How to Speed up a Video? 5 Practical yet Free Methods Are Provided!

A lot of people haven't noticed that some mainstream online video sharing websites provide the feature to accelerate videos directly, such as YouTube, Dailymotion, Twitch, etc. You can generally find the "Speed" option in a reasonable position of the playback window, for the most part, in the settings menu, which generally allows you to speed up the playback. And some mobile apps also allow instant video speed control. However, these websites and apps generally can only increase the playback speed up to 2 times faster.

What if there is no "Speed" option in the player? You know what, most main video sharing sites have switched to using HTML5 video instead of Flash by default. And HTML5 videos natively provides APIs to accelerate playback of any video, but many websites either hide or limit this feature. Nevertheless, you can fix this issue by installing a browser extension - Video Speed Controller.

For Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/video-speed-controller/nffaoalbilbmmfgbnbgppjihopabppdk?hl=en

For Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/videospeed/

After adding the extension to your browser, refresh the video page and you'll see a speed indicator in top left corner of the video player. Click on "+" to speed up the video playback or simply press the hotkey "D" on the keyboard. You can also hit the extension icon > Settings > customize the shortcuts and other settings as you wish. It is worth mentioning that this extension only supports HTML5 video.

For the downloaded or recorded videos on your local drive or mobile devices, most popular media players can help you take a quick overview of them. I'll take VLC Media Player as the example because it can be installed on different platforms.

On Computer: When you play a video in VLC, simply press the hotkeys "+" or "]" to accelerate the video, and press "=" to make it normal. You are also able to configure the hotkeys by going to "Tools" on top menu bar > "Preferences" > "Hotkeys" tab.

On Mobile: When you play a video with VLC app, tap "three dots" in the bottom right corner and select "Playback speed" option. Just drag the slider to the right, towards 4.00 at most.

The aforementioned methods just temporarily speed up the video, the original videos are still in a normal playback speed. If you want to accelerate a video permanently, try the following two methods.

Some online services offer an easy-to-use tool to speed up videos without any program or plugin installed. What you need to do is just upload your video > change the speed > wait for the upload and conversion > download to your local drive. The upload and download process may vary based on your network speed and website server. After the download, it will be a fast motion video permanently.

1. https://www.onlineconverter.com/change-video-speed

2. https://www.fileconverto.com/make-video-play-faster-or-slower/

3. https://www.mp3care.com/slow-motion-speed-video.aspx (SHUTDOWN!)

Compared with the online application, video editing is a solid method for video speed-up as it can either speed up the entire video or apply the fast-motion effect to a particular part. No need to purchase the pricy programs, some free video editors can work like a charm. The following content is demonstrated with VSDC Free Video Editor, I believe other freeware like Shotcut, VideoPad, etc. adopt the similar operation.

Step 1. Run VSDC Free Video Editor and import the video you want to increase the playback speed.

Step 2. Select the video on the timeline, scroll down the "Properties window" on the right side. Enter a value behind "Speed (%)". For example, if you input 300 instead of the original 100%, the video will play four times as fast as the original video and so on.

Step 3. Finally, press "Export project" tab on the top menu bar. Select a desired video format and export the speed-up video. DO NOT press “Save” or “Save as” button, otherwise you’ll get a .vproj project file.