How to Change Clip Speed in DaVinci Resolve

For one constant speed, right-click the timeline clip and choose Change Clip Speed. Type 200% to play it twice as fast, or 50% for half speed. For a speed change inside the shot, open Retime Controls with Command-R on macOS or Ctrl-R on Windows, add speed points and adjust the segments between them. In Resolve 21.1 you shape the ramp in the Keyframes panel. Motion quality is a separate decision, made under Inspector > Retime and Scaling.

Use a percentage when the playback rate is what matters, and Duration when the clip has to fill an exact gap. For clean slow motion from high-frame-rate footage, work out timeline fps ÷ source fps × 100 before you reach for Optical Flow. If Resolve has to invent frames, compare Frame Blend with Optical Flow on the actual shot. Speed Warp is a Studio-only motion-estimation mode, and it won't rescue every shot.

Duplicate the timeline before you experiment and leave the original alone. Select only the video and audio items you mean to change. A ripple can shift every later cut, and Freeze Frame can take over playback of a whole selected clip. This page sticks to fixed speed, variable speed, ramp shape and frame generation; changing the delivery frame rate is a different job.

Reverse a clip or a short segment

For a whole clip on the Edit page, select it, right-click and choose Change Clip Speed. Enable Reverse Speed, keep the speed magnitude at 100% for normal-speed backward playback, then click Change. Blackmagic’s linear speed-effect controls document this checkbox. Check the start and end frames, linked audio and neighboring cuts before continuing.

For only part of a clip, open Retime Controls with Cmd+R on Mac or Ctrl+R on Windows. Add a speed point at each boundary, then choose Reverse Segment from that section’s speed pop-up. Reverse Segment turns that section backward; Rewind adds a reverse-and-replay effect. The detailed retime and audio sections below explain the timing choices.

For the rewind look, open Retime Controls, click any segment's speed pop-up and pick a percentage from the Rewind submenu. Resolve adds two speed points after the segment's rightmost point, so that stretch plays back in fast reverse at the chosen percentage and then plays again from its start. With the playhead parked inside the segment, the rewind runs from the segment's end back to the playhead. With the playhead outside it, the rewind reaches back to the segment's start.

To reverse only the sound, go to the Fairlight page, select the audio clip and open the Inspector's Speed Change controls. With Speed Change enabled, click the Left Arrow under Direction to run the waveform backward; the Right Arrow sets it forward again. Leave the snowflake icon alone. The manual warns that this freeze-frame option negatively affects the selected audio file.

Change Playback Speed Without Retiming the Clip

Sometimes the question is how fast the Viewer plays while you review, and the clip itself should stay as it is. That's the job of the JKL keys: L plays forward at 100%, J plays backward and K stops. Each extra press of L or J raises the fast-forward or fast-reverse speed, and Shift-L or Shift-J goes straight to fast playback.

Shift-K plays slowly, at 1/2, 1/4 or 1/8 speed. Holding K with L gives slow forward playback, with pitch-corrected audio on macOS, and K with J plays slowly in reverse. Whenever playback runs faster or slower than real time, a speed indicator appears to the right of the Viewer's frames-per-second readout. To skim a whole timeline, choose Playback > Fast Review; longer clips play faster than short ones, K or the Spacebar returns to normal playback, and it works in the Timeline Viewer only.

To watch a long take faster, I'd stay with JKL rather than retime anything, because a shuttle speed lives in the Viewer and never reaches the render. The keyboard shortcuts guide pairs JKL with frame stepping on the arrow keys and the rest of the edit keys.

DaVinci Resolve Change Clip Speed Dialog: Fixed Speed in One Box

Right-click a clip in the Edit page timeline and choose Change Clip Speed, or select it and go to Clip > Change Clip Speed. The dialog gives you three ways to describe the same change: a percentage, a frame rate, or a duration in HH:MM:SS:FF.

Use Duration when the selected source range has to fill an exact gap. A ten-second source range, for example, runs five seconds at 200% or twenty seconds at 50%. Those lengths assume you keep that source range and let its timeline duration change, so check Ripple Sequence and the cuts around it before you apply.

The checkboxes matter more than the number you type:

• Ripple Sequence pushes or pulls clips after the retimed clip to make room for its new duration.
• Reverse Speed changes playback direction.
• Freeze Frame holds the frame under the playhead; Shift-R creates the same whole-clip freeze without opening the dialog.
• Pitch Correction keeps attached audio closer to its original pitch, but large changes can still sound processed.
• Maintain Timing / Stretch to Fit leaves Composite, Transform and Cropping keyframes at their timeline positions or compresses and expands them with the retimed clip.

