Rotate video: settings and best results

What does Rotate video do?

Rotate video turns, straightens or mirrors your videos on your own computer. Use it for a clip that came out sideways or upside down, a slightly tilted shot, or a mirrored selfie video. In the app the tool is called Rotate Video.

A live preview shows the result before you run. Rotate Video gives back one MP4 file for each video, with the same name, sound, length and frame rate.

02Step 2: Turn it upright

Under Rotate settings, a square preview shows a still frame of the first video. Click a row in the queue to preview another one.

Click the arrow buttons on either side of the preview to turn the picture a quarter turn at a time, until it stands upright. Or pick a turn under Rotation:

• None keeps the picture as it is. The default.
• 90° ⟳ turns it a quarter turn clockwise.
• 90° ⟲ turns it a quarter turn counterclockwise.
• 180° turns an upside-down video the right way up.

A quarter turn swaps the width and height, so a sideways 1920 × 1080 clip becomes an upright 1080 × 1920 video. Nothing is cut off. The line above the run button sums up your choice, for example "Rotate 90° CW".

12345

1. 1Rotate clockwise
2. 2Rotation
3. 3Custom angle
4. 4Flip horizontal
5. 5Run rotate

04Step 4: Run, then check the result

Check where the files will go: Default output folder saves them in your workspace’s output folder, in a rotate folder with a subfolder for today’s date, such as 10-15. Click Change to pick another folder for this run. Then click Run rotate.

When the run ends, each video shows Done with its new file size. Click View on a file to compare the Original and the Output, and Open folder to go to the rotated copies. See See and compare your results and Where your files are saved.

1234

1. 1Done
2. 2View
3. 3Saved to
4. 4Open folder

Every setting, and when to change it

Rotation

Turns the picture a quarter or half turn. Quarter turns swap the width and height without cutting anything. The arrow buttons beside the preview step through the same choices.

• RangeNone, 90° ⟳, 90° ⟲, 180°
• DefaultNone

Custom angle

Tilts the picture by a small angle on top of the rotation, clockwise for positive values. The size stays the same, so the corners are trimmed and filled with black.

• Range-45° to +45°, in 0.5° steps
• Default0°

Flip horizontal

Mirrors the picture left to right.

• RangeOn, Off
• DefaultOff

Flip vertical

Mirrors the picture top to bottom.

• RangeOn, Off
• DefaultOff

How do I get the best results?

• Use the preview. Click each clip in the queue and check that the preview stands upright before you run.
• Group clips by fix. Clips that need different turns go in separate runs, because the settings apply to all of them.
• Prefer quarter turns. They keep the whole picture. Use Custom angle only for a real tilt, and keep it small.
• Compress afterwards if size matters. Rotate Video saves at the highest quality, so a rotated file can be larger than you expect. Run it through Video Compress.

Why does the result look wrong?

• It is now upside down or still sideways. The clip needed the other direction. Try 90° ⟲ instead of 90° ⟳, or 180°.
• Black corners appeared. A Custom angle keeps the video’s size and fills the gaps with black. Crop them away with Crop Video.
• Text reads backwards. Flip horizontal is on. Turn it off and run again.
• Nothing changed, but a new file was made. With None, a 0° angle and no flips, the line above the run button reads "No change". Rotate Video still saves a new MP4 copy.

Limits

• Rotate Video takes MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM, AVI, M4V, MPG, MPEG, TS, MTS, M2TS, 3GP and WMV files.
• It always saves an MP4, even with no change. To get another format, use Video Convert afterwards.
• The MP4 uses H.264 when Hangar finds video encoding hardware: the encoder built into a Mac, or NVIDIA, Intel or AMD graphics on Windows. Without it, the MP4 uses AV1, which can take longer to save and may not play on older devices.
• The same settings apply to every video in the run.
• Custom angle goes from -45° to +45°.
• Add video files, not folders.
• Everything runs on your computer. Nothing is uploaded.

Use Rotate Video in a chain

Rotate Video is available as the Rotate / Flip step in chains, under the Video steps, with the same Rotation, Custom angle and flip settings. The step has no preview, so the arrow buttons beside it are grayed out; pick the turn under Rotation instead.

Put Rotate / Flip first, so later steps such as Resize or Compress work on the upright picture. To run the same chain on new files each week, see Run a chain on many files.