The speed of one's work is bound to the speed of which one can get the program to do what one needs it to do. SpeedEDIT has shown me the most well-thought-out selection of Hot-Key controls and Mouse/Keyboard combinations I've seen yet. With the press of a key, I can center my Timeline's view on my current time location, move my current position within the project to a numerically entered timecode, cut (split,) trim, or stretch a clip, fade in/out, set a clip's in/out points, constrain dragged movement of a clip to vertical axis, Slip-and-Slide a clip, have one clip Inherit the in/out/fade/speed settings of another, and a heck of a lot more! (F1 opens a window that has five pages of these genuinely useful short-cuts!)

NOTE: I've got to take a moment to say how helpful the "Slip-and-Slide" function has been to the way I work.

My sense of timing comes from a long history in music. I base the timing of my works on an internal rhythm I feel from the pacing of the cuts, this rhythm or phrasing usually takes precedence over the context of the material, and as such, it is usually locked-in from early on.. When I animate my scenes from the timings established in my Animatic, (animated storyboard,) I usually add 24 frames to the head and tail as "Handles." I've set SpeedEDIT to automatically trim these 1 second Handles from my clip when it comes time to replacing the storyboard panel with the final animation so it drops perfectly into the slot the drawing once held. And using Slip-and-Slide, I can preserve the feel of the clip's content while fine-tuning the action of that clip by sliding the In/Out points while maintaining the same duration!

Something I found surprisingly helpful is that SE will actually play the Icons of video-clips when you mouse-over them in the File bin.

In addition to the Timeline view for composing your project SE also gives you the ability to work in a Storyboard format as well, helpful for examining the visual flow of your work at a glance. (I also liked the fact that you can re-size these storyboard Icons in real-time to be as large or small as you'd like.) SpeedEDIT is unique because the Storyboard interface remains linked to the Timeline. Any changes made in one view are instantly updated in the other.