Abstract: The present invention has been made in consideration of linear reverse playback of MPEG video data and has particular applications to video special effect editing. According to one aspect of the present invention, the disclosed system uses a minimum number of frame storage to buffer decompressed I and P frames so as to decompress B frames in a reverse order and subsequently display the B frames. Every time, it comes to display the decompressed I and P frames buffered in the frame storage, an I frame or a P frame in a group of picture (GOP) prior to current GOP is decompressed and buffered into one of the frame storage that becomes available when the content therein has been retrieved for display. The cyclic use of the frame storage and the time that would be otherwise spent for decompressing B frames guarantees a linear reverse playback of MPEG video data without showing retardant visual effects that often result from non-even decoding processes in displaying compressed frames.