With Ripple Sequence off, the timeline won't open or close space by itself. Frames you trimmed earlier can reappear at the tail while the clip stays in its original slot. If you see that, sort out Ripple Sequence before you touch the speed value again.

Retime Controls: Speed Points, Ramps and Freeze Frames

Select the clip and choose Clip > Retime Controls, or press Command-R on macOS or Ctrl-R on Windows with the default DaVinci Resolve keyboard preset. A custom preset may map it elsewhere. One contextual-menu instruction in the current manual calls the command Retime Clip instead, so I'd go through the main menu and skip the naming confusion.

Read the numeric speed beside each segment first. The arrows give you a quick visual hint through their spacing and direction, but only the percentage tells you exactly how fast that part plays. And check which clip is selected before you drag any retime handles.

A whole clip can also be retimed by dragging. Move the pointer to the left or right edge of the Speed Change name bar on top of the clip, and when it turns into the Retime cursor, drag to stretch the clip slower or squeeze it faster. Squeezing speeds the clip up and shortens it in the same move. Selection mode won't ripple the timeline and Trim mode will, so pick the mode before you drag. I'd drag only for rough timing and type the final percentage, because a drag stops wherever the pointer does, and an exact figure such as 40% is easier to type than to hit.

To isolate a middle section, park the playhead where it starts, open the speed pop-up and choose Add Speed Point. Move to the end of the section and add a second point. You can then change that bounded section with its Change Speed menu or with the handles:

• Dragging the top handle of the second speed point right slows that segment and left speeds it up, changing the clip length either way.
• Dragging the bottom handle widens the range of the clip playing at that speed, reallocating frames from before and after the segment.

That leaves a simple rule. Grab the upper handle when the segment speed is what you want to change; the clip gets longer or shorter as you drag. The lower handle shifts source frames from one side of the speed point to the other. The clip duration changes with it too, just by a different amount, so it isn't a locked-duration control.

For a temporary hold, park the playhead on the frame you want and choose Freeze Frame from the Retime Controls speed pop-up. Resolve adds two points around the hold and picks playback up again after it; drag the second point to set how long the hold lasts. That's not the same as Clip > Freeze Frame or Shift-R, which freezes the entire selected clip. Reverse Segment reverses the current section, and Rewind adds a reverse-and-replay effect. The Speed Ramp presets replace whatever speed effect is already there, so try them on your backup copy only.

The Speed Ramp submenu in the same pop-up has two options, and either one swaps the current effect for five speed segments that climb from 10% through 30%, 50% and 70% to 90%. It's a starting shape. Drag the speed points afterwards to give each step the duration the shot needs.

Resolve eases one speed segment into the next by itself. Start with that, and only open the Keyframe Editor if the boundary still lands too hard or has to hit an exact moment.

Retime Curve: Shaping a Ramp You Already Built

In Resolve 21.1, select the timeline clip, open the Keyframes tab at the top of the interface, click the Keyframe Curves icon and pick Retime Speed or Retime Frame in the parameter list. If an older tutorial tells you to right-click > Retime Curve, it's describing the former under-clip workflow. Retime Frame plots source frames against timeline time: a shallower slope slows motion, a steeper one speeds it up and a descending slope plays it backwards. Use Retime Speed to adjust speed segments, then confirm the resulting numeric percentages in Retime Controls.

Control points on either curve match the speed points in the Retime controls one for one, so moving one updates the other live.

For a quick ramp, start with speed points. Go to the curves when you need finer timing or a shaped acceleration. You don't have to build the ramp first, either: the curve editor can create the whole effect, not just repair an existing ramp.

I checked this section against Blackmagic Design’s September 2026 Resolve 21.1 Reference Manual, which says Resolve 21 brought Bezier easing to retime parameters. Shape the transition with the curve controls, then render a sample and look closely at the start, the end and any freeze boundary.

Resolve 21.0.3 added new ease modes for Retime Speed and Retime Frame curves, configurable keyframe ease actions and a legacy speed-mode curve option, as RedShark’s July 2026 release coverage reported. Legacy speed mode changes how the curve behaves; it doesn't bring back the old under-clip editor. Test a duplicate before you switch curve modes across a finished sequence, and check the numeric segment percentages and a short rendered sample before copying the ramp anywhere else.

Clip Speed and Audio: Pitch, Muting and Linked Tracks

Attached audio can follow a fixed video retime. Check the Pitch Correction box in Change Clip Speed when you want the duration to change without the obvious chipmunk-or-monster pitch shift. The Resolve 21 Reference Manual warns that big speed changes can still sound worse than small ones, so the checkbox doesn't guarantee clean dialogue.

