I can't select sections of the timeline to speed up or slow down

Help/How To
1

I have watched tutorials which tell me how to slow down the whole video. I have even seen some videos which show people choosing a section of their video being sped up/slowed down. However, nobody has explained how they got the section selected. They seemed to use a keyboard shortcut to select the two points between which to affect the speed edit, but didn’t say what it was. Any help would be gratefully recieved.

Thanks

Ben

2

select the desired portion of the video you are editing by either mousing to the playhead, (the white line with the triangle at the top found in the timeline), holding left mouse and dragging it to the desired position on the timeline where you want to make your split. (typically i get close and use the arrow keys to go one frame at a time for a more precise split), and then either press the S key, or mouse over to the time line where you will see an icon that looks something like two pages in an open book just to the left of another icon that looks like a magnet. that is the Split at Playhead button. click that and Shotcut will split the track where the playhead is.
repeat the process for where you desire to end your selection. click your selection and it will highlight in red when it is selected, click the properties tab, and type your desired setting into the speed box, (the maximum speed is 20.00x), and either hit enter or mouse down to your selection and click it…the selection will suddenly shrink an you’ll be left with a yellowish-ochre band in the time line which is easily removed by right clicking and selecting remove, and the following portion of the track will automatically snap to the adjusted selection. typically i’ll move the playhead back and press the space-bar to see how it worked out and whether or not i need to adjust it further. hope this helps.

2 Likes
3

This is one of the best explanations I’ve ever found for any process in a program like this. Sincerely, thank you for taking the time to do it right and help others in the process.

4

glad i could help…and thank you.

5

Now that the selection is “in red”, it’s easier !

I’d add that sometimes, you can have problem applying changes of speed.
Move the part you want to change speed on a second track (if you want to slow it down it will help not to overlap what come after). Then change speed then press enter

If there is a problem, just select an other clip, go back to the first one and retry