iPhone 3G S:How to Rotate Videos for Playback on Your Notebook

The iPhone 3G S is the the first iPhone to record videos and it’s easy to save them onto your computer.  But sometimes videos will playback sideways, which is caused by rotating your iPhone 3G S after hitting record. In this video tutorial, I’ll show you how to correct these sideways videos on your notebook.

One of the first videos I shot on my iPhone 3GS was of my mother’s dog eating a bone. It looked great on my iPhone 3GS, but it appeared sideways when I tried to play it back on my MacBook Pro. I needed to change the orientation before I could send the video to my parents.

You can easily rotate the iPhone 3GS’s videos using Quicktime Player. You will need to upgrade to the pro version to unlock the editing features described below and in the video. Quicktime Pro is a $29.99 upgrade for both Mac and PC users. You can also use iMovie 09 (Mac Users) or just about any PC video editing suite that supports .MOV video files if you want to avoid upgrading to Quicktime Pro.

1) Open the movie you’d like to rotate in Quicktime Player (Mac-double click), (PC- right click -> Open With -> Quicktime Player

2) If you haven’t already upgraded to Quicktime Pro, click on “File” from the top menu bar, select any item with the “Pro” logo. A window will pop up with instructions on how to buy the upgrade.

3) Once you activate Quicktime Pro, point your mouse at the “Windows” menu at the top of Quicktime Player and select “Show Movie Properties.”

4) At the top of the Movie Properties window, there will be a list with three items. Select “Video Track.”

5) Once you select “Video Track,” four tabs will show up beneath this list. Select “Visual Settings,” which is the third item from the lest.

6) Under “Visual Settings” you will see a lot of information about the video. Ignore it and look at the last item that’s titled “Flip/Rotate.” There are four buttons. The left most button will flip your video horizontally, the second will flip your video vertically, the third will rotate your video 90-degrees clockwise and the last will rotate your video 90-degrees counter-clockwise. To fix my video, I just clicked the forth button once.

7) Once your video is rotated the way you want, remember to save your movie by selecting “File” from the menu at the top of your screen, then selecting “Save” or “Save As.”

Mac users can also use iMovie 09 to rotate their movies if they want to avoid buying Quicktime Pro. Here’s how to rotate iPhone 3GS videos in iMovie 09. While this is free, there are more steps invlolved and you’ll have to go through the iMovie 09 import/export process, which can take a substantial amount of time for long video clips.

1) Import your iPhone 3GS video into a project: File-> Import -> Movies.

2) Create a new project: File-> New Project. The iPhone records in 4:3 aspect ratio, so be sure to select this aspect ratio for your new project.

3) Drag your clip from the clip viewer into your new project.

4) Click on the “Crop” button, which is located just below the video player.

5) Click on one of the curved arrows. The one pointing to the right rotates your videos 90-degrees clockwise.

6) Once you’ve rotated your video, you’ll be able to share and export your videos.

There a variety of other video applications that have rotate functions, but the methods listed above are the easiest and most affordable. To avoid this problem in the future, be sure to orientate your iPhone 3G S the way you want the video to show up on your computer BEFORE you hit record. Once you press record the video will be stuck in that position.

Related Posts

Advertisement