Shotcut tutorial · companion page
Shotcut has no keyframable speed, so there is no ramp to draw. The hack is to cut the join into a ladder — four seconds, two seconds, one second — and give each block a flat speed of 8x, 16x and 32x, then mirror it on the other side. Six constant speeds read as one smooth ramp.
Reading in another language? Use the translate picker in the header, or your browser’s own translate command — the Shotcut panel, control and value names are marked to stay in English so they still match what is on your screen.
The title promises a hack, so here it is in one sentence: because Shotcut 20.09.27 has no keyframable speed parameter, you cut the clip either side of the transition into blocks of four, two and one second, set each block to a single fixed speed — 8x, 16x, 32x going in, 32x, 16x, 8x coming out — and close the gaps. No filter, no keyframe, no plugin.
In this build the Properties panel gives one Speed value per clip. There is nothing to keyframe, so a gradual change can only be built by making more clips.
One second, then two, then four, running toward the join. Because the fastest block is also the longest piece of source, the acceleration reads as smooth rather than as three jumps.
The incoming clip gets the same three cuts in reverse order, decelerating 32x to 16x to 8x. Symmetry is what makes the join feel like one gesture.
Speeding a clip up in this build can leave one frozen frame at the end of the block. It has to be found by stepping frame by frame, split off and deleted, or the ramp stutters.
[ speed ramping is not a native functionality of Shotcut, unfortunately ]
Ben Espanto · 1:22
YouTube’s own chapter list stops at 3:35 and the first entry has no title at all. The five cards up to 3:35 follow that list; everything after it was derived by reading the frames, and each derived card says so and cites the timecodes it was read from. Click any screencap or timestamp to play that section from its exact second, right here in the card.
Every number below was read off the screen in the video — the Properties panel and the player timecode field. Nothing here is a recommended-sounding guess.
Drag the outgoing clip onto V1, then drop the incoming clip straight after it. There is no second track anywhere in this technique — everything happens in a single row.
If the second clip letterboxes, fix it now — a size change after the ramp is built means re-checking every block. In the video the only filter used in twenty-four minutes is Size, Position & Rotate on the incoming clip.
Click the join and read the player position field. Type the position field directly rather than dragging — the cuts have to be exact or the ladder is uneven. Subtract four seconds, split; subtract two more, split; subtract one more, split.
The order matters: the one-second block ends up closest to the cut, the four-second block furthest from it.
Select a block, open Properties, type the multiplier into Speed and press Enter. Work outwards from the cut: the one-second block goes to 8x, the two-second block to 16x, the four-second block to 32x. Pitch Compensation stays unchecked throughout.
A sped-up clip gets shorter and leaves an empty slot behind it. Right-click the gap and choose Remove so the next clip slides up against it. Do this after each block, not at the end.
The join has moved because the outgoing side got shorter, so read the position field again before cutting. This time count forwards: four seconds, then two, then one. Speeds run 32x, 16x, 8x so the shot decelerates back to normal.
Six speed-changed clips in a row is heavy. The player status bar in the video reads Preview scaling is ON at 360p for the whole build. It is a playback setting only and does not touch the export.
This is the part that is easy to skip and should not be. Step the player one frame at a time across each sped-up block. Where the picture does not change, that frame is a duplicate the speed change added: split it off, delete it, and close the gap.
The arithmetic catches it too. One second at 23.976024 fps is 24 frames; at 8x that is 3 frames, but Properties reports Timeline 00:00:00:04. The two-second block at 16x shows the same extra frame. In the second example all three blocks on a side carried one.
The timeline preview will not do the ramp justice on a modest machine — both times in the video Ben renders the file and plays the export instead. Judge the transition from the exported file, not from the scrubbing preview.
Read directly off the frames of the video — the Properties panel, the player position field and the About Shotcut dialog. Nothing was taken from the spoken audio.
