Hmmm. Without a velocity envelope? That could be very very tricky.

Try this with auto-ripple enabled:

- Starting where you want to slow down, split the video into individual frames (yeah, hundreds and hundreds of them).
- Out of the first 10 or so, Ctrl-stretch one frame out to 2 frames' length.
- Out of the second 10 or so, Ctrl-stretch two frames out to 2 frames' length each
- Out of the third 10 or so, Ctrl-stretch three frames out to 2 frames' length each
- Out of the fourth 10 ... i think you can see where i'm going with this ...
By the time you get to 100 frames you will be stretching them all out to double length, so at about 5 seconds after you start slowing down you'll be going half speed. Now continue the process except out of the next 10 frames you'll Ctrl-stretch 9 out 2 frames' length each and one of them 3 frames' length. etc. and etc. and etc. Of course, you'll have to decide on a block size appropriate to how rapidly you want to slow down. Smaller blocks will slow down faster and longer blocks will slow down slower.

However, this will only get you down to 1/4 speed. At that point you won't be able to Ctrl-stretch any farther. From that point out, you'd have to render the 1/4 speed remainder out to a new .avi file, then bring this back onto the timeline and start over with that. Eventually you'll get to the point where you've slowed it enough that you can paste a still frame in and be done with it.

Wow. This would be a whole lot of work. :( If you're billing for your time you'd be better off buying the upgrade to Vegas instead and using it's Velocity envelope function.