How to do a speed ramp in a video editor

Speed ramps are made in Video by Zaweba from Inspector > Speed and time > Ramp the speed. It keyframes the clip's speed from 0 to 400 percent, so a shot can rush, slow to a crawl and rush again, and there are five ready-made ramps to start from. The clip keeps its length on the timeline while the speed inside it changes.

This is the effect often called time remapping, or a velocity edit in social video: a jump that slows at the top, a car that whips past and then drifts, a dance move hit in slow motion on the beat.

Starting from a ready-made ramp

Select the clip and open Inspector > Speed and time. Choose Ramp the speed and try the ready-made ramps first. There are five, and they cover the common shapes. Play each one and see how it feels against your shot and your music. A preset you like is often only a nudge or two away from finished.

Shaping your own ramp

Speed in a ramp is keyframed like any other value. Move the playhead to where the change should start, set a key, move on and set another with a different speed. Between keys the speed eases from one value to the next. Zero percent holds the picture still, which makes a freeze in the middle of a ramp very easy. Commands go further, from minus 400 to 1,000 percent, if you need to run a clip backwards or very fast.

Ease shapes matter. A sudden jump in speed looks like a glitch, while a smooth ease into slow motion feels intentional. The keyframe graph shows how the value changes over time, and Bezier keys have handles you can drag to shape the curve.

How the edit behaves

Because the clip keeps its length, a ramp doesn't push the rest of your timeline around. Splitting, trimming and slipping a ramped clip keep every moment where it was, so you can tighten the start or end without the ramp sliding to the wrong place.

Linked sound follows the ramp like tape. Its pitch rises as the speed goes up and drops as it slows, and a hold at zero is silent. That's authentic, and sometimes exactly what you want for a whoosh, but for speech it's usually better to lower the clip's own sound during the ramp and let music or a sound effect carry it. Plain speed changes without a ramp, from 0.25 to 4 times, keep the pitch instead.

Making the slow part smooth

The slow section of a ramp needs extra frames. Set the clip's in-betweens to optical flow, which warps and mixes neighbouring frames, and the slow part plays smoothly rather than stuttering. Footage shot at a higher frame rate gives it even more to work with.

Timing it to music

Ramps look best when the change lands on a beat. Add markers with M on the beats you want to hit, then place your speed keys on those markers. The Markers tab lists them all, and Ctrl+Shift+M jumps to the next one, so lining up keys becomes quick and exact.

Keep one strong ramp rather than five weak ones. A single well-timed slow moment in a fast edit carries far more weight than a clip that never settles on a speed.