One of the most common video editing techniques is speeding up – when we need to quickly “scroll” a fairly large period of time on the screen. This is easy to do in Blender in the Video Sequencer Editor (VSE).
.blend file on Patreon
For example, let’s take a video with clock hands that spin for exactly one minute, and speed it up in Blender VSE so that it lasts only 10 seconds.
First, switch to the video editor by selecting the “Video Editing” tab in the Blender workspaces menu. Set the frame rate to 30 fps and the playback duration to 300 frames, which will give us a ten-second video after rendering. Drag our 1-minute video into the Video Sequencer and select it.
The length of the strip now is six times longer than the total playback length.
If we now hold down the right edge of the strip and drag it to the left, shortening its length, the playback will not speed up, and the compressed part of the video strip will simply be cut off where we stop.
To speed up the strip, we need to apply the “Speed Control” effect to it.
First, let’s put the strip in a group (meta-strip) by pressing the key combination of Ctrl + g. This is not necessary for one whole strip, but if we want to speed up several consecutive strips or have previously cut the strip, grouping allows us to operate with pieces of strips as with one whole strip.
Now let’s apply the effect – in the menu, select Add – Effect Strip – Speed Control.
An additional time-binding block appears above the strip.
Now, just as we tried before, hold down the far right edge of the strip with the mouse and drag it to the left. And now we see that the clock hands are spinning, which means that the strip is not cut off, but compressed in time.
Align the right edge of the strip to the extreme mark of 300 frames.
If we now turn on animation, the strip lasting 1 minute will play out in 300 frames, and in 10 seconds.