Rotate or Flip a Phone Video the Right Way

You press play and the clip is lying on its side. Or the phone's selfie camera produced a video where the sign behind you reads backwards. Or a clip looks fine on your phone and sideways on the office computer. These are three different problems, and they have three different fixes: a turn, a mirror and a "tell the player" flag. Using the wrong one costs you quality or leaves the problem in place.

The short version: drop the video into Rotate Video, choose one of five actions, press Apply, and download a new MP4. A quarter turn or half turn of an ordinary phone clip takes seconds and loses no quality.

The five choices

The tool offers five buttons, and the difference between the first three and the last two matters.

• Turn right 90 degrees and Turn left 90 degrees. These turn the picture a quarter turn clockwise or anticlockwise. A landscape clip becomes portrait, because width and height swap.
• Turn 180 degrees. This turns the clip upside down, which fixes a phone that was held the wrong way up.
• Mirror left-right. This flips the picture like a mirror image, so the left side becomes the right side. It is a flip, not a turn.
• Flip top-bottom. This swaps the top and the bottom, like a reflection in water.

The tool's tip gives the main use for mirroring: selfie clips where text reads backwards. Many phones show you a mirrored preview of the front camera but save the picture the right way round, and some apps save the mirrored version. If the writing on a T-shirt or a shop window is back to front in your clip, Mirror left-right fixes it.

The fast way and the slow way

How the tool turns your clip depends on the file, and it matters for quality and for time.

The fast way. For a 90 or 180 degree turn of an MP4, MOV or M4V file with H.264 or HEVC picture, which covers nearly every phone and camera clip, the tool does not touch the picture. It copies the picture and the sound as they are and sets a rotation flag in the file that tells players to display it turned. That takes seconds and loses no quality at all. The note under the result says so: "Turned without re-encoding: the picture is untouched and the file now carries a rotation flag."

The slow way. Mirroring and flipping have to rearrange the actual pixels, so the clip is re-encoded to a new MP4. The same happens for formats the fast way does not cover, such as AVI. Re-encoding takes longer, because every frame is processed, and it compresses the picture again. The settings keep a high quality, but it is a second compression, so it is not quite identical to the original. Sound is kept as it is when it is AAC or MP3, and converted to AAC otherwise.

When the flag is not enough

The rotation flag is obeyed by phones, browsers and most players. Some editors and some televisions ignore it. If you turn a clip, it looks right in your browser, and then sideways in a particular program, that program is ignoring the flag. The fix is the checkbox under the buttons: Re-encode the picture (slower, loses a little quality) for players that ignore the rotation flag. When you tick it, the tool turns the pixels themselves, so the clip is upright for every player.

A related case is a clip that already carries a rotation flag. Many phone clips are stored sideways with a flag that makes them display upright. If you then turn such a clip, simply adding a second flag could give a wrong result, so the tool re-encodes it to be sure and tells you: "This clip already carries a rotation flag, so it was re-encoded to turn it reliably." That is the safe choice, and it takes the longer route.

Which direction?

It is easy to turn the wrong way. Think of the top of the picture. If the top of the picture is currently on the left side of the screen, the clip needs to be turned right, clockwise, to bring the top to the top. If the top is on the right, turn left. If the picture is upside down, use 180 degrees. When you are not sure, apply one and look at the preview. Nothing is changed in your original, so you can try again with the other direction. The tool reads the clip and its rotation flag before it starts, so it is working from what the file says rather than what you see in a player that may already have adjusted it.

Portrait or landscape for the place you will use it

A quarter turn changes the shape of the clip. A 1920 by 1080 landscape clip becomes 1080 by 1920, which is a portrait clip. That is exactly what you want for a clip that was recorded sideways by mistake. It is not what you want for making a landscape clip fit a portrait video format, because a turned landscape clip is still a landscape scene lying on its side. If your aim is to fill a tall screen, the right tool is cropping, not turning.

Clip size and the engine

All video tools run in your browser, so the file is not uploaded. On first use, the browser downloads a processing engine of about 25 MB from a public network. On the trial, a clip can be up to 50 MB, and a paid plan allows up to 200 MB. For a longer or larger clip, Trim Video cuts the part you need first. Compress Video shrinks the result if you need to email it, and it is best done last, so the turn works from the original picture. If the clip's sound is not needed, Mute Video removes it first.

The new file is named after the original with "-rotated" added, so party.mov gives party-rotated.mp4, and your original is not changed.

A few worked cases

A clip filmed with the phone held sideways in a rack. It plays on its side. Choose Turn right 90 degrees (or left, depending on which side the top is). The fast way is used, and the result carries a flag.

A video shot on the front camera with a sign in view. The sign is back to front. Choose Mirror left-right. This is a re-encode, so it takes longer. Check the sign in the preview.

A clip recorded upside down on a table-mounted phone. Choose Turn 180 degrees. Fast way, no quality loss.

A turned clip that looks right in the browser and wrong in the company's video editor. Go back, tick the re-encode option, and apply again.

Steps

1. Open Rotate Video and drop in your video.
2. Pick the action: turn right, turn left, turn 180, mirror or flip.
3. Tick the re-encode option only if a player you use ignores the rotation flag.
4. Press Apply. The first time, allow a moment for the engine to load.
5. Read the note under the preview. It says whether the picture was copied or re-encoded.
6. Download the video, named after the original with "-rotated" added.
7. Trim or compress it afterwards if needed.

The tool is a Professional Tool with 10 trial uses a day, then a $1 day pass or the $4.99 monthly plan.

Common mistakes

Choosing a flip when the clip needs a turn, which gives a mirrored picture. Turning the wrong way and not checking the preview. Trusting a clip that looks right in a browser without testing it in the program where it will be used. Forgetting that the trial allows 50 MB. Compressing before turning, so the picture is compressed twice. And turning a landscape clip to fill a portrait screen, which leaves a sideways scene.

Summary

Most sideways clips need nothing more than a flag, and the tool uses that fast, lossless route whenever the file allows. Rotate Video offers quarter turns, a half turn, a mirror and a flip, re-encodes when the pixels have to move, tells you which route it took, and has an option for players that ignore the flag. More tools for video are in the video tools category.

Open Rotate Video→

Which of your clips keeps coming out sideways? Tell us on the contact page.