Change video speed, free

How do I speed up a video?

Add the video above, choose a speed from 0.25× to 4× and watch the preview play at that speed. Then save it: the tool writes a new video at that speed on your device, in the same format as the original. A 2-minute recording at 2× becomes a 1-minute video; at 0.5× it becomes 4 minutes. The new video has no sound, for the reason explained below.

When to change the speed

Speeding up screen recordings

Most screen recordings are slower than they need to be. People type, wait for pages to load, look for the next button and think out loud. A modest speed-up makes a demo feel confident without making it hard to follow, while a strong speed-up turns a long setup into a short “and then this happens” sequence.

The trouble with speeding up a whole recording is that everything goes faster, including the parts that need time: a dialog someone has to read or an explanation in your own voice. For those videos, split the recording with the video trimmer, speed up only the slow parts, and join them in an editor.

What happens to the sound?

The sound is left out. Played faster or slower, audio comes out at the wrong pitch, so a voice sounds like a cartoon at 2× and a growl at 0.5×. A silent result is more useful: add music or a fresh voice-over in an editor, or put captions on it. If you need the original narration at normal speed, keep the original file, or save its sound first with extract audio from video.

What happens to smoothness?

The frame rate stays the same as the original. Speeding up shows more of the recording in each second, and frames that would come too close together are dropped, so motion stays smooth. Slowing down stretches each frame over a longer time; a 30 fps video at half speed shows 15 different pictures per second, which looks slightly choppy for fast motion. Screen recordings are forgiving here because most of the screen doesn’t move. For smooth slow motion of camera footage, record at a high frame rate to begin with.

Speed and file size

A faster video is shorter, and a shorter video is usually a smaller file. Leaving out the sound saves a little more. That makes speeding up a handy way to fit a long walkthrough under a size limit without lowering the picture quality. Combine it with the video compressor if you need to hit an exact size.

Tips

Tell viewers it’s sped up

If a process normally takes longer than it looks, say so in the text or with a caption, so nobody worries when their install takes five minutes instead of thirty seconds.

Change speed before you make a GIF

A sped-up clip makes a shorter, smaller GIF. Change the speed here, then use video to GIF.

Trim first

Cut the start and end with the video trimmer before changing the speed. The result is shorter, the work is faster, and nobody has to watch you reach for the stop button at four times the speed.