Speed Changes in the Timeline
“How can I stop the Timeline from shifting when I change the speed of a clip?"
Basically you can't. That's the way the application is designed to work. It makes sense of course, if you half the speed of a clip it's going to take twice as long to complete. So how do I make a clip a specific speed, but keep it fit in the Timeline window.
There are a couple of ways to do this, you can move clips to other sequences or to the end of the sequence and do the speed change there, but that's too clumsy for me.
The way I recommend is to match frame to a new instance of the clip. To start mark the duration of the clip in the Timeline with the X key. This sets In and Out points in the Timeline. Move the playhead to the In point (Shift-I).
The normal match frame function using the F key opens the clip from the Browser, if you apply the speed change to this then every other time you want to use that clip or a part of that clip it's going to be speed changed. Rather than using the F key use Cmd-Opt-F, which matches back to a new instance of the clip called up from the media on your hard drive. Mark an In point on this new clip and apply your speed change to it. Finally use overwrite to edit it back into the sequence.
One of the easiest workarounds is instead of trying to do the speed change in the timeline, do it in the viewer.
Match Frame the first frame of your clip into the viewer, and then do your speed adjustment and re-edit the clip back into the timeline.
If you want a specific length of the shot or a specific action to fit into the space in the Timeline, mark In and Out points on the clip and edit it into the sequence with Fit to Fill (Shift-F11).
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