How do I rotate video (MOV) file on Windows?

Question

I recorded a video (on iPhone) in portrait mode. Now I need to rotate it. Right now I have a MOV file. I'm using Windows. What program can I use to rotate and save this video without losing quality?

Answer 1

Google Picasa can rotate videos and save them into a new file. Just install Picasa if you haven't already, find the video, and click the rotate button just as you would for a photo.

Picasa converts the video to VFW I think, at least it won't be MOV afterward.

I would take advantage of this by making a copy of the video, then delete part of each copy so you end up with the two parts you want. Then merge those two videos. (I'm not sure how to merge videos, haven't needed it. Perhaps Picasa can't do that?)

For this to work, you need to have Quicktime installed, otherwise Picasa will not open/edit .MOV files

Answer 2

This requires QuickTime Pro to do (and works on Mac OS X using QuickTime Player 7 with Pro as well):

1. Open the movie with QuickTime Player
2. Choose Show Movie Properties from the Window menu
3. Click on the video track, then click on the Visual Settings tab
4. Clip the button to rotate your video.
5. Save your movie. No transcoding required.

A free option is MPEG Streamclip (awesome program) where you can just choose "Rotate Video" from the Edit menu. If saved as a QuickTime movie it won't require transcoding.

Answer 3

Instead of Movie Rotator or MPEG StreamClip (from squared5.com), which are limited applications, I would recommend AVIDemux. It's an open source video editor that can, among other things, open MOV files and save them as AVI losslessly, or process them and apply filters such as rotation.

AVIDemus is useful, for example, when you have a video that was rotated only during part of its duration, for example when the camera operator switched from portrait mode (e.g. recording a person's speech) to landscape mode (e.g. to record the audience's reaction).

But above all, I'd recommend avoiding Apple products that output videos in .MOV format.

Answer 4

Windows Movie Maker is the way to go as its Free for Windows 7 and super easy to rotate. You just drop your movie into the program and then you can click "Rotate right". It also lets you upload direct to YouTube.

I saved my file as a WMV beforehand so that it didnt take as long to upload.

Answer 5

Try using VirtualDub with a MOV VfW codec or via AVIsynth.

Alternately, install mencoder and use that from the command line.

On Linux your options would be better >_<.

Answer 6

Was able to do it with http://www.squared5.com/ Program rotated it when I opened the video. Then I selected Export to AVI (did not selected rotate because it already rotated the video) and saved it.