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Use Quicktime Pro to rotate Movies
With many of the digital camera manufacturers adding the ability to record 
movies of various lengths and quality to their digital cameras, a recent problem has popped up. How to rotate a movie that you have taken with the digital camera? In this quick little tutorial, I'll show you how to use Quicktime Pro [$29.99 - Apple.com] to rotate any video clip.
To begin, open the video file that you would like to edit in Quicktime Pro. The file I edited for this tutorial is a video of my wife skiing that I took while skiing beside her. I used my Nikon Coolpix 775 to record the footage.
Next, go to the Movie menu in Quicktime Pro and click on Get Movie Properties (apple - J). This will bring up the Movie Properties dialog box. See image below. Here we will click on the pop-up menu on the left that says movie and select Video Track. Next, we will select size from the menu on the right that says Annotations. Size will be all the way at the bottom. In the size dialog box you will see two buttons with arrows that indicate rotation (highlighted in image below). Just click on the one that will rotate your movie the way it needs to be rotated and then close the dialog box and save the movie. You should now be able to view your movie without cocking your head to one side.
Comments
You're my hero!
Yes, as you stated, I took some video with a digital camera that I brought on a cuise to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversay. I framed the acrobatic performers in the viewfinder--with the camera in a vertical postion. It looked great in the viewfinder. Needless to say, the playback of them doing their performance in a "horizontal" orientation in the video was a bit wierd. In looking for a fix for the problem, I "googled" a search on "rotate video macintosh" and hit upon your site. What a great resource you have created! I need to spend more time in your archives for other helpful hints.
Thru this experience I also realize that Quicktime Pro is quite a versatile application. I think that most of us just use it to play mpegs and such. There are a lot more features that I was not aware of (splicing videos for example) until I had a need to actually use Quicktime for something other that playback.
I'm stuck for a solution to a problem in another area, so I'll be sending you a separate message to your "askme" about audio mixing and editing.
Thanks again!
Joe
Posted by: Joe Kostka | March 10, 2005 11:35 AM
Hi Brad--I'm the guy who really appreciated your tip on using Quicktime Pro to rotate video. What a help that was for me!
I tried to send the following question via your "Askme" feature, but did not get any confirmation that it was sent or received by you. I'm writng this message from my work PC (ugh--not a Mac!) and get occasionally messages that "Active X" is not enabled--perhaps that is the problem (although I did not receive any such message when I tried the "askme" route.
Anyway, as I stated in my previous feedback, I'm looking for an easy to use audio edting and mixing application. My wife coaches our local High School dance team and I'm pressed into service to create their dance mix, which is usually a compilation of popular songs that the girls provide to me on CD.
Currently, I use iMovie to do the editing. I really like the fact that I can drag and drop audio files into the two audio tracks. Also, it's really easy to slip the beginning and end with the "sliders" that appear for each audio track. Clicking each track "on" and "off" really helps in the editing process as well.
After I get the audio mix finalized (with wifey's approval!) I export as a .mov and them open the .mov in quicktime and export as a .aif file and subsequently burn to a CD for the Dance team.
Although iMovie serves my purposes, there are some frustrations. 1. The two audio tracks are a limitation. Each audio track gets pretty crowded when you have three or more songs in each track and it's difficult to sometimes discern where the beginning and end of each track is. More tracks than two would be better. 2. Waveform presentation would be a big plus. Often times I'll need to do an exact cut or splice out a naughty word and insert something "socially" acceptable for the team's public performances. 3.Ability to export directly to .aif format would be great.
I've experimented with Peak and it just does not have the "user friendly" interfact that iMovie has in adjusting the audio tracks. Although I do use Peak for waveform presentation and editing as I mentioned above. It's also good for changing the gain and adding special effects to audio segments.
Needless to say, I'm not trained in audio editing and this is a limited hobby with me. I would prefer not to pay big bucks for an application that has the features I need. Shareware would be ideal.
Hope that this makes sense. Thanks in advance for any help that you are able to provide.
Regards, Joe
Posted by: Joe Kostka | March 10, 2005 12:07 PM
I am guessing that you saw that the new Quicktime has this feature built in under Visual Settings.
I do appreciate the tip.
Posted by: brian Stucki | June 3, 2005 09:39 PM
Forums are full of people desperately looking for an answer to this little problem, and getting incredibly fuzzy answers from self-made-experts.
Thanks a lot for your simple an precise Tutorial.
Posted by: Marc | March 3, 2006 10:58 AM