Rotate & Flip Video

Turn a sideways clip the right way up and make it stay that way in every player. Runs entirely in your browser.

The rotation flag, and why videos come back sideways

A phone does not turn the picture when you record in portrait. The sensor reads out the same way it always does, and the file is tagged with a display-rotation flag telling the player to turn it before showing it. This is efficient and almost always invisible — until the file reaches software that ignores the flag.

That is the whole reason this tool exists. The video is not “broken”; it is correct according to its own metadata and being shown by something that does not read it. Baking the orientation into the pixels removes the disagreement.

Rotating twice is the classic failure

Here is where naive tools go wrong. They apply a turn to the frames and write the file out — with the original rotation flag still attached. The player then dutifully applies that flag on top of the turn that is already in the picture, and the result is sideways again, usually the other way. The user tries rotating once more and makes it worse.

The output here has its rotate metadata explicitly set to zero. The orientation is in the frames, the flag says there is nothing left to do, and every player reaches the same conclusion.

You can use it with no turn at all

Leaving the controls untouched is a valid thing to do: it bakes in whatever rotation the file was already tagged with and clears the flag. That is exactly the fix for a video that looks right on your phone and wrong when you drop it into something else, and it is why the button is available before you have chosen a direction.

Rotate Video FAQ

Why does my video look fine here but sideways somewhere else?

Because the rotation is probably not in the picture at all. Phones record in whatever orientation the sensor is in and tag the file with a flag saying 'display this turned 90 degrees' rather than turning the pixels. Good players read that flag; plenty of software does not, which is why the same file looks upright on your phone and on its side in a video editor, a browser upload or a presentation. Converting here bakes the orientation into the pixels and clears the flag, so everything agrees.

Will my video get rotated twice?

No, and this is the specific bug worth knowing about. If a tool turns the picture but leaves the original rotation flag in place, the player applies the flag on top and the video ends up sideways again — often the opposite way. The output here has its rotate metadata explicitly cleared, because the orientation now lives in the frames and nothing should re-apply it.

Is my video uploaded?

No. The re-encode runs in your browser through WebAssembly. Nothing is sent anywhere.

What is the difference between rotating and mirroring?

Rotating turns the whole frame around its centre; mirroring reflects it, which swaps left and right (or top and bottom) and makes any text in the shot read backwards. Mirroring is what you want to undo the flipped preview on a front-facing camera, where the recording is saved mirrored so it feels like a mirror while filming. They can be combined, and the order matters: this rotates first, then mirrors, which is what the preview shows.

Why does the file need re-encoding at all?

Because the pixels genuinely change position. Some players can rotate by rewriting only the metadata flag, which is instant — but that just moves the problem to the next player that ignores the flag. Turning the actual frames means decoding and encoding them, which takes real time and is the only way to get a file that looks the same everywhere.