Reverse video playback in your browser

Yes — video reversal cannot be done with stream-copy because every frame must be decoded, reordered into reverse sequence, and re-encoded. JAD performs a full encode pass to produce the reversed output. This means reversal takes longer than lossless operations like trimming. Use a high-quality CRF setting (CRF 18–22) to preserve quality through the encode.

Reversed audio sounds like speaking backwards — vocals become an unintelligible backwards sound pattern, and music sounds alien. Some speech recorded backwards contains the reversed audio version as a creative effect. If reversed audio is not desired, use the mute option to export the reversed video without audio, then add a different audio track.

Video reversal requires the entire video to be decoded into memory before re-encoding in reverse order, which is memory-intensive in the browser. Very large files (above 2 GB) may cause memory pressure in the browser tab. For long or large files, consider splitting the video into shorter segments before reversing, then merging the reversed segments in order.