Hi Terrypin,

Thank you for taking the time to help.

I sometimes record video with my smartphone holding it up like you would use the phone. But when I transfer the video onto my PC the  video's are on the side (like this: http://s1.postimg.org/gbaedkldr/tree_58_png_hq_by_gd08_d4t94lq.png) so I need to rotate them 90 degrees in order to see the video as I shot them.

So I do not want to reduce or stretch the image but to rotate x/y axis 90 degrees so x becomes y and y becomes x.

However when using the rotation function black borders are introduced left and right of the video.

Like Terry, I am a little confused by your question, but I think what you are asking is impossible!  You seem to want to rotate a 1280*720 video through 90 degrees but still have the aspect ration as 1280*720, so removing those black borders. 

The effect would be that your footage would now be "squashed" vertically but "expanded" horizontally.

Is that what you want?  If not, as Terry says, a sample screenshot would be helpful.

Hello marcusdeman, you posted your response to Terry whilst I was typing.

I now understand that what I thought you were asking is correct!  Unfortunately, as I wrote in my previous post, you cannot do this without completely changing the aspect ratio of your original footage.

I have just been asked to create a DVD from footage shot on a smartphone by my neice, all filmed with the phone/camera in "portrait" mode!  There is no way I know to "correct" this reversed aspect, unless you are prepared to crop each frame and zoom in to make one small part of the original frame fill the screen, with the consequent "loss/removal" of the remainder of that frame.

Hello marcusdeman, you posted your response to Terry whilst I was typing.

I now understand that what I thought you were asking is correct!  Unfortunately, as I wrote in my previous post, you cannot do this without completely changing the aspect ratio of your original footage.

I have just been asked to create a DVD from footage shot on a smartphone by my neice, all filmed with the phone/camera in "portrait" mode!  There is no way I know to "correct" this reversed aspect, unless you are prepared to crop each frame and zoom in to make one small part of the original frame fill the screen, with the consequent "loss/removal" of the remainder of that frame.

Hi Emmrecs :)

Avidemux is a program that is able to do true 90 degrees rotation without loss of any pixels as it just transfers each pixel from x to y and vice versa as it does not care about any aspect ratio.

I wonder why that is not possible in Video Pro X. Initially I thougth the correct workflow would be: import video in VPX, use rotation function, export with dimension rotated but that introduces the black borders.

So another method was to convert with Avidemux and then import in VPX so I can do alterations. But what do I have to select as resolution? Whatever I use black borders are introduced which were not in the original video or the one converted with Avidemux.

Hi Both,

... and those new posts have appeared while I was trying it!

I'm still confused, because it seems straightforward to me.

I took a brief video with my smartphone in vertical mode and imported it into MEP 2014, leaving my project settings at their usual 1920 x 1080.

After using Movement effects > Rotation/Mirror I rotated it through 90 degrees. Then in Size/Position I changed its 'width' (now really its height) to 1080, with 'Keep proportions' enabled. I temporarily changed the background to blue so I could better see what I was doing. It plays OK with the obvious loss of size due to my 'mistake' in taking the clip in portrait mode. I could, of course, have changed the size so that it completely filled the screen, but that would have lost the bulk of my content and the resulting resolution would have been very poor.

What am i misunderstanding here?

High res: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4019461/MEP-Vert-Horiz.jpg

Resultant video: https://www.dropbox.com/s/6y9g5abfvq75phr/VertHoriz.mp4?dl=0

Hi Emmrecs :)

Avidemux is a program that is able to do true 90 degrees rotation without loss of any pixels as it just transfers each pixel from x to y and vice versa as it does not care about any aspect ratio.

I wonder why that is not possible in Video Pro X. Initially I thougth the correct workflow would be: import video in VPX, use rotation function, export with dimension rotated but that introduces the black borders.

So another method was to convert with Avidemux and then import in VPX so I can do alterations. But what do I have to select as resolution? Whatever I use black borders are introduced which were not in the original video or the one converted with Avidemux.

