Just starting out with video editing? Looking for a simple video editor to use? Need to speed up or slow down video clips? Shotcut is definitely the right choice! And this guide tells you exactly how to change the speed of your video in Shotcut.
When slowing down a video you also need to take into consideration the way it was recorded. If you have not yet recorded but are planning to record in slow motion, then record in a high FPS (frames per second). This means when you slow the video down it keeps a smooth and consistent quality. Anything under 24 FPS is going to look and feel choppy and ideally you want keep to 30 FPS.
To put this into context, image you are recording on a 60FPS camera. You can slow down your video by half (0.5x speed) because 0.5 x 60 = 30. And 30 FPS is the lowest you want to allow the video to playback. Shotcut will allow you to go much slower, but you will see performance issues with you video quality during playback.
If you are speeding your video up, then you need not worry, the quality will effectively increase FPS (but realistically this will get capped when exporting the video – back to the standard frame rate you have set).
Change Speed of Video in Shotcut
You are likely to benefit from detaching the audio from your video before you apply the speed settings. Audio can behave strangely when speeding up or slowing down. Detaching the audio and addressing this separately will solve the problem.
- Open Shotcut
- Drag in a video clip to the Playlist
- Move the clip into the timeline
- OPTIONAL: Detach Audio (right click > More > Detach Audio)
- With the video selected in the timeline, click on Properties
- Change the speed option to increase or decrease the speed of the video
- Less than 1x speed = SLOWER playback (slow motion)
- Greater than 1x speed = FASTER playback (sped up)
Shotcut: https://shotcut.org/