Mashup: Overlaying reverse video on top of forward version

I saw the film Room 237 last night, and Im very intrigued by something they did in the movie. Room 237 is a documentary about 5 fans obsessed with the Stanley Kubrick film, The Shining. Each person has their own theories about the film, and one of those theories was that Kubrick intended the film to be viewed both forwards and backwards, and this person created a version that overlayed a reverse copy of the film onto the regular version.

Now Im sure they cherry-picked the highlights to show in the documentary, but the scenes they did show were quite jarring, and Id like to recreate this. I have the blu-ray version of The Shining, and its been converted to MKV. What Im looking to do is this:

Create a reverse version of the film. Ive found a guide for ffmpeg that would seem to do what I need:

stackoverflow.com/questions/2553448/encode-video-is-reverse

Then if my understanding is correct, I would need to use Vegas, or similar application, to combine the two versions, reducing the opacity on one or both tracks. I would only need audio from the forward version (although it might be interesting to have the reverse audio as a separate audio track that could be used if desired, buts it not important.)

Can anybody tell me if this basically the right way to go about doing this?

My apologies if this is in the wrong forum; this seemed to be the best one for the subject

 

I can't assist with Vegas (only use Freeware), but if you are passingly familiar with AviSynth you can use a script to open a video in VirtualDub.

AVI file:

Code:

a=AVISource("clip.avi")
b=AVISource("clip.avi").reverse()
vid=Overlay(a,b, mode="blend", opacity=0.5)
return(vid)

Sample clip:
http://www.mediafire.com/?9gg2cnltcbfo9dm

For an MPEG from a DVD movie, demuxed and indexed using DgIndex:

Code:

a=mpeg2source("titanic.d2v")
b=mpeg2source("titanic.d2v").reverse
vid=Overlay(a,b, mode="blend", opacity=0.5)
audio=NicAC3Source("titanic T80 2_0ch 192Kbps DELAY -92ms.ac3")
audiodub(vid, audio)

The MPEG clip requires extra plugins for AviSynth.
VirtualDub normally outputs AVI file - but it can use external codec, perhaps to save as MP4 or MPEG.

Sample clip:
http://www.mediafire.com/?btg44l8g0251alw

Note that the samples are not literally from the start and end of a movie - that would be at least two hours, but it gives a sample of what the overlay looks like.

 

Excellent, thank you!

I have a big test this week, so won't get around to starting this project until the weekend, but I'll report on my progress (or lack thereof.)

 

Getting close, it's just a matter now of trimming off the end credits and getting them lined up properly. Avisynth/avidemux is the bomb! Thanks much!