Your mention of Avidemux apparently being able to work the miracle of maintaining the original aspect ratio on footage that has been rotated 90 degrees so intrigued me that I downloaded and installed it and tested it on some of the phone footage I previously mentioned.

Now, I am clearly a novice where Avidemux is concerned, but I did find the filter which allows footage to be rotated through 90/180/270 degrees; the result was exactly as I expected, the video, which was 1920*1080 portrait, became 1920*1080 landscape, complete with large black borders on both sides!  Exactly as VPX5 (in my case) displayed it!

If I did something wrong in my quick test of Avidemux, I apologise, but I really do not see how ANY video editing software could create/transform the footage in the manner you want, the "full" image shown, without borders but with aspect reversed and no distortion!

I've posted below various still image options to make portrait oriented footage "fit" a landscape screen.

This is the original image

The image, rotated 90 degrees:

Expanding the width of the image, whilst maintaining the aspect ratio, effectively "zooming in" to the centre of the image:

Expanding the width (to fill the screen , no borders) but not maintaining the aspect ratio:

FYI, although I did not take a still image from the Avidemux footage, it appears exactly as the first of my screen shots, above.  I really do not think there is any way to achieve what you are wanting, sorry!

@Terry.  I don't think you're misunderstanding this!

As I said in my last post, I think marcusdeman is asking for something that is impossible: to have a portrait "image", rotated 90 degrees to become landscape but fill the screen (no black borders), without any distortion.

Jeff

@Terry.  I don't think you're misunderstanding this!

Thanks Jeff, I was beginning to doubt my sanity!

@marcusdeman,

I'm guessing you simply want the zoomed in, full screen result?

Here are the screen shots from within MEP.

You cannot make a 1280*720 become 720*1280 and vice versa without cropping or turning it on its side. The proportions of the image have to remain the same. You can rotate the image. If you filmed with a cell phone in portrait mode the width will be 720 and the height 1280.

If you rotate the image (Effects, Movement effects, Rotation/Mirror) by 90 degrees, you will have an image 1280 wide by 720 high, but it will be on its side.

There is no way, and no program on earth that can get your full portrait image to fit the landscape image without either distorting the image (making people fatter) or cropping either top, bottom or both.

Here is a screen shot of the portrait image superimposed on a landscape image. The portrait image fills the height (in my case 1080) of the 16:9 window, even though the image resolution was 1080x1920, with 1080 being the width of the cell phone video because it was shot in portrait mode. The height has to fit into my 1080 high window, because  that is the resolution of my project 1920 wide by 1080 high (16:9). The landscape image comes in correctly because it is 1920 wide by 1080 high.

Here is a screen shot with the portrait image being stretched, proportionately, with the normal landscape image in the background. 

I will have to continue stretching the image to fill just the 1920 width and then move it up or down to display the part that I want. Thus the top and bottom get cropped and the final result is an image within the window that has a lower resolution than the original or the clip shot correctly in landscape mode. This is because the final resolution is what shows up in the video window, and the clip was stretched so that it is now 1920 wide but, at a 16:9 ratio, 3413 high. When you stretch an image and then view only part of it, you are viewing a lower resolution.

Final result:

My video is still at a 1920x1080 resolution, but not the image within that window.

If you don't know how to zoom out the preview window (not the image) to see the dashed lines like I did, click in the preview window and while holding down the Ctrl key, use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out. Ctrl + double-click resets the preview monitor to 100%.

And, like I said, there is no program that can do anymore than this.

Hello everyone,

Thank you for all replying to my original question. So I've created a short movie and rotated with Avidemux. I've also added screenshots from mediainfo to show you that the x/y resolutions are swapped.

I have to also add to this that I use VLC Player to watch the movie with the following video settings (at menu bar):
Zoom = 1:1
Aspect Ratio = Default
Crop = Default

You can play with the Fit to window option. 

Now for the videos:

Before Avidemux

http://tempsend.com/2269D2CFB3

Conversion Setting Avidemux:



After Avidemux:

http://tempsend.com/95454354D1

I renamed both movies to "before avidemux.mp4/after avidemux.mp4" after taking the screenshots with mediainfo. Rest assured the info is correct ;)

Here are the screen shots from within MEP.

