Change Video Speed

The audio is the decision that matters

Play audio faster and its pitch rises. That is simply what happens: the same waveform in less time is a higher frequency. It is why a sped-up recording sounds like a cartoon and a slowed one sounds like it is underwater. Three options, and picking the right one is most of the job.

Keep audio (pitch-corrected) is the default and what you want almost always. The audio is time-stretched rather than simply played faster, so a voice stays recognisably that voice at 1.5x or 2x. This is what podcast apps and video players do when you speed something up.

Remove audio is right for anything going into a montage, a background loop, a silent demo on a landing page, or a timelapse where the original sound is meaningless at speed.

Keep audio (with pitch change) is the raw version, and it is here on purpose. If you want the chipmunk voice, or a slowed-down menacing one, this is the setting that gives it to you.

Why 4x actually sounds right here

A technical detail with an audible consequence. The audio filter that does pitch-corrected stretching accepts a range of roughly half to double speed in a single pass. Ask it for 4x directly and it either refuses or produces something garbled — which is why a lot of speed tools quietly stop at 2x.

This one applies the filter in stages to reach the speed you asked for, so 4x and 0.25x come out clean rather than mangled. It is the kind of thing nobody advertises and everybody notices.

Slowing down has a real limit

Speeding up is straightforward — you are discarding time. Slowing down is not, and it is worth knowing why before you are disappointed.

The tool stretches the timing of the frames you already have; it does not generate new ones in between. So a clip shot at 30 frames per second played at quarter speed still has only those 30 frames spread across four times as long, which reads as choppy. The slower you go, the more obvious it gets.

Mild slow-down — 0.75x or 0.5x — generally looks fine. For genuine slow motion, the answer is at the camera: shoot at 60, 120 or 240fps, and there are enough frames to stretch. Phones have a slow-motion mode for exactly this reason.

Useful speeds

1.25x to 1.5x is the sweet spot for lectures, tutorials and meeting recordings — noticeably quicker while every word stays clear. 2x works for familiar material or a second pass through something. 4x and above is for turning a long static recording into a timelapse, usually with the audio removed. 0.5x is for showing someone exactly what you did in a demo, or picking apart a technique.

Speeding up is also the least destructive way to fit a clip inside a platform's time limit: 1.2x is barely perceptible and buys you a fifth of your length back without cutting anything.

Related tools

Trim Video cuts a clip down when speeding it up is not enough. Video Compressor reduces the file size afterwards, and Video to GIF turns a sped-up clip into a GIF, which is often what a fast demo is really headed for.