Speed and Retiming

Changing a clip's speed lets you create slow motion, speed up action, or reverse playback. v2026 introduces a new Speed panel that makes retiming clearer and more flexible.

Opening the Speed panel

Right-click a clip on the timeline and open the Speed submenu. It offers one-click forward presets - Slow 25%, Slow 50%, Fast 200%, Fast 400% (and Normal 100% when the clip isn't at normal speed) - which apply immediately, resizing the clip and rippling the timeline. Choose Custom... to open the Change Speed panel for full control.

Setting a speed

The Change Speed panel gives you three ways to retime a clip:

• Rate presets - pick a common speed from the Rate menu, which also remembers your recent choices.
• Typed rate - type any percentage into Rate. 100% is normal speed; below 100% is slow motion; above 100% is fast motion.
• Duration - type the duration you want into Duration, and Lightworks calculates the rate needed to fill it. Useful when a shot has to fit an exact gap.

Direction and reverse

Use the Direction option (Forward / Reverse) to control playback direction. Entering a negative or positive percentage rate flips the Direction option automatically. Reversed clips play smoothly, without black frames.

Choosing what happens to the clip

When a speed change makes the material longer or shorter, the Media options decide what happens on the timeline:

• Resize on - the clip's footprint follows its new length, rippling the rest of the timeline.
• Resize off - the clip keeps its footprint, and you choose which frame anchors the retimed content: Keep start frame in place or Keep end frame in place.
• With Resize off, shortening a clip to a target duration leaves a black gap where the freed footprint was - the downstream timing is protected.

This separation - resize or not, and which end to anchor - lets you keep the part of the shot that matters exactly where it is while the timing changes around it.

Speed on the timeline

Any speed other than 100% is displayed on the segment after the segment text labels, so retimed clips are always easy to spot when reading the timeline.

Note: The legacy speed controls (the Advanced button at the end of the timeline) are still available and unchanged.