How to Slow Down a Video in DaVinci Resolve (2026 Guide)

Part 1. How to Slow Down a Video in DaVinci Resolve

Resolve can handle most speed changes with no add-ons. There are three ways to do it.

1. Use Retime Controls to Change Video Speed

Retime Controls is the quickest way in. Right-click the clip on your timeline and choose Retime Controls, or press Ctrl+R (Cmd+R on a Mac). A colored bar with a percentage shows up over the clip.

Click the small arrow on that bar and open Change Speed. You'll see presets like 25%, 50% and 75%. Pick one and the clip slows right away.

You can also grab the end of the bar and drag it. Pull right and the clip stretches out and slows down. Pull left and it speeds up. Keep an eye on the timeline, because a slower clip runs longer and can crash into whatever sits next to it. The ripple option pushes the later clips out of the way if you want that.

2. Slow Down Only Part of a Video

You rarely need a whole clip in slow motion. A skate trick, a basketball shot or a splash lasts a second or two, and the rest should play at normal speed.

With Retime Controls on, move the playhead to the spot where the slow motion should start. Open the arrow menu on the clip and choose Add Speed Point. Move to where it should end and add a second one. Now the clip has separate segments, and each one has its own speed.

Select the middle segment and drop it to 25%, for example. The parts before and after stay at 100%. If a hard jump between speeds looks awkward, open the Retime Curve and smooth the transitions into a ramp. Ramps usually feel more natural.

3. Use the Inspector to Adjust Clip Speed

The Inspector is better when you need an exact number. Select the clip, open the Inspector, and look under Video for Retime and Scaling. You can type in a speed there, and it's also where you pick the retime process (more on that below).

It comes in handy when you want the same speed across several clips, or when 37% is the number you need and no preset matches it. You can get the same result by right-clicking a clip and choosing Change Clip Speed, which opens a small box for the percentage.

Part 2. How to Make Slow Motion Smoother in DaVinci Resolve

Slowing footage down is the easy bit. Making it look smooth is harder.

Adjust the Retime Process and Frame Interpolation

Resolve gives you three retime processes, and each one deals with missing frames in a different way.

• Nearest repeats the closest frame. It's fast, but it's also the one most likely to look choppy.
• Frame Blend mixes neighboring frames together. It looks softer, though fast movement can leave ghosting.
• Optical Flow studies the motion between frames and builds new ones. For smooth slow motion, it's usually the best native option.

You'll find these in the Inspector under Retime and Scaling, or in the project settings if you want one process for the whole project. Optical Flow also has motion estimation modes, from Standard Faster up to Enhanced Better. The better modes take longer to render but can look cleaner. Speed Warp is only in the Studio version.

Optical Flow isn't magic, though. It's guessing what should sit between two frames. On steady, simple motion the guess is good. On fast action, splashing water, hair, or a moving subject in front of a busy background, you may see warping, smearing or wobbly edges.

Choose the Right Slow-Motion Speed for Your Footage

Speed choice matters more than most people expect. At 50%, Resolve has to fill in one new frame for every original frame. At 25%, it has to invent three. That's a big jump in guesswork.

With 24 or 30 fps footage, 50% often looks fine. You get a clear slowdown without pushing the software too hard. Once you go down to 25% or lower, the problems start to show.

High-frame-rate footage gives you a lot more room. A clip shot at 120 fps has plenty of real frames, so you can slow it to 25% on a normal timeline and still get smooth motion. That's why phones and cameras have dedicated slow-motion modes.

Why Slow Motion Can Still Look Choppy

A video is a stack of still images. A 30 fps clip has thirty of them every second. Slow it to 25% and you'd need 120 frames to fill that same second, but you only have thirty. The other ninety have to come from somewhere.

With Nearest, Resolve repeats frames and you get stutter. With Frame Blend, it mixes them and you get a soft, ghosted look. With Optical Flow, it generates new ones, which can look great or can add visual glitches. None of these can add real detail the camera never captured. That's why the same settings can look perfect on one clip and rough on the next.

Part 3. How to Slow Down a Video Without Losing Smoothness

Slowing a video down and generating new frames are two separate jobs. Once you see the difference, picking the right tool gets a lot easier.

Slow Down High-FPS Footage

If you know you'll want slow motion, shoot at a higher frame rate. Most modern phones can record at 120 or 240 fps, and plenty of cameras offer 60 or 120.