Variable-speed audio gets its own Pitch Correction option, in the Speed menu of Retime Controls. Look for it in the exact Resolve build you're running; the current manual documents both pitch-corrected and un-pitch-corrected variable-speed playback there.

The Resolve 21.1 manual still contradicts itself on this. The overview on p. 1216 says variable-speed audio is muted, while the audio section on p. 1127 documents pitch-corrected or uncorrected variable-speed playback. So don't assume silence is unavoidable, and don't assume the checkbox hands you usable dialogue either. Check the audio component, the selection, the mute/solo state and the Speed menu in your installed build, then listen to a rendered sample.

Before locking the retime, check two audio boundaries that are easy to miss:

• Linked Selection makes linked video and audio items select together, and edits to linked items can travel together; it doesn't merge them into a new media file. Make sure both items are selected before a fixed retime. Reach for a Compound Clip only when several timeline items really need to behave as one container.
• Pitch Correction gets less transparent as the speed change grows, so compare it on and off on the actual source.

If attached dialogue still smears with Pitch Correction on, undo the picture retime on that audio component and solve its timing separately. Elastic Wave is the Fairlight tool for audio that has to stretch without dragging the picture along with it.

On the Fairlight page, right-click the audio clip and choose Elastic Wave retiming. Its timing points stretch or compress the audio while keeping its pitch, and the picture isn't retimed from the Fairlight page.

Retime Process and Motion Estimation: Fixing Choppy Slow Motion

When a slowdown asks for more timeline frames than the source holds at its effective frame rate, Resolve has to repeat, blend or synthesize frames. You choose how it does that project-wide under Project Settings > Master Settings > Frame Interpolation, and per clip in the Inspector under Retime and Scaling.

• Nearest duplicates frames for slow motion and drops them for fast motion. It's the cheapest to process, and it's the reason untouched slow motion looks stepped.
• Frame Blend dissolves adjacent duplicated frames into each other. The manual recommends it specifically for shots where Optical Flow produces unwanted artifacts.
• Optical Flow generates new frames with motion estimation. It can look exceptionally clean on linear motion, and it tends to tear when two elements cross in different directions or the camera moves unpredictably.

Optical Flow gives you these Motion Estimation choices: Standard Faster, Standard Better, Enhanced Faster, Enhanced Better, Speed Warp Faster and Speed Warp Better. On macOS, Resolve 21 also lists AI Speed Warp Metal, a Speed Warp variant tuned for Mac hardware to speed up DaVinci Neural Engine processing. Which one looks best depends on the shot; with crossing subjects or unpredictable camera movement, a lower mode can come out cleaner.

Speed Warp is a Studio feature. In Resolve Free you can compare the Standard and Enhanced modes, and Enhanced Better is the highest non-Speed-Warp option in this menu. The Resolve Free feature guide and Free vs Studio comparison cover the wider license boundary.

A lot of guides treat Speed Warp as the cure for every stuttering shot. It isn't. Optical flow methods estimate motion, so a busy foreground crossing the frame can tear worse at the edges than a simple Frame Blend would, and it costs more to render. Try both on the actual shot instead of picking the highest setting on principle.

If both the preview and the rendered file show irregular cadence, look at the source before you raise Motion Estimation quality. Phone and screen recordings are often variable frame rate, but check the file before you transcode: MediaInfo reports its Frame rate mode as CFR or VFR, along with minimum and maximum rates, and the variable frame rate guide walks through that check. If it reports VFR or a real gap between those rates, transcode a test to a constant frame rate, relink it and compare the same section.

Optical Flow can synthesize in-between images, but it can't promise to repair irregular capture timing. If only the timeline preview stutters and the export is clean, go to the separate slow-playback checklist.

Speed Percentages That Skip Interpolation Entirely

For high-frame-rate footage with steady capture timing, the source-to-timeline ratio gives you a slowdown that can use one real source frame per timeline frame. Start with Nearest there, so you aren't asking an interpolation algorithm to blend or invent frames it doesn't need.

Speed percentage = timeline frame rate divided by source frame rate, times 100.

Use the actual rates shown in Clip Attributes and Timeline Settings, not the rounded numbers on the camera body. 59.94fps into a 23.976fps timeline also comes out at 40%. Footage that's already been conformed, variable frame rate files and clips that already carry a retime can all throw this calculation off.

The familiar “60 fps at 50%” advice is right for a 30 fps timeline and wrong for a 24 fps one. On a 24 fps timeline, 60 fps footage uses every source frame at 40%.

