Change the rate and watch the clip change length on the track. The footage is the same; the time it occupies is not.
Change video speed on one clip at a time, so a single moment can stretch or compress inside a cut that otherwise plays at its own pace. The speed sits on the clip and not on the file, so trying a number and rejecting it costs nothing. It runs in your browser, on the timeline holding the rest of the edit.
How to change video speed in three steps
- 01
Pick the clip
Select the one moment that should not run at the pace of everything else.
- 02
Set the speed
Take it up to compress the dull part, or down to hold on the good one.
- 03
Export the retimed cut
Render MP4 up to 4K locally, with the new timing already inside the file.
What the speed control does
Speed is one of the timeline tools in Compose V2, which reaches workspaces one at a time.
Speed lives on the clip
Each clip carries its own rate, so a sequence can run normal, fast and slow in turn without splitting into separate projects or separate exports. Nothing about the project has to change to hold all three.
A tool on the toolbar
Speed sits beside selection, blade and the trim tools, because retiming is something an edit does over and over. Pick it, set the rate on the clip, carry on cutting.
Sound stays your decision
Audio on its own track keeps its own timing when the picture above it changes pace. A music bed holds its tempo through a slowed shot, and dialogue follows the picture only if you retime it too.
Ramps, not just rates
Properties animate over the length of a clip, so a shot can arrive at speed and settle, or hold and then run away. That gradual change is what separates a retime from a setting.
Retime by asking
Take every B-roll clip to double speed is one instruction across a whole timeline. Copilot reads the current state first, applies the pass atomically, and hands it back as a single undo.
Export at the new length
The retimed sequence renders as one MP4 on your own machine. A marked span exports alone when only the slowed section is wanted.
Slow motion is limited by what the camera captured. When a moment needs to hold longer than the footage will bear, generate a shot built for it here, choosing from the whole model roster in the same project, and cut to that instead of stretching what you have. Seedance 2.5 is one of the video models on that roster.
Speed up video to 2x and past it
Doubling is the default because it is the point where a viewer still reads the action but stops waiting for it. It suits shots that carry their information in the first half and their tedium in the second:
- A process shot of something being assembled.
- A walk across a room.
- A screen recording of a form being filled in.
Past 2x the footage starts doing something else. At high rates a shot stops being a record of an event and becomes a texture, which is right for a time-lapse and wrong for a demonstration. The test is whether a first-time viewer could still follow what happened, so set the rate and watch it once without touching anything.
Slow motion video maker
Slowing down is the harder direction, because it asks for picture that was never filmed. Footage shot at a high frame rate has frames in reserve and slows cleanly; footage shot normally does not, and pushing it far enough will show.
So slow the shortest possible span:
- Blade either side of the moment that deserves the weight.
- Take that piece down and leave the rest at normal speed.
- Keep it short. Half a second reads as deliberate; twelve seconds at half pace reads as a fault.
When a shot cannot take it at all, the honest fix is a different shot, not a lower number.
Video speed controller, clip by clip
A speed control that applies to a whole video is a playback setting. One that applies to a clip is an editing decision, and that difference shows up in what you can build:
- Compress the approach, hold the arrival and a sequence gains a shape it did not have flat.
- Open slow, snap to pace once the subject is established.
Both are two or three clips at different rates inside one cut, and both survive later changes because the rate belongs to the clip and travels with it. Once the pacing is right, trimming the joins is what makes it feel intentional, and a rate that should arrive gradually is the case for a video editor with keyframes. Retimed pieces from different sources still have to combine videos at the end.
Related video tools
Online video editor
The timeline the speed tool sits on, with everything else beside it.
Video trimmer
Isolate the exact span worth slowing before you touch the rate.
Keyframe animation
Ramp a speed or a move across a clip instead of setting one value.
Video merger
Put the retimed pieces back into one sequence and export it once.
Add music to video
A bed that holds tempo while the picture above it changes pace.
AI montage maker
Cut a run of short clips to a track when pacing is the whole point.
Video filters
Treat a slowed shot so the held moment reads as a choice.
B-roll generator
Generate the shot that can hold, when the filmed one cannot.
