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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?

6 Answers 6

27

Google Picasa can rotate videos and save them into a new file. Picasa converts the video to VFW I think, at least it won't be MOV afterward.

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

Just install Picasa and QuickTime if you haven't already, then find the video and click the rotate button just as you would for a photo.

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  • omg. i had picasa all along and assumed it wouldn't do it. thanks.hubpages.com/hub/How-To-Edit-Videos-With-Picasa-3
    – meddle
    Sep 10, 2010 at 20:15
  • 1
    I can't open .mov files in Picasa.
    – Jonas
    Nov 16, 2011 at 23:46
  • +1. Picasa, at least on OS X, opens the movs and saves the rotated movs flawlessly (and losslessly!)
    – GJ.
    Jun 22, 2012 at 21:12
  • It works on Windows as well. At least as of Picasa 3.9 (QuickTime player also installed) Jun 29, 2012 at 11:59
  • @sarat: what do you mean? Sep 3, 2012 at 8:26
15

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.

AVIDemux 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.

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8

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.

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  • Windows Movie Maker turned a 2M file(Mov) into a 26M file when I tried to rotate it
    – DevDave
    Jun 5, 2014 at 18:01
  • The size of the file depends on the format/options you choose when saving.
    – HeavyE
    Jul 14, 2014 at 12:30
  • Best answer! This should be the check marked solution.
    – Phil
    May 6, 2020 at 16:02
6

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.

4
  • cool. is there an iPhone app that can do that(like iMovie on iPhone)?
    – meddle
    Aug 10, 2010 at 14:01
  • @meddle: Never used or heard of it before today: Rotate Video ($.99)
    – Chealion
    Aug 10, 2010 at 14:32
  • Great app you recommended there! Sweet!
    – motto
    Oct 1, 2012 at 21:25
  • Quicktime is a huge crap. It does not work or even crashes on WIndows. I hate that stuff. I rotated the video with AVIDemux and it was very very easy. The resulting file was not bigger than the input file and the quality was perfect. cwl.cc/2012/04/how-to-rotate-video-in-5-easy-steps.html
    – Elmue
    Sep 30, 2016 at 15:05
2

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

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

0

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.

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