VLC Media Player can do a lot more to videos than just playing it. We know that it can convert videos or stream them from online sources. Those are some of the good uses of VLC Media Player. Now comes the time to share an interesting use of VLC Media Player. This interesting use of VLC Media Player is to rotate videos while playing them.
Videos can be rotated, flipped and even transposed for different purposes. Videos can be simply rotated by clockwise 90 degrees, 180 degrees, and 270 degrees. You can also rotate the video by arbitrary angles such as 1 degree, 27 degrees and so on. Besides rotating, videos can also be flipped horizontally and vertically. Finally, videos can also be transposed or anti-transposed, which flips and rotates the videos at the same time. You will be surprised by the number of things that VLC Media Player can do with videos.
To rotate, flip or transpose videos in VLC Media Player:
- From the VLC Media Player menu, go to Tools > Effects and Filters [Shortcut: CTRL + E].
- From the Adjustment and Effects, go to the “Video Effects” tab.
- Go to the sub tab of Video Effects that says “Geometry”.
- Check on the checkbox beside the text that says “Transform”. There you will find options to do the following to your video:
- Rotate by Fixed Angle: Click on transform, to rotate a video by a certain fixed and a standard number of degrees: 90, 180 and 270 degrees. Those can be selected from the drop-down after you check the transform button.
- Flip Videos: From the drop-down select on “Flip horizontally” or “Flip vertically” to flip the videos in those directions.
- Transpose: Click on “Transpose” and “Anti-transpose” from the same drop-down to flip as well as rotate the video. Transpose is when your video is rotated 270 degrees clockwise and flipped horizontally. Anti-transpose is the result when your video is rotated by 90 degrees clockwise and flipped horizontally.
- Rotate by Certain Angle: Check on the checkbox beside the text that says “Rotate”. Move the angle dialer around. Your video will be rotated by a certain arbitrary degree.
Note: Remember that this rotation setting is saved and when you open a new video, it will still be rotated. You will have to come to this section to uncheck the boxes to disable rotation for playing other videos.
To Make the Rotation Permanent
The steps that you followed above just rotated the video for playing only. If you want to make the rotation permanent, follow these instructions after the above steps:
- From the menu bar, go to Media > Convert / Save. [CTRL + R]
- Click on Add, and browse and add the current video.
- Click on Convert/Save.
- In the Convert dialog, click on Settings next to the Profile.
- In the Profile edition dialog, navigate to Video Codec > Filters tab tab
- Activate the Video transformation filter.
Note: Activate the Rotate video filter if the video was rotated at an angle like 59 degrees. - Switch to the Audio codec tab, and choose MP3 as the Codec under Encoding parameters.
- In the Convert dialog, don’t forget to choose a Destination file and press Start.
- Hit Play to begin the transformation process.
The video will be rotated and the changes will be permanently saved in the destination file. If the player minimizes, bring it back up. If the transformation process has not started, press Play in VLC controls. The position seeker will show the progress of the conversion.
Some Uses of Rotating a Video
- Correcting a video that has been taken in the wrong way or angle. For example the person who took the video decides to rotate the camera device while taking the video. One way to watch it normally is to rotate it by VLC.
- Watching the video in style by rotating it in a certain angle.
- Filling up a portrait video of the entire area of a widescreen. When a video’s height is longer than the width, the screen displays black areas on the left and right. In such a case, rotating the video by 90 degrees or 270 degrees will help fill up the entire monitors which have more width then height normally.
View Comments (114)
This is an asinine fix to something that should not happen. I use two different web cams. One works perfect. The other one has a very normal looking video as I record, but the saved file is inverted. Sure I can go through the idiotic process above to convert every file back to original input format. Why can't the program just save it the way it is shown on the screen as it's being recorded? Like I said--two cameras, one works right the other wrong (they both work correctly on Windows Camera and several other recording programs.)
VLC Dev should focus on the UX too. Because users like simplicity and they like to do things fast and easy. I installed VLC for the first time on my windows OS, but things were very complicated on VLC, so I installed PotPlayer. And PotPlayer is very easy to use and control. To rotate a video I just had to press Alt+K and it is done. But to the the same thing on VLC I gotta go through a whole bunch of stuffs. On PotPlayer if I open a video file, the file open according to the resolution, but that is not happening in VLC. VLC has a lot of features but most of the users don't even need them. All they care to get things done easily. So focus on the UX and make it easier for the users to use. Even Gnome default player is better than VLC in this case.
If those Options didn't Help try this.
Its likely that you have a Filter that is toggled on and its not thru the " Effects & Filters "
Go Thru " Tools > Preference
@Simple Pref Menu -Go to the very "Bottom Left " and tick " ALL " on Show Settings.
@Advance Pref Menu -Go down to the "Bottom" under "Video" Cat. and Select Filters.
In the Filters tab, there should be a Check marked on Rotate Video Filter.
Un-Check that Demon and Save your Sanity. :D
This is ridiculous. I just use Windows Movie Maker.
I don't know why rotating a video is such a big deal It is even problematic with Windows Movie Maker, but at least a normal person can do it.
It is just a common sense feature and VLC needs to to something about it.
My screenshots are saving upside down.. I didn't do anything to the video. Any ideas for a fix?
Rotate it back?
Followed steps. I have version 3.0.16 Vetinari. Saved it, VLC closed and I had to do a refresh on the folder for the video to appear. It worked great except that my 3 minute video only saved as an 8 second video. Why? Did I misunderstand a step somewhere? I get this post is 2 years old but did things change that much?
Can you not see how stupid it is to have to go through 40 odd steps just to rotate a bloody video, is this not a design flaw that the simplest of tasks takes a bloody 4 page user manual!
Hahaha, that's true man. it should add some useful buttons on the player pannel.
My thoughts exactly. I want a toolbar button that flips the video horizontally.
Yes exactly... Nowadays such kind of button is essential.
why MP3 encoding? can't you just keep original audio track?
You can give it a try. Let us know what happens.
I have a video that is taken with the camera being rotated as much as 90 degrees from side to side. it is unwatchable in it's current form.
I can watch it with the geometry feature and I loaded the video. turn-on geometry, then hit screen capture and it did not save it with me rotating the screen as per my view. I was hoping that screen capture would be to save what I was watching. it just saved the raw video without my geometry attempts. maybe I turned screen capture on too soon before I started using geometry ? any ideas ?
I have two videos, one of which needs to be rotated 90 degrees. I rotated this and saved it but then the other video was rotated. I kept trying but both videos are affected, although only the video I altered was open in VLC. A strange problem, but I cannot figure out how to solve it. Can anyone help?
I figured out what is going on. This instruction does not alter the video I am trying to rotate. Instead, it alters the program --- VLC Player itself. This in itself is useless for most instances in which one wants to rotate a video. To rotate the video itself, it is necessary to follow the procedure under the heading "To Make the Rotation Permanent" above.
The instructions are confusing because the title is "How to Rotate and Flip a Video ..." although that is not what the procedure does (it alters VLC Player itself to rotate videos when playing them).
Thank you so much for this super helpful post! So detailed and at just the right level for me - solved my problem, I am happy :-)