Reverse a Video

Reverse a video for a jaw-dropping effect

A video played backwards turns an ordinary moment into something amazing: water jumps back into the bottle, a diver shoots out of the pool, a tower of blocks rebuilds itself, a torn sheet of paper puts itself back together. It's a hugely popular effect in TikTok videos, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and music videos, also known as a rewind or "reverse" effect. For the best result, film a quick, clear movement against a steady background, with the phone held still: a fall, a jump, a throw, splashing water or flour tossed in the air. Slow movements don't work as well, because nobody notices they are reversed. Once your video is reversed, you can speed it up with "Change Video Speed" or turn it into an animated GIF with "Video to GIF".

Reversed sound, normal sound or no sound

By default, the sound is reversed along with the picture: speech turns into mysterious gibberish and noises "rewind", which makes the effect even stronger. If the video has music or a voice you want to keep understandable, choose normal sound: the picture runs backwards, but the soundtrack plays forwards, from start to finish. For a video you'll put different music on, choose "No sound", then use "Add Music to Video". Listening to a sentence or a song backwards to look for a hidden message is a classic too: just keep the reversed sound and listen to the result.

Make a boomerang from any video

A boomerang is a short video that plays forwards then backwards, like a round trip, and seems to loop forever. Instagram and Snapchat offer it while you're filming, but not for a video you've already recorded. Here, just check "Boomerang": the video plays forwards, then backwards, and this back-and-forth is repeated once, twice or three times in the final file. For a great boomerang, keep a clip of 1 to 3 seconds with a simple movement: two glasses clinking, a jump, a hair flip, a wave crashing. Cut the part you want first with "Cut / Trim Video", then, if you like, speed up the result to get that snappy boomerang rhythm.

Why 60 seconds maximum?

To play a video backwards, every frame has to be decoded, since the last frame becomes the first. In a browser, memory is limited, so the video is processed in chunks of a few seconds, each reversed and then joined back together in reverse order, before being re-encoded as an MP4 (H.264). 4K videos are scaled down to 1080p to fit in the available memory. This takes time: expect one to three times the length of the video on a recent computer, longer on a phone. That's why the tool accepts up to 60 seconds, which is plenty for reverse effects and boomerangs. For a longer video, keep the part you need with "Cut / Trim Video" before reversing it.