I took a few videos on a new Lumix camera recently (format *.MTS) and I’d like to rotate them 90 degs counterclockwise, as I took them holding the camera in portrait at the time, but would like to view them on screen in portrait as they should be.
I’ve googled this a bit, and downloaded a few options. Picasa seemed to be the easy answer, but doesn’t (that I can see) support this file format (and even if it did I’ve read that it messes up the audio too) and all other programs I’ve tried have either watermarks on the output video or annoying malware-esque extras attached, and I’ve spent the last hour clearing their aftermath off my computer. And they didn’t work, to add additional insult.
Does anyone have a simple solution? It’s a common format, so I assumed it would be an easy win, but am coming up short. Many thanks for any assistance you can offer.
On which screen are you wanting to play the file back on? Is it vital that the file remains in the .MTS format?
Because the first thing I thought of is to use the open source program VLC, which can not only play the file format, but can also convert between file formats. Of course, you’d have to do it one video at a time, but at least you can leave most of the settings intact.
I’m not sure if any program outputs as .MTS, as it’s really a camcorder format, just used for quick encoding of video.
I edit the videos I take with Magix. It is a fully functional video editor that can edit .mts files and export them in any number of formats. Of course it can join your clips, allow you to cut the wobbly and out of focus bits, add titles and a soundtrack. It will also rotate your video through any angle you want, zoom in or out and correct colour and exposure.
There are cheaper editors on the market but that’s the one I have.
Wow, ok I didn’t know VLC could convert/save videos as well. That might be easier to use than Avidemux. Anyway, depends on what you want to do:
If you want to preserve quality and stay true to the original, just rotate the video in the player. Don’t convert the file.
If you want to play the video using other software / share it with others on computer and preserve most of the quality, rotate the video using VLC or Avidemux or other software.
If you want to play it on another device (DVD / Blu-Ray player), you have to rotate and add black bars. I don’t think devices support video in the transposed aspect ratio.
Anyway, Avidemux (http://avidemux.sourceforge.net/) is totally free. It’s not a trial, nor does it contain ads/malware/toolbars/fixyourcomputerforfree. It’s a bit buggy and rough around the edges, though. After installing, if you load your video and choose a Video Output encoder, you can add rotate and add black bars filters. Like VLC, it can’t output .mts either, though.
Was just looking for a freebie program to perform a simple rotate on each clip, rather than a video suite for actual editing/tweaking. Changing the format isn’t an issue, probably should have just done that first - I’d just like to be able to view them on my PC or tablet the correct way round.
Many thanks again to all; I’ll see if I can get VLC or one of the others to work. Cheers!
The link I gave you has the whole suite. You probably only need a portion of it (and individual parts can be installed independently.) I don’t use it much, but I find it a useful gadget to have around for when I suddenly want to do something I haven’t done before and (a) don’t want the learning curve or expense of a video editing package and (b) need a reasonable job quickly.
I’ve downloaded and installed VLC. I can now view the file rotated in VLC, no worries, looks good. But when I follow all the stages in your link for convert/save, it runs through the process okay but all I end up with is a 2kb-4kb file of…well, nothingness. I’ve tried lots of variations and read all the comments and troubleshooting ideas in the link but really can’t make this work. Any thoughts or help you can offer? Thanks again. (I’d really like to try to make this work with one program rather than jumping again to try another)
Don’t know if this is any use to what your doing but I just recently asked here about flipping an iPhone video 180° and was lead to a free command line utility which strips/modifies the ‘rotate’ bit of video files:
Like I said you have to run it from a command line, no GUI, but it worked like a charm.