How to Rotate Video in Windows for "free"

Staci loves taking pictures and videos with our Canon Powershot IS S2. In fact, since we have started using that camera, my Sharp VL-AX1U mini-DV has pretty much been retired. The Canon's 640x480 @ 30 fps mode with stereo sound is more than adequate for our video needs.

On occasion, we will take a mini-movie and will turn the camera 90 degrees, a common practice for photographers while shooting stills. Rotating digital stills are child's play, in fact many new camera models will do this for you automatically. Rotating video, however, is a completely different animal.

I quickly found out that Pinnacle Studio 10 did not have a rotate video function. Googling "rotate video" brought up a number of commercial programs and filter plugins that would do the trick, but it seemed like overkill. I did find a free program called VirtualDub, but then found another link that told me that the answer was installed on my computer all along.

Windows Movie Maker is part of the "free" software that comes bundled with XP. It has been criticized as being lightweight, probably because it can't author DVDs natively. I instructed Staci to start up the program. She loaded the .AVI file from the Canon and added it to the timeline. Then she located the Rotate filters located in the Collections\Video Effects screen. After applying the desired Rotate filter (90, 180, or 270 degrees), she exported the video and it was ready for YouTube. You can view the result here.

"Serious" camcorder manufacturers probably never expected videographers to rotate their camcorders while taking video. Maybe that is why some "serious" video editing packages omitted the option to rotate the video back. However, as quality and popularity of video from digital still cameras increases, so does the need to rotate video, since still photographers like to rotate their cameras. I can see the option to rotate video being hastily added to succeeding versions of video editing software, if it isn't there already. I'm still planning to test drive VirtualDub in the future, but in the meantime, Windows Movie Maker is an option that is most likely available to you already.