Rotating Vertical Videos

Everyone on the Internet is saying never to take videos in portrait mode (vertically). However, there are some scenarios that call for vertical videos, much like pictures that look better in portrait mode.

Thing is, once downloaded from my DSLR, those vertical videos show up as horizontal videos on my PC, with the subject lying down. Usually, I just use Freemake Video Converter to rotate them into portrait mode again. However, there are some videos that Freemake is not able to handle, for whatever reason. The MOV file loads fine, but when I click the "Edit/Play" button, the program (version 4.1.10) just quits/exits with no warning. Thanks to Google, I found a way to do the same thing using VLC.

So this is how to rotate your portrait-mode videos:

1. Run VLC.
2. Under Tools, selects Effects and Filters (Ctrl+E).
3. Click on Video Effects tab, then click on Geometry sub-tab.
4. Enable Transform, and select "Rotate by 90 degrees" from the drop-down list, and click Close. There is another option to Rotate, but this is more if you want to rotate using a specific angle, instead of the preset ones.
5. Go back to Tools --> Preferences. Under Show settings, select All.
6. From the left pane, select Stream output, then Sout stream, then Transcode.
7. Under Video filter, enable Video transformation filter. Click Save.

You can test that the whole process works by playing your vertical video. It should now play right side up.

And this is how to convert the video permanently:

1. Under Media, select Convert/Save (Ctrl+R).
2. Add the video file you want to rotate.
3. Click on the drop-down arrow beside the Convert/Save button and select Convert (Alt+C).
4. Specify a destination file for the converted output.
5. Default profile is MP4 container using H.264 video and MP3 audio. Click on the Tools icon on the right to edit the settings.
6. Click on the Audio codec tab. Select MP3 as codec and sample rate of 48000. This is so because my original video uses PCM and 48000 sample rate, which I'd like to keep.

So far, this gives me the best results. I tried the "Keep original video track" option to preserve video quality, but in this case, the video was not rotated.