| Setting | Value | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
| Shotcut version | 20.09.27 | Help → About Shotcut at 1:00 |
| Clip resolution / frame rate | 1920x1080, 23.976024 fps | Properties → Video |
| Codec / format | H.264 / AVC, yuv420p, 16:9, Progressive | Properties → Video |
| Track layout | V1 only — one video track | Timeline |
| Example 1, outgoing clip | video01.mp4 · 00:00:27:14 | Playlist |
| Example 1, incoming clip | video02.mp4 · 00:00:44:09 | Playlist |
| Example 2, outgoing clip | video03.mp4 · 00:00:14:10 | Playlist |
| Example 2, incoming clip | video04.mp4 · 00:00:13:11 | Playlist |
| Only filter used | Size, Position & Rotate | Incoming clip, example 1 |
| Position | -71, -40 | Size, Position & Rotate |
| Size | 2062 x 1160 | Size, Position & Rotate |
| Zoom | 107.4 % | Size, Position & Rotate |
| Size mode / fit | Fill · Center · Middle | Size, Position & Rotate |
| Rotation | 0.0 ° | Size, Position & Rotate |
| Pitch Compensation | Unchecked on every clip | Properties |
| Preview scaling | ON at 360p | Player status bar |
| Keyframes used | None — zero | Speed is not keyframable in this build |
| Block | Side | Speed | Duration | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 second | outgoing | 8.000000 x | 00:00:03:11 | 00:00:00:04 |
| 2 seconds | outgoing | 16.000000 x | 00:00:01:17 | 00:00:00:04 |
| 4 seconds | outgoing | 32.000000 x | 00:00:00:21 | 00:00:00:03 |
| 4 seconds | incoming | 32.000000 x | — | — |
| 2 seconds | incoming | 16.000000 x | 00:00:02:19 | 00:00:00:04 |
| 1 second | incoming | 8.000000 x | — | — |
Two rows carry an em dash because the panel was never shown holding that value on screen — the speed was typed between two frame captures. Everything else in the table was read off a visible panel. Note the Timeline column: three of the four measured blocks report one frame more than the arithmetic allows, which is the duplicate-frame bug the tutorial spends several minutes hunting.
| Example | Timeline total | Join | Outgoing cuts (−4, −2, −1) | Incoming cuts (+4, +2, +1) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 — forest pair | 00:01:12:00 | 00:00:27:14 | 00:00:23:14 · 00:00:21:14 · 00:00:20:14 | — |
| 1 — after the gaps closed | 00:01:05:10 | 00:00:21:00 | — | 00:00:25:00 · 00:00:27:00 · 00:00:28:00 |
| 2 — landscape pair | 00:00:27:21 | 00:00:14:10 | 00:00:10:10 · 00:00:08:10 · 00:00:07:10 | 00:00:18:10 · 00:00:20:10 · 00:00:21:10 |
Example 2 is a separate, unsaved Untitled project with its own two-clip playlist, so its timecodes are unrelated to example 1. The pattern is what carries over: three cuts on each side at fixed one-, two- and four-second intervals from the join.
Machine transcribed from the video audio. Spoken phrasing is left as-is. Spoken numbers are frequently approximate — where the transcript says “21” the panel reads 00:00:21:14 — so the settings above come from the frames, never from this text. Every timestamp plays the video in the hero from that second.
So here's a tutorial that's probably long overdue. Finally, I'm going to show you a
workaround for creating the speed ramp transition. But first, you got to listen to my intro.
I'm just a normal person with no video editing background. I wanted to start making YouTube videos
and maybe cool transitions and effects. I don't really plan on being a professional video editor,
so I was looking for a free, easy-to-learn video editing software. Luckily, I stumbled on Shotcut,
a free open-source video editing program that can do many of the tricks you can do on more
enterprise video editors like Adobe Premiere or DaVinci Resolve, but with a much simpler
and leaner interface, thus dramatically shortening the learning curve. It just takes using your
imagination. So let's learn together. First, before we get started, I want to make sure
that you know what version I'm using for this tutorial. So in this version, I'm going to use
the Shotcut version 20.09.27. So as I mentioned before, this is actually a workaround to
the speed ramp transition, only because if you didn't already know, speed ramping is
not a native functionality of Shotcut, unfortunately, even though the developers have promised that
it's in the roadmap, it's on the roadmap that should be done by the end of the year, but
at this point for the rest of us who want to create cinematic videos that include
speed ramping, we would have to come up with a workaround, and this is one of them.
So in order to show you this technique, I'm going to show you two examples of how to do it.
So we're going to start out with the first one here, and I have two videos to begin with.
So I'm going to drag the first video onto the timeline, and I'll play the end part of it.
It looks like that, and then I'm going to drag the second video that it's going to transition into.
And really, what the speed ramp transition is, is at the end of this video, it's going to need to
speed up into the second video, and starts out at a high speed, and then slows right back down again.
Let me just make sure that these videos or these video clips match, because the second one here,
the aspect ratio is a little different because you can see little black bars there.
So I'm going to need to go into filters for this second clip, and go into the scale.
Actually, rotate the size position and rotate, and I'm going to need to increase the size a little bit,
so that it fits the screen.
Okay, so that's better.
If you've used other video editing software before, speed ramping is really simple because it's one of those filters,
or one of these effects, that is key-framable.
So you can change the speed, so you don't just want to instantaneously go from one-time speed to 30-time speed
without it gradually leading up to the 30-time.
So what you want to do is you want to slowly graduate from 1 to 30.
