Learning how to reverse a video in Premiere Pro is exciting. It’s fun to edit and looks pretty cool. It’s perfect for anyone looking to spice up their YouTube videos, anyone who’s looking to create a commercial – and possibly best suited to a cool music video. 

How to reverse a video in premiere pro

In today’s article we look at what reversing a video in Premiere Pro means, why it’s important – and finally, the four steps you need to undertake to ensure you nail the reversal of your footage in Premiere Pro. 

Let’s get straight into it!

What is reversing a video in Premiere Pro?

Reversing video footage in Premiere Pro is essentially playing the footage backwards to create a cool effect for your production. You can add multiple effects to the footage including slow motion and rotating the footage

Basically, you play your original footage backwards, it creates an intriguing effect, that when slowed down is perfect for commercials and music videos.

Why is reversing a video so important in Premiere Pro?

Reversing video in Premiere Pro is important for a number of reasons.

Firstly because it’s actually pretty fun 🙂 

But seriously, the reasons it’s important to reverse the video in Premiere Pro are:

It intrigues the viewer. 

Sports channels use it a lot of the time to help spot interesting parts in the game, they use it to pinpoint the exact second something incredible happens. For instance, they use it in Football, Soccer, racing and more. 

It’s the perfect solution to those lightspeed players crashing into each other at speed. 

It keeps the audience engaged. 

By playing something in reverse, it adds to the story – it captures the audience’s imagination and can unsettle them. It keeps them intrigued, wondering what’s next? 

It can also be used to show a key point in a movie, if you want to shed light on a certain moment, in your film, show or commercial, this adds to it. You can do it subtly in film, or go crazy big on it in commercials, either way, if you use it right, the audience will go wild for it. 

How to reverse a video in Premiere Pro?

Here are our simple steps on how to reverse a video in Premiere Pro.

Import your video in Premiere Pro

Choose the files you want to import into Premiere Pro and import them. Then drag them onto your timeline ready to reverse them.

Reverse your video in Premiere Pro

Now you have your video footage on your timeline, it’s time to reverse them. To reverse them simply right click on the clip and click on Speed > Duration. Then select the “Reverse Speed” checkbox. 

click on Speed > Duration

When reversing the video footage in Premiere Pro, it automatically reverses the audio – if you wish to delete the audio in Premiere Pro and replace it with music or background audio you can do that too.

Change the speed in Premiere Pro

Once you’ve reversed the video in Premiere Pro, you have the option to speed up or slow down your clips, depending on how you feel. 

The speed plays at a normal rate of 100% so reducing it to 50% will slow it down by half or by increasing it to 200% will play it twice as fast. 

Experiment with the speeds until you are happy with the output. Then click “ok” to save your speed.

Finally, export your project from Premiere Pro

You’ve finally reversed your video in Premiere Pro, now it’s time to share it with the world. Simply export your video from Premiere Pro at the preferred export settings for your medium. 

If you’re looking for the best Premiere Pro export setting for YouTube, click the link. Or, if you’re looking to export a video from Premiere Pro and understand the export settings in more detail, simply click on our guide to Premiere Pro export settings here. 

Our final thoughts – How to reverse video footage in Premiere Pro

This is such a great tutorial for anyone looking to spice up a commercial or a YouTube video – maybe you’re even wanting to shoot a music video and you’re looking for ideas! Learning how to reverse video footage in Premiere Pro is fun, and it will take your editing skills to the next level.  

We hope this article on “How to reverse video footage in Adobe Premiere Pro” has been useful to you, let us know your thoughts down below in the comments. 

Scroll a little further for more exciting Premiere Pro tutorials.

Happy editing!

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