You cannot make a 1280*720 become 720*1280 and vice versa without cropping or turning it on its side. The proportions of the image have to remain the same. You can rotate the image. If you filmed with a cell phone in portrait mode the width will be 720 and the height 1280.

Hi browj2,

You assume that proportions of the image "have" to remain the same because of some original proportions. If I want to rotate a rectangle that outfits the proportions why isnt it possible to readjust it as necessary? 

I believe that rotation of any image should be possible in any angle without having to crop/adjust the original image just because a pixel is placed somewhere else in the frame and if it does not fit the canvas the canvas should be increased (or reduced when there is nothing to fill).
 

Hi Marcus,

Your second video does not work.

I think I know what you are after; a non-standard video output.

When you open a new project in VPX6, you are asked for the movie settings. Select "user defined."

When VPX6 finishes loading, the project settings screen will open. Change the parameters at the bottom to be what you want. Here is the screen shot.

I took your original video, rotated it, centred it and exported it. Here it is in this non-standard format.

DropBox version.

Of course, if you want to add in video the right way round, you will now have huge top and bottom borders.

Send me a gold star!

As you can see, the web page does not play the video correctly as intended because it wants to play standard formats: 4:3 and 16:9, not 9:16.

Dropbox does another thing. It too wants to play at 16:9 so you see black borders on each side.

However, Windows Media Player plays it correctly. Here is the screen shot (entire screen):

It still has minor black borders, but is what you want.

Normally, no one would produce a video like this.

Hi Marcus,

Your second video does not work.
 

 

Hi John,

What program do you use to watch the movie I provided? I use VLC player and the video works.

Also what were the export settings you used? When I export to mp4 with the same settings as the movie settings I again get black borders on the side. It seems the video is also not as clear as the original.

Hi Marcus,

Here is a screen shot of the parameters from Windows Explorer:

Here are the export parameters from VPX6:

There should be very little loss of quality if any. It is a wmv file, not mp4.

I don't have VLC. I use the same player as most people who have a Windows machine, Windows Media Player.

It would not read your second file, nor would VPX6. MEP2015 Premium allowed me to drag the file onto the timeline, gave me an image, but would not run. The monitor went blank.

When I double-click on the file that I exported, it opens WMP exactly as I showed in the screen shot. I can actually resize the WMP to remove the minor bars at the left and right as shown below:

If I shrink it any further horizontally, it automatically decreases the video size to fit the width, but the program window height stays the same, and I get bars at the top and bottom like this:

After which I can reduce the top and bottom to remove the black bars. Here is a screen shot of the reduced size on my monitor:

Now onto your comment about not cropping a video if it is rotated somewhat, and have the entire image fill the video output screen with no black borders anywhere and no cropping. I cannot fathom what that would look like.

Wait! I have an idea. If I rotate your video by 20 degrees, and then........ Is this what you mean?

So, how did I get WMP to do that?

I can't imagine how to play that full screen and not either lose something or have blank space around the angled parts.

Given your comments about rotating and cropping, I am wondering how much experience and understanding you have about video and how video editors work. Do you have much experience in video editing? Do you know that the editor is non-destructive and does not modify the source files? That cropping is just hiding part of the image, not actually cutting anything?

What do you do in the case with the H:V parameters reversed as in your case and you want to add in a second video that was filmed landscape? Do you understand that the image would either fit the width of the project template say 720 wide in your case but that it could not fill the screen without part of the image being cropped (hidden) behind the project template opening?  The opening is now 720 wide x 1280 high and you cannot modify this in midstream. Look at my examples in my first answer.

Perhaps you could explain better what you mean and given us screen shot examples of what you are looking for.

Hi Marcus,

I was able to view your videos, with the same results as yours.

I then installed Avidemux and repeated your conversion.

My output file, After- Avidemux.mp4, was 2971 KB, versus my download of yours at 9423 KB, slightly puzzling. What settings did you use?

