Time Remapping

Time Remapping is the act of remapping time itself upon a piece of footage. In other words, the act of slowing down, speeding up, reversing, or non-linearly changing the time it takes a piece of footage to play. Changing the flow of time often will (optionally) change the pitch of the footage as well, reflecting the speed change.

Speeding Up / Slowing Down

One of the simplest types of time remapping is simply to speed up or slow down footage (i.e. make it go faster or slower.)

Reversing

Reversing is a classic technique where a piece of footage is played in reverse. It's simple, but effective!

As the process is a bit more technically complicated, more primitive editors may not be able to reverse footage.

In Vegas

Simply right click the video and click "Reverse". That's it!

In Premiere

Right click the video and select "Time Stretch". From there, you can set the speed of the footage. To reverse, check the "reverse" box and exit the menu.

Reversing in incompatible editors

Some editors, like Windows Movie Maker, cannot reverse clips without special techniques. For these more primitive editors, there is one technique that can be done for a similar effect:

• Take the clip you want to reverse, and cut it into as many pieces as you can. The more the better!
• Re-arrange all of these clips so that they play out in reverse order. That's it!

It may seem simple, but based on the size of your clip this process can be very long and tedious. Be sure to save often!

You may also not be able to split clips frame-by-frame; for example, in WMM, frame divisions are only allowed every 2-3 frames, depending on the frame rate. As a result, this strategy creates a very choppy looking effect (which also makes Stuttering and Scrambling particularly difficult).

Related Techniques

While much more common in YTP the "sus" technique is a popular way to add easy comedy to a video. Take a piece of footage, preferably one word. From there, "cut" it roughly in half, or more preferably, at a vowel. Duplicate this new piece, and reverse the second one. Finally, tack the two on together.

When you're done, you should get something like this:

• "Wow, aren't you surprised!"
• "Wow, aren't you suuS"

The possibilities are endless.

Non-Linear Time Remapping

If more needs to be done than simple slowdowns/speedups, time can be remapped manually, usually with a graph editor. Because of this, non-linear patterns can be introduced that can cause the footage to change in speed over time. An example of this is the "spin down" effect commonly associated with a record player stopping.

Emulating Time Remapping

Various effects and VSTs exist that can 'fake' the remapping of time without actually changing the speed of a piece of footage.

The "spin down" effect can be replicated using a dedicated button in various VSTs such as iZotope Vinyl (this will not change the video speed, however.)