Unfortunately, we can't do that here, so we're going to have to get rid of it a little bit.
So here's how I would do it here.
I would go into the first clip, go to the very end of it, and then cut out four seconds.
So how do I do that?
So if you look at here, we are at 27.14, and so that's 27 seconds and 14 milliseconds,
so 27 minus 4 makes it 23.14.
And so at this point, I'm going to go into the split icon, and I'm going to split it there.
So this one here, this length here, is four seconds.
Right after that, I'm going to go to the very beginning where I split it.
I'm then going to cut another two seconds.
So here, if you notice there, we're at 23.14, 23 minus 2, that becomes 21.
Oops, accidentally deleted, so go in here, and we need to go to 21, enter.
And then while that's selected, we're also going to split that.
So once again, this spot here is four seconds.
This spot is two seconds.
And then after that, from this spot on, we need to cut another one second.
So at 21, minus 1 is 20, we're going to cut another one second.
So 1, 2, and 4.
So the first place we want to go to is this spot here.
And right now, this is playing at regular speed.
And so this spot here, we're going to need to go to properties right there.
And it says there, it's one time speed.
We're going to need to speed that up eight times.
So I'm just going to type in the number eight, enter.
And all of a sudden, if you notice, it's actually shrunk it because now it's going at eight times speed.
So we're going to leave that alone for a little while.
We're going to right click this empty area and just click remove to move the next clip right against it.
And so the second block here, instead of eight times speed, we're going to go here under properties and we're going to type 16.
So this one needs to be 16 speed.
Once again, shrunk it.
We're going to right click, remove this spot here.
Finally, this piece here that originally was four seconds long, we're going to go into the speed setting and we're going to set that to 32.
And this one's going to shrink that dramatically and then right click, remove.
So once again, we go here, let's zoom in a little bit, we go here and this is eight times speed.
We go here, this is 16 times speed and we go here, that's 32.
So let's see if this thing is going to render because once you start doing the speed, the speed ramping or changing the speed,
my computer might not be fast enough to render this.
Let's see if it applies the speed.
Let's set the preview scaling to 360 here.
See if it does it.
Okay, yeah, okay.
So it seems pretty normal right now.
Now, because this is a workaround and this isn't really what it's meant to do,
while I was developing this technique, I actually ran into a bug and I don't know why it does this.
So when you do speed up the clip, don't just trust the settings that it's doing exactly what you want it to do
because sometimes what happens is when I shrink or when I speed up a clip of a video,
it adds additional frames to it, which is a weird thing and it's something that I might have to take up with the developers
and ask them if this is a bug.
So how I found it is by playing the frame one by one.
So let's choose this one that is the eight-time speed.
So we're going to play it frame by frame.
You notice that at the very end?
So I'm going to play it again.
It went backwards once.
See that?
So what ends up happening, and I'm going to zoom in a lot more so you can see,
is I end up having that back up by one frame and just removing it and then moving the next one in there.
And so if I play this frame by frame again, all of a sudden it's okay,
but that's what you're going to have to do.
And it's odd that it only did it on this particular one.
And it's going to do it again in this second one and I'm going to show you.
So this is the first part of the speed ramp transition.
And just to remind you what I did.
So this first part, I sped it up eight times.
The second part, I sped it up 16 times.
And the third part, I sped it up 32 times.
So we're going to do the reverse on the second clip.
So first and foremost, once again, we need to cut a four-second clip.
So from where we are, we are at the 21 second point.
We're going to need to add another four, which means that goes to 25.
Enter right there.
Let me zoom out a little bit so you can see what I'm doing.
So this is the four-second mark.
So I'm going to add a split right there.
And then from that point, we're going to add another two seconds.
So I'm going to have to go here and go to 27.
There, add another split.
Right there.
Last but not least, from this mark, we need another one-second clip.
And so I'm going to go in here and go to 28.
Enter split.
And that needs to be selected.
Okay.
So I'm going to shrink it even more.
So once again, this part here, that's a four-second clip.
This part here, that's a two-second clip.
And this part here is once again a one-second clip.
And so the reverse of that is this long four-second clip.
Now we go back to properties.
We go up here and we set this to 32.
So right there.
And then we right-click.
We remove that.
We go to the second clip here.
Go to properties again.
And this one gets set to 16.
There.
Remove the gap.
Finally, this smallest clip here.
We go in here and we set this to eight.
And then we remove excess.
So let me zoom in.
We're now going to play the second half of it.
Okay.
It's a little jittery only because my computer's not that fast.
But in order to spot check to make sure that it didn't add another frame,
we're going to have to play it frame by frame.
So you notice here, it didn't move.
So that means it added another frame here.
So we're going to select that.
