“My iPhone video plays sideways on my Windows computer. Is there any way to rotate my video so it plays correctly?”
Videos that playback sideways on Windows are the result of the way you held the iPhone when you recorded the video. You can also end up with videos that playback upside down. If you hold your iPhone in a vertical position, like you would when you talk on the phone, your video will record in a 9×16 aspect ratio. Computer software and HDTV screens expect your video to be 16×9 aspect ratio, which is the reverse of the way you held your iPhone to record. You can fix this problem, but you will need some additional software to make it work. The steps that follow will help you rotate iPhone video for playback on your Windows computer and on your HDTV.
The first thing you need is the correct software to fix your iPhone video. If you have Windows XP or Windows Vista, you can follow steps similar to these using Windows Movie Maker. If you have Windows 7, you will need some additional software. For this tutorial, I show you how to use Pinnacle Studio to rotate and edit your iPhone video. Pinnacle Studio isn’t free, but it is one of the best editing solutions you can get for Windows 7 and it’s what I use to edit most of my own videos.
Once you have Pinnacle Studio installed, the steps to rotate your iPhone video are relatively simply. First you add your iPhone video to the Pinnacle Studio timeline. Edit any of the video you want to exclude.
With the video on the timeline, you choose to Add Video Effects from the Pinnacle Studio Toolbox. The first effect you are going to choose is Rotate, which should be included under the Studio HD RTFx list of effects. You will want to choose the Half Size Right Rotate preset to get your video to rotate correctly in most cases.
After you Rotate the clip, you will want to zoom in on the video to fill the frame as much as possible. To zoom, you want to click the Add New Effect button and choose Pan and Zoom from the Studio HD RTFx effects list.
The two Pan and Zoom settings you need to adjust are Zoom, which should be increased to about 50% in most cases and Vertical Position, which will be a positive or negative number depending on which part of the video you want to appear in the frame. In some cases you may want to check the Reduce Flickering button as well.
Once you complete these steps, click Make Movie at the top and save your movie. My preference is to use the MPEG-4 HD 720p preset.