How to Reverse a Video

Posted on July 14th, 2009 by Marck

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Back in the days of VHS, one of the fun things that you can do with a player and a VHS cassette is to play it while it’s on rewind. The playback is faster than usual, but it comes as a limitation of the device. Here are some ways that you can reverse a digital video.

Tools

To reverse a video, you’ll need the following tools:

Computer (preferably with high-performance specifications)
Video editing software (like Adobe Premiere or VirtualDub)
Video playback software (programs like Windows Media Player or DivX should do fine for this task)

Steps

To reverse a video, follow these steps:

Play back the video to see if there are any skips, or if the video is properly encoded with the right codec and format. You may need to repair the video with a video editing software later on.
Repair skips and other errors with the video editing software. For skips, make sure that the scene flows smoothly when you snip the video clips together.
Most video editing software have a built-in reverse function that automatically plays the video backwards. Enable the reverse function and wait for the video to finish processing. You may also select parts of the video to be played in reverse.
Depending on your project or the type of video format you’re editing, you can also reverse the sound. For raw video, simply edit the sound channels. For compressed video, you may want to extract the audio channel first before editing it.
Experiment with speeds. You may speed up the video, slow it down, or opt to retain the original speed of the video clip.
Once the video is completely reversed, preview the changes before saving the video under a different filename.
Play back the video to ensure that the reversing process is complete, and that there are no skips in the video.

Reversing a video is useful for entertaining guests, or for checking out the various effects you can use for a video. With these tips and the right video editing tools, you can reverse a video quickly and easily.