' and that the 'titling system lacks advanced motion features, requiring users to switch to After Effects for certain projects.' The switch to After Effects isn't primarily about capability; it's about the round-trip cost. You have to export, reimport, re-sync audio, and re-render. For a two-second animated title sequence, that's twenty minutes of workflow overhead.

This gap persists because the vendors who could fix it — Adobe, in this case — ship their tools in tiers deliberately. The motion ceiling in Premiere Rush exists because removing it would require either rebuilding the timeline engine or building a bridge to After Effects that's seamless enough to undercut the value of owning After Effects separately. Neither is in Adobe's interest.

What's missing is not a whole new editor but a focused timing and keyframe layer that operates on top of the assets a user already has in their project — a way to open a scene, see every animated element on a shared timeline, adjust timing relationships between them with visual handles, and write back a rendered version. The complaint 'I don't like that to do motion graphics, I have to use another program' is a demand for in-workflow motion editing, not a demand for a new editing environment.

This is a business because the integration surface creates a durable advantage. Once a user has their project format connected and their motion work flowing through one tool, switching costs are real. The need recurs on every project with any title or graphic motion, and the buyer — a production company or agency — measures the cost in billable hours lost to round-trips.

What to build

Build a desktop app that imports Premiere Pro project files (or accepts exported XML/EDL), presents every title, graphic, and image layer with a shared keyframe timeline, lets the user adjust per-element animation timing with easing curves, and exports the animated sequence as a rendered video or After Effects-compatible composition file.

Where to start

Start with a specific, bounded use case: animated lower-thirds for corporate interview videos, where the motion vocabulary is narrow (slide in, hold, fade out), the file format is always Premiere Pro, and production companies are doing this same operation dozens of times per project and would pay immediately to stop doing it manually.

The hard part

Reverse-engineering or reliably parsing Premiere project file formats to extract layer and timing data without breaking on every Adobe version update is a real ongoing maintenance burden — Adobe does not publish a stable public spec for .prproj files, so you're building on shifting ground.

How it makes money

Annual license per editor seat at $150–250/year, positioned as a professional tool purchase rather than a subscription, with a team license tier for production companies with three or more editors.