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

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?

meddle

Posted 2010-08-10T01:18:51.943

Reputation: 765

Answers

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.

Torben Gundtofte-Bruun

Posted 2010-08-10T01:18:51.943

Reputation: 16 308

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. https://cwl.cc/2012/04/how-to-rotate-video-in-5-easy-steps.html

– Elmue – 2016-09-30T15:03:08.163

omg. i had picasa all along and assumed it wouldn't do it. thanks.http://hubpages.com/hub/How-To-Edit-Videos-With-Picasa-3

– meddle – 2010-09-10T20:15:14.780

1I can't open .mov files in Picasa. – Jonas – 2011-11-16T23:46:06.353

+1. Picasa, at least on OS X, opens the movs and saves the rotated movs flawlessly (and losslessly!) – GJ. – 2012-06-22T21:12:34.423

It works on Windows as well. At least as of Picasa 3.9 (QuickTime player also installed) – Euro Micelli – 2012-06-29T11:59:58.607

@sarat: what do you mean? – Torben Gundtofte-Bruun – 2012-09-03T08:26:55.967

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.

Dan Dascalescu

Posted 2010-08-10T01:18:51.943

Reputation: 3 406

Picase did not work for .mov files (even qith QuickTime installed, which seems to be broken on Windows 8). It worked with AVIDemux like a charm with this 5 easy steps: https://cwl.cc/2012/04/how-to-rotate-video-in-5-easy-steps.html

– Alexander Taubenkorb – 2014-08-15T07:22:37.437

AviDemux works pretty well, but took me a few minutes to figure out how to do it. See http://www.opensourceisbetter.com/rotate-a-video-with-avidemux-gtk-2-5-2/ for step-by-step.

– Wade Hatler – 2013-12-27T00:55:42.393

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.

Schebesta

Posted 2010-08-10T01:18:51.943

Reputation: 71

The size of the file depends on the format/options you choose when saving. – HeavyE – 2014-07-14T12:30:33.910

Windows Movie Maker turned a 2M file(Mov) into a 26M file when I tried to rotate it – DevDave – 2014-06-05T18:01:50.483

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

Open the movie with QuickTime Player
Choose Show Movie Properties from the Window menu
Click on the video track, then click on the Visual Settings tab
Clip the button to rotate your video.
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.

Chealion

Posted 2010-08-10T01:18:51.943

Reputation: 22 932

– Elmue – 2016-09-30T15:05:19.943

cool. is there an iPhone app that can do that(like iMovie on iPhone)? – meddle – 2010-08-10T14:01:10.867

@meddle: Never used or heard of it before today: Rotate Video ($.99)

– Chealion – 2010-08-10T14:32:37.380

Great app you recommended there! Sweet! – motto – 2012-10-01T21:25:36.893

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

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

Borealid

Posted 2010-08-10T01:18:51.943

Reputation: 1 108

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.

meddle

Posted 2010-08-10T01:18:51.943

Reputation: 765