After- Avidemux.mp4 played in VLC, WMP and BM Player, correctly displaying a vertical (9:16) picture, with black borders in the rest of my 1920x1080 screen.

MPC opened it but showed no video.

I got the following error with MPC-HC:

BS Player showed me a zoomed to centre view, presumably because of its settings. (I rarely use it.)

The only really important program in the current context IMO is MEP or VDL. MEP 2014 gave this error:

--------------------

I'm guessing that the underlying confusion here is caused by  some or all of a bunch of factors that never fail to give me a headache:

1. Display Aspect ratio (DAR)
2. Pixel Aspect Ratio (PAR)
and the really exasperating one
3. Inconsistency in the way that video editors and players interpret file flags about PAR/DAR/Camera rotation. Affecting not only their display behaviour but sometimes whether they tolerate a file at all.

I said 'guessing' because I don't really grasp the subtleties of this stuff.  And threads like this:
http://avidemux.org/smuf/index.php?topic=10970.0
only end up confusing me further.

--------------------

Anyway, at least it now seems clear that, rather than wanting the original image with all its contents accessible in MEP in a portrait view, yet having no black borders (impossible), you just want it to look as it does in those players I mentioned above: VLC and WMP in particular. Black side borders included. Yes?

If so, what I'm still not clear about is why my straightforward rotation in MEP isn't a satisfactory practical solution? Is it just a matter of intellectual curiosity (which I know can be a strong motivation!)?

But I have a nagging feeling I'm still missing something!

Hello John, Terry,

So much information you too provide and I hope I can answer all of them.

John: concerning your question about my experience. I am just an hobbyist / amateur that is learning about video editing. I have no formal education in video editing and I am sorry that I have mistaken / misused any terminology. Also my native language is not English.

Terry:

Regarding my "after - avidemux.mp4" file I think I have chosen the wrong output format. After selecting output format "mp4v2" I got a filesize of 2674 KB and readable by VPX. Sorry for the mishap!

With exporting I choose in VPX the mp4 format. I've noticed that certain settings such as ratio is disregarded with wmv but not in mp4. 

Hi Marcus,

I'm wondering if all you really wanted was this export configuration?

High res: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4019461/MEP-Rotation-marcusdeman-4-MEP2014-Export.jpg

Hi Marcus,

I'm wondering if all you really wanted was this export configuration?

High res: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4019461/MEP-Rotation-marcusdeman-4-MEP2014-Export.jpg

 

But Terry, won't that just produce an image greatly distorted/stretched in the horizontal plane?

Fundamentally, as John and I have both previously said, if you rotate portrait orientation video, whatever, its original aspect ratio, you have two options if you wish to avoid the black side bars:

1. Stretch the image to fill the width of the screen, choosing the option to "Keep proportions", which means that the image will be zoomed in, though obviously the user can choose the "centre" of the zoomed area which does not need to be the centre of the original image.
2. Stretch the image to fill the width of the screen, deselecting the option to "Keep proportions", which will lead to the image being distorted/stretched in the horizontal plane, whilst keeping all the content of the full image visible.

But Terry, won't that just produce an image greatly distorted/stretched in the horizontal plane?

Hi Jeff,

No, it just shows the image as it appears in the preview monitor.

And because of its higher resolution, my thought was that presumably that looks as good as is possible from such an incorrect portrait recording of a landscape target.

Here's the exported video made with that specification, from my original MOV file taken vertically with my Canon Ixus 220 HS:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5wdtsn869je18jw/Vert-Horiz-Export-3413x1930-1.mp4?dl=0

Apart from playing it, you can download. (In my case by clicking the '...' icon bottom right.) Note that MediaInfo shows that MEP changed it from 3413 x 1920 to 3412 x 1920, presumably to make it divisible by 4.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4019461/MEP-Rotation-marcusdeman-5-MEP2014-ExportMediaInfo.jpg

(Also note my typo in the name, '1930' instead of '1920'!)

Bottom line is that I think we're all singing from the same hymn sheet.  (Although I didn't get a final 'Yes' from Marcus!) IOW, displaying such