More frames per second means more real information. When you slow that footage down, you're stretching real frames instead of invented ones, so it looks cleaner and you can go to lower speeds without much fuss. One catch: high-fps clips usually need good light, since each frame gets less exposure time.

Use Frame Interpolation for Low-FPS Videos

Sometimes you don't get a choice. It might be old footage, a clip a client sent over, or a video pulled from social media. In those cases, frame interpolation is your best bet.

Frame interpolation builds new frames between the existing ones by estimating where things are moving. Instead of repeating or blending frames, it creates a fresh image for each gap. Done well, motion looks fluid even on footage that was never shot for slow motion. Resolve's Optical Flow is one version of this. Dedicated AI tools take another route, using models trained on large amounts of video to predict what belongs between frames.

When DaVinci Resolve Is Not Enough

A few situations tend to trip up Resolve's built-in options:

• 24 or 30 fps footage slowed to 25% or lower
• Fast sports or action clips with lots of movement
• Footage with busy backgrounds, where Optical Flow warps edges
• Clips where you need smooth results without spending time on retime settings

For those, it can help to run the footage through a tool made for frame generation before or after you edit in Resolve.

Part 4. Pro Tip: Create Smoother Slow Motion with HitPaw VikPea

If Resolve leaves you with choppy results, HitPaw VikPea is worth a try. It isn't a video editor. It does one job, which is creating extra frames so slow motion looks smoother.

Create 2x or 4x Slow Motion From Regular Video

VikPea's Frame Interpolation Model generates additional frames between the ones already in your video. Rather than playing the original frames more slowly, it adds new ones. That lets you turn ordinary footage into 2x or 4x slow motion with smoother movement.

It helps most on clips where the motion is the whole point:

• Sports moments like a kick, a swing or a jump
• Dance videos where you want the movement to show
• Action shots that go by too fast at normal speed
• Any moment you want viewers to look at more closely

How to Slow Down a Video With HitPaw VikPea AI Frame Interpolation

Step 1. Open HitPaw VikPea

Launch HitPaw VikPea on your computer and open the main interface. From the left-side panel, select AI Toolbox, then choose Video Frame Interpolation to access the slow-motion tools.

Step 2. Import Your Video

Click the import option and select the video you want to slow down. You can use footage from smartphones, cameras, sports recordings, travel videos, dance clips, gameplay, and other sources.

Step 3. Select the Slow Motion Model

After importing your video, select the Slow Motion Model. This model uses AI frame interpolation to analyze the original frames and create additional frames for smoother movement during slow playback.

Step 4. Choose the Slow Motion Speed

Choose the slow-motion level that matches your project. VikPea supports 2x and 4x slow motion. Use 2x for a moderate slowdown or 4x when you want a more noticeable slow-motion effect.

Step 5. Adjust Output Settings

Configure the output settings based on your needs. You can adjust the resolution, FPS, format, and output path in the basic settings. Advanced options may also let you adjust settings such as bitrate, video encoding, crop, and color space.

Step 6. Preview the Result

Use the Preview option to check the processed video before exporting. Watch moving subjects carefully and check the motion smoothness, details, and any unwanted artifacts created during frame interpolation.

Step 7. Export the Slow Motion Video

Once you are satisfied with the result, select your preferred output settings and click Export. VikPea will process the footage and save the finished slow-motion video to your selected output location.

DaVinci Resolve vs. VikPea for Slow Motion

These two don't really compete. Resolve is a full editing suite, so it's the better pick when you need to cut clips, ramp speeds and control exactly where the slow motion starts and stops. VikPea is stronger at one thing: adding frames so slow motion looks smoother. Plenty of people will end up using both.

FAQs About Slowing Down Videos in DaVinci Resolve

Conclusion

DaVinci Resolve makes slowing a video down simple. Retime Controls handles quick changes, speed points let you slow only the moment you care about, and the Inspector gives you exact numbers. Switching the retime process to Optical Flow also smooths things out on a lot of clips.

The limit is the footage itself. If a clip doesn't have enough frames, no speed setting can make good ones out of thin air, and that's when stutter and warping show up. In that case, AI frame interpolation is the better route, because it builds new frames instead of stretching old ones.

If you've slowed a clip a lot and it still looks rough, HitPaw VikPea is a reasonable post-processing step.