How to Speed Ramp in DaVinci Resolve

Today we’ll create an intro, using speed ramping in DaVinci Resolve. Speed Ramp is a great way to make your video more dynamic and lively - and also quite easy for beginners.

Here's the result we'll got:

Let’s start creating!

Import

We have prepared to clips and epic music, suitable for the tutorial:

Open DaVinci Resolve and create a new project.
Go to Project Settings and set the desired resolution and frames per second. We set 30 fps and 1920x1080 resolution:  

Now we can make a new timeline for our intro video:

Import clips and music to DaVinci Resolve and place content in bins to keep it organized:

Drop the videos into the timeline and crop them if needed.

Speed Ramping

Let’s use Speed Ramp - we want to create a fast start that turns into a slightly slowed-down movement.

Right-click on a video clip and select “Retime Controls” from the menu:

As you can see, the selected video layer expand a little bit, and retime marks become visible:

Now, use the arrow on the bottom of the layer to add Time Markers:

We’ll use them as a speed-changing points.

Place markers, taking into account that after changing the speed, the length of the selected part of the video will decrease(or increase).

Click on the arrow to select speed option in “Change Speed” section:

We’ll make the beginning of our video 800% faster.

The second part will be a bit slower, 75% of the speed:

While changing video speed, you can see that speed markers are changing their color and distance:

Also, you can move markers after you have changed the clip speed.

To edit time speed more precisely, we’ll use some advanced settings. Select “Retime Curve” from right-click menu:

In opened curves section, choose Retime Speed instead of Retime Frame:

Under Time Marker you will see a keyframe dot:

The speed change curve changes very sharply from one state to another, so we need to soften the moment of transition. 

To do this, select keyframe and choose ramp curve option on the top:

Done!

 Transition and Title

 Next, let’s add a transition between the videos. To do this, we’ll use a SWIFT pack.

It contains different styles, transitions, titles and LUTs for DaVinci Resolve:

We just dragged it to get the result we need:

We can additionally add a title from this pack - go to Titles and choose from different categories.

Drag the title you’ve selected on top of videos:

We can make the title transparent by turning off 4 color controls:

Quickly edit this title to achieve the perfect result:

Additionally, you can change Composite Mode of this title - different image overlay modes can produce different results, so don’t be afraid to experiment with the settings:

Add In and Out fades to make the transition even more seamless:

Now let’s edit the music. Use an epic and short sound for travel intro - you can pick royalty-free tracks from YouTube Library or on specific websites, for example Artlist. You can also add In and Out fades for the track:

Here’s the result we got:

Use speed ramp in your work to quickly create impressive and seamless transitions!

To Sum Up

Hope this tutorial was useful - check our blog for more DaVinci Resolve guides: How to export from DaVinci Resolve, Studio vs Free version, How to optimize DaVinci Resolve and much more!