iMovie 2022— How to Make a Timelapse Video from Multiple Clips in iMovie

Have you ever wanted to crate a really neat timelapse video from your most recent adventure?

Perhaps you have multiple clips that you want to combine into 1 timelapse video?

Maybe you’re like me and have lots of awesome dashcam footage you want to turn into a fun montage.

Great — you’ve found the right article. iMovie makes it is surprising easy and fast!

For reference I am using iMovie v10.1.12 on macOS 10.15.4 but I’ve verified these steps working with the latest M1 Macbook Pros April 2022 and macOS 12.3

Let’s Get Started

1. Open iMovie and create a new Movie project

2. Import your video clips

Empty Project

Imported Media

3. Select all clips and drag-n-drop onto timeline

^result^

4. Select all clips on the Timeline, and Detach and Delete Audio

Detach Audio

Delete Audio

5. Select all clips on the Timeline, Select Speed option

Upper Right Corner — Clip Options

6. Change Speed from ‘Normal’ to ‘Custom’

7. Change Speed % to desired level and hit the ‘Enter/Return’ key (if you don’t hit enter it won’t work).

Set speed %

If done correctly the timeline clips will show little rabbits to show the clips being sped up:

8. (optionally) add your own music / audio to add some spice to your timelapse.

9. Export to desired destination

What speed % do I use?

It depends on the combined length of the original clips and the desired timelapse video length.

For example, if you have 5 hours of footage and you want to condense it down to 1 minute you’ll set the speed to 30,000%.

I’ve created a simple calculate to do just this task: Timelapse Calculator

The original time can be found in the middle of iMovie’s timeline once clips are loaded.

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