I'm going to add a split there.
And I'm going to remove that additional frame.
And then I'm going to proceed to the next frame and see if it hangs there.
Like here.
See that?
I'm moving it and nothing.
And so I'm going to have to go into this one here.
Split that.
And then remove that one right there.
Right click.
Remove finally this last clip.
Let's see if it pauses.
See right there again.
I'm going back and forth and nothing is happening.
And so we don't really need that frame.
Split that again.
Remove that.
Bring this in here.
So let's start from the very beginning to see if there's any excess frames in this other one.
See if you see something like this as I go back and forth.
See I don't know why it does that.
So I'm going to go back here again.
Add a split.
Remove that.
Remove the excess.
Okay.
And that's it.
So that's how I do this transition.
You're not really going to see it only because my computer is slow.
So I'm going to have to render this and I'm going to show you what it looks like.
So stay tuned.
So I just finished rendering this clip and this is the end result.
See how it slowly ramps up.
It goes from 8x speed to 16x speed to 32x speed and then it slows back down again in a gradual manner.
I suppose you can cut it even more and go from 2x to 4x to 8x to 16x to 32x or as many times as you want to cut it.
But I found that if you cut it from 8x to 16x to 32x that it's sufficient and this is the end result.
So now let's try this technique on a second set of clips.
So in this next set this time around I'm going to use some landscape type videos.
So I'm going to drag this first one here and this is what this thing looks like.
And then the second one which is also a landscape one but totally unrelated because this one is a snowy landscape.
And the second one is actually a desert.
So let's stick them together.
Let's zoom in there.
So once again from that middle transition point we're going to count back by 4.
So that makes this thing here 10.
We're going to split that from that point on.
We're then going to go back by 2.
So that this needs to be 8.
Split that part and then we're going to subtract another 1.
So this needs to be 7.
And there and we split that.
And so once again this is 1 second, 2 seconds and finally 4 seconds here.
While we're splitting we might as well do that on the other side.
So from this point on we're going to add another 4 to this mark here.
So that becomes 18.
Add a split there and then we're going to add another 2.
Which makes this 20.
Add another split there and then finally we're going to add one more.
One here and we're going to split that.
So that's what the components look like.
One, two, four, four, two, one.
Okay so let's start with this first one.
Zoom into this one here.
We're going to go to properties again.
We're going to set this to 8.
8 times.
Just going to shrink that.
We go to the second one here.
We're going to need to set that to 16 times.
That and then finally we choose this part here.
We're going to speed that by 32 times.
And then I'm just going to right click all these green areas to remove all the gaps.
And then we're going to select this one here.
This is the beginning of the second clip and that starts at 32.
And we're going to begin slowing it down.
Remove that part here in the second one.
From 32 we go to 16.
And then last but not least this part here.
Going down to 8 times speed.
And then right click and right click.
And that's what we have.
Again it's going to be a little bit juddery because I'm using laptops.
It's not really the fastest computer there is.
But we're going to need to start from this very beginning cut.
And we're going to need the spot check to make sure that it doesn't pause.
Like this is a pause right here.
Again it's one of those bugs that I found.
So I'm going to have to select that.
Add a split there.
Choose the frame that pause.
Remove and remove it.
And then we're going to continue spot checking here.
See whenever you run into one of these things where there is no movement whatsoever.
And I don't know why it does that.
We're going to delete it.
And then remove that.
Move to the next clip.
It's weird that it doesn't do it for every single one.
So the first half we only did it once.
In the second half it's already done it twice.
So here we're going to have to select this part here.
Delete that.
Remove and then move on to the final part.
Again here.
All three clips that I cut all had that dead frame.
Or that frame that just repeats or doesn't move.
So now this is when it's slowed down.
Let's see if I'm able to play this for you.
No it's not really doing it.
So once again I'm going to need to render it so that you see what this thing looks like.
So stay tuned.
So I just finished rendering the second video and this is what this thing looks like.
I'm going to play it again.
But admittedly this technique is a little janky
but as I said in the beginning this is somewhat of a workaround
because of the lack of the native speed ramping functionality that Shotcut has.
But considering that this was somewhat of a ghetto rigged version of a speed ramp
it does succeed at least in attempting to replicate what speed ramping looks like.
Don't you think?
Let me know.
And you know this is quick and dirty.
Pretty easy to execute and hopefully it helps you out
and hopefully it helps make your videos a lot more cinematic
and adds this speed ramp transition to your arsenal.
So once again thank you for sticking along.
I know this one might have been a little bit lengthier as well
as just like all my other videos I ask you if you like this
and if this is helpful for you please subscribe.
It's going to help my channel a lot.
And once again thanks for tuning in and I will see you next time.