How to Speed Up & Slow Down Videos on iPhone with iMovie
Do you want to speed up or slow down some of the video footage/clips on your iPhone? This is a feature that most video editing software offers, but thanks to Apple’s iMovie app for iPhone and iPad, you don’t have to transfer the clips to your computer to get this done, you can do it all from your device.
Apple’s built-in video editor in the Photos app is simple and good enough for most users for basic edits like cropping and applying filters. However, Photos app is not capable of increasing or decreasing the speed of your clips and this is exactly why you’ll need a more advanced solution. Video editing apps for mobile devices have improved a lot in the last few years, giving users access to advanced tools like adding transitions, combining multiple clips, speeding them up, and so on. Unlike most third-party apps, Apple’s own iMovie app makes video-editing easy even for beginners.
How to Speed Up & Slow Down Movies with iMovie on iPhone or iPad
First and foremost, you’ll need to install the latest version of iMovie from the App Store. Even though it’s Apple’s app, it doesn’t come pre-installed on iOS/iPadOS devices. Now, without further ado, let’s take a look at the necessary steps:
- Launch the iMovie app on your iPhone or iPad.
- Once you open iMovie, tap on “Create Project” to start a new video editing project.
- Next, select “Movie” from the New Project screen as shown below.
- Now, select the video that you want to speed up/slow down from your Photos library and tap on “Create Movie”.
- This will take you to your video timeline. Select the clip in your timeline to access all the editing tools that iMovie has to offer.
- In the bottom menu, next to the Cut tool indicated by a scissor icon, you’ll find a speedometer icon. This is the speed up/slow down tool. Select it to start using it.
- Now, depending on whether you want to increase or decrease the speed of the clip, you can move the slider to the right or left accordingly. You can preview the clip to see if the video speed is good enough for you.
- Once you’re satisfied with the changes, simply tap on “Done” to exit the timeline and finish the project.
- Next, you need to save the video that you just edited. Simply tap on the Share icon located at the bottom to bring up the iOS share sheet.
- Now, just select “Save Video” to export the file to your Photos library.
- iMovie will now begin exporting the clip, but once it’s done, you’ll see a similar pop-up as shown below. Just tap “OK” and exit the iMovie app.
There you go. As you can see, it’s really not hard to use iMovie for speeding up and slowing down video clips.
You can repeat the above steps to increase or decrease the speed of other video clips too. If you’re trying to make a montage of multiple sped up or slowed down clips, you may be interested in learning how to use iMovie to combine two or more videos together.
Note that iMovie can take a longer time to export your video depending on its size. During this process, make sure iMovie is actively running in the foreground because minimizing the app will halt the export and you’ll need to do it all over again.
Do remember that your iPhone is capable of taking slow-motion videos natively, and you don’t really have to use iMovie if all you’re doing is slowing down videos. You can even adjust the slow-motion recording speed by adjusting the frame rate (FPS). And, if you ever want to switch back to normal speeds, you can use the built-in video editor to get it done.
The ability to speed up and slow down clips is just one of the many video editing features that iMovie has to offer. If you enjoyed using iMovie so far, you may also be interested in checking out other tools that can help with trimming, adding background music, inserting transitions, and so on, so don’t miss more iMovie tips here.
What do you think of using iMovie for video editing on iPhone or iPad? Let us know your experiences and thoughts in the comments.