Exact fractional pairs work the same way: 59.94 ÷ 23.976 is 2.5, so the clean playback percentage is 40%. That holds as long as the clip hasn't already been conformed or retimed and the source cadence is stable.

Changing Media Pool > Clip Attributes > Video Frame Rate is a different operation. It changes how Resolve interprets the source instead of adding a timeline speed effect. Set a genuine 60fps source to 24fps and it plays slowly at 100%, but its audio isn't affected and can drift out of sync. Write down the original setting and try it on a separate copy of the project before you change source interpretation. And don't stack the 40% timeline retime on a clip you've already interpreted as slow motion unless you actually want a second slowdown.

Clip Speed Changes That Break the Timeline

Check the timeline copy before you ripple anything. Which clips move depends on the speed tool, the edit mode and the track controls:

• The Change Speed dialog ripples only when the Ripple Sequence box is checked.
• The Retime controls ripple in Trim mode (T) and can overwrite neighboring clips in Selection mode (A).

On a cut locked to music, a ripple can knock later cuts off their beats. With Ripple Sequence off, look at the changed clip's out point and the source handles you have left; keeping its timeline slot doesn't guarantee the same visible ending. With Retime Controls in Selection mode, lengthening the clip can overwrite a neighbor, while Trim mode ripples instead. Either way, check the adjacent cuts.

Sync Lock is on by default. Turn it off only on tracks that have to stay out of a cross-track ripple, and expect those tracks to lose relative sync with the retimed section. Position Lock is the stronger finishing control: it stops horizontal clip movement and all ripple operations while still allowing plenty of non-positional edits.

An empty higher video track won't protect you from cross-track ripple or lost audio sync. Work in the duplicate timeline and look over the neighboring cuts, linked audio and any titles after each change, and undo straight away if the result is wrong.

Changing Speed on Multiple Clips

Select every clip you want to change and open Change Clip Speed. The dialog applies to the whole selection, and so does the Speed Change group in the Inspector.

To copy a full ramp, build and check it on one clip, copy that clip, select the targets, choose Paste Attributes and turn on Retime Effects. The same dialog has its own Ripple Sequence choice.

Remove Attributes can strip retime effects from a batch, and it also asks whether the timeline may ripple. Check destinations with mixed frame rates one by one instead of assuming one interpolation mode suits the whole selection. The clip-duplication guide covers the separate job of copying timeline items rather than their attributes.

Look at each target after a batch change. A percentage copied between different source frame rates won't give you the same motion cadence. With multicam, check synchronization and the selected audio before retiming, and don't flatten or decompose the original just to make a speed control appear. A compound clip can retime a group as one container, but look inside at its audio and effects. With Fusion compositions, check the composition's frame range and animation after retiming a duplicate, because changing picture timing won't necessarily stretch every animation inside it.

Speed Methods Compared

Pick the speed tool that fits the job, then check what it does to duration and to the neighboring clips. Numeric speed, audio timing and frame interpolation each need a check of their own.

Once motion and audio pass a short test render, move on to the Resolve export settings guide for delivery. The DaVinci Resolve Tutorial hub puts this retime workflow in the wider edit-to-export path.

Clip Speed FAQ

Can you change clip speed in the DaVinci Resolve Cut page?

Yes. Speed Change in the Video Inspector works on both the Cut and Edit pages and includes Direction, Speed %, Frames Per Second, Duration, Ripple Sequence and Pitch Correction. The Retime Controls overlay on the timeline, with its draggable speed points, is an Edit-page workflow.

How do you reset a clip to 100% speed in DaVinci Resolve?

Open the Retime controls with Command-R or Ctrl-R, click the pop-up next to the speed percentage at the bottom of the clip and choose Reset to 100%. To strip retiming from several clips at once, use Remove Attributes with the retime checkbox on, then decide whether the timeline should ripple.

Does changing clip speed in DaVinci Resolve reduce video quality?

Retiming doesn't lower spatial resolution on its own, but it can reduce motion quality. Speeding up skips source frames, and slowing down past the clean source-to-timeline ratio needs repeated, blended or synthesized frames. Judge cadence and artifacts in a rendered sample, especially with Optical Flow.

Can DaVinci Resolve change the speed of audio without the video?

Yes. On the Fairlight page, right-click an audio clip and choose Elastic Wave retiming. Add timing points to stretch or compress the waveform while maintaining pitch; the picture isn't retimed from the Fairlight page.

Jason Miller I run DaVinci Resolve Club, an independent publication. My guides explain editing, color, Fairlight, Fusion and delivery, with clear Free vs Studio limits.