Import video opens as portrait instead of landscape

Help/How To
1

I’ve recorded some videos using a tripod with the phonecamera facing straight down on a piano keyboard, and wanted to edit it in ShotCut.

However, when I import the clip into ShotCut it is incorrectly seen as portrait instead of landscape, so 1080x1920 instead of 1920x1080. When I rotate the clip it is smaller than the 1920x1080 screen, and I also have to zoom it to 177,7% which should probably be 177,77777% so I wonder is it rounding off?

My question is; is there a more straight forward way to use this clip as landscape? There isn’t any flip/transpose filter as far as I know, so I mean a filter to just transpose the video pixel-perfect by 90, 180 or 270 degrees. Also when I open it in VLC it does show as landscape.

I’ve attached a screenshot below:

shotcut_portrait1.png1255×696 153 KB

2

Btw here is a screenshot of rotating and zooming the video

shotcut_portrait2.jpg1200×960 340 KB

3

Which video mode was set when you first imported the video?

4

When I just start up ShotCut and the project says “Untitled” so it’s a new project, and I look in the menu; Settings -> Video mode, the item “HD 1080p 29.97fps” is checked.

Then I import the cip and then it’s like the screenshot of the first post.

5

I assume then it’s the ‘rotate’ param in the meta data of the video written by the device the video was shot with.
Perhaps you can strip this by transcoding with Handbrake or similar.
Just a guess at this point.

6

I ended up just using the Rotation/Scale filter. I gotta say though, the ShotCut UI has some odd quirks and is not all that intuitive. Still, eventually I managed to convince it to export something, here’s the result :wink:

7

I’m sure transcoding in Handbrake would have worked.
I’ve not come across this issue with any on my cameras or phone footage.
Which camera did you use for the video?

8

It was recorded with a Galaxy S7 on a tripod facing straight down. Maybe it was at a slight up angle (like 15~20 degrees) which tagged the video with as “rotate / portrait” in the meta data.

In particular with camera phones this is sometimes an issue, so a “transpose” filter or an option when opening a video file to “ignore rotate” would be great.

9

Ignore rotation option would be handy, but better next time to disable this in the phone before recording now that you’re aware of it :slight_smile:

10

Hi BdR, Nice video, the content being especially interesting to me - I am a piano teacher, and will probably use your arrangements and your video demos for some of my lessons if that’s Ok with you !!.. good work… Interesting point about your images rotating, I’m planning some keyboard shots like yours in the future so I will bear that in mind.
Jon

11

Of course you can use the piano videos as lessons, btw I’ve just uploaded some more, see here

12

Great stuff Ben - always on the lookout for contemporary arrangements to keep my teenagers happy :grinning:
Thanks!
EDIT: Ooops, just notice you are Bas, not Ben…! Apologies…

13

I have taken some videos this summer hiking with my iPhone. Those things have amazing stabilization - much better than my Canon HDV camcorder. However, I did get one video in which the iPhone must have gotten confused. It always played turned 90 degrees! And if I rotated the phone the video rotated also to maintain 90 degrees. It was simple enough to use the rotate filter in Shotcut but it was disconcerting to see this. Steve’s advice to lock the rotation in the iPhone Settings is good except when I lock it and then open the camera in video mode it does not stay locked since the iPhone (in my case) uses some sort of gyroscope. Perhaps mounting it so it is viewing straight down somehow fooled the gyroscope. Just speculating here.

-=Ken=-