How can I rotate a video?
June 7, 2023 2:39 PM   Subscribe

A family member took a video and switched from landscape to portrait midway. Help!

I'd like to switch the video to have one orientation. The difficultly? I'd like some control over angle of the video, so I can avoid a hard cut from landscape to portrait. Like some kind of angle definition linked to the time.

If it's something I can use per month rather than buy outright (like Final Cut Pro for iPad) that would be even better.
posted by bergnotburg to Media & Arts (8 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
If you don’t find a smoother solution, you could split it at the rotation and crop both landscape and portrait square to hide the transition.
posted by zippy at 2:51 PM on June 7, 2023 [3 favorites]


If you have an iPad (or better yet, a Mac), iMovie should be able to do this for free.

I'd like some control over angle of the video, so I can avoid a hard cut from landscape to portrait.

I would suggest doing a crossfade between the two orientations. Trying to do a slow rotation is going to look weird. If there's a reasonable static image that would make sense to cut to at the point the camera rotated, that would be ideal.

Landscape crossfades to image for a few seconds crossfades to rotated portrait footage.
posted by Candleman at 2:57 PM on June 7, 2023 [1 favorite]


Would this help?
posted by LOOKING at 4:20 PM on June 7, 2023


There's always ffmpeg - don't know if you'd need to split the video into pieces and then merge them or if you can just give it timestamps. There are also free editors like shotcut that might work.
posted by trig at 11:03 PM on June 7, 2023


Response by poster: Thanks for the answers so far. How do TV shows do this?
posted by bergnotburg at 1:12 AM on June 8, 2023


As far as TV shows doing it, Homecoming season 1 has several sequences where the aspect ratio changes for dramatic effect, and they animate the transition between frame sizes. You'd probably need professional software to pull that off gracefully, though, so Candleman's suggestion is probably the easier solution.
posted by fifthpocket at 8:25 AM on June 8, 2023


Response by poster: @Candleman my video is very short and the fade would happen at a key moment, so I am looking for something that keeps the video running without a fade or cut. Thanks though!
posted by bergnotburg at 12:14 PM on June 9, 2023


In a few years, there will be AI based products that can extrapolate enough information to fake a smooth transition but for the time being, you're going to have to live with an awkward rotation given your constraints.
posted by Candleman at 7:50 AM on June 18, 2023


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