Speed-ramp an animation
CapCut-style speed curves: make motion accelerate and decelerate inside one event.
Speed ramping (the CapCut-style speed curve) makes motion accelerate and decelerate inside a single event without changing its duration. A Fade In still takes its 0.7 seconds — but it can crawl at the start and whip to the finish, or freeze dramatically in the middle.
Apply a ramp from the timeline
- Right-click any clip in the timeline.
- Choose Speed ramp ▸.
- Pick a preset — the ● dot marks the one currently applied:
| Preset | Shape |
|---|---|
| Montage | quick hit, then settle |
| Hero | dramatic slow-motion in the middle |
| Bullet | freeze mid-flight, then release |
| Jump cut | slow bookends, whip through the middle |
| Flash in | crawl, then accelerate away |
| Flash out | burst in, land in slow motion |
Right-clicking one clip of a multi-selection applies the ramp to every selected clip at once. Clips with a ramp show a small ⏱ badge.
Edit the curve node by node
Select the clip and open the Timing section of the inspector — the Speed ramp block shows the curve editor:
- The vertical axis is the speed multiplier on a log scale: 0.1× — 1× — 10×, with 1× in the middle. Drag a node up to speed that moment up, down to slow it into slow motion.
- Double-click the curve to add a node right on it; double-click a node to remove it (the two endpoints always stay).
- Drag a node sideways to move when the speed change happens. While dragging, a live
2.40×readout follows the node. - Off removes the ramp; Custom… starts a flat 3-node curve to shape from scratch.
How it works
The curve is the playback speed over the event's own time. Under the hood the editor integrates it into a time warp — progress(t) = ∫speed / total — and composes it with the event's easing. The same math ships in the render: the compiled Python gets a _speed_ramp_rate_func(...) helper and every ramped animation's rate_func runs through it, so the canvas preview and the rendered video match exactly.
It works on every event kind: Manim animations (Create, FadeIn, …), property keyframes, transforms, matrix maps, camera moves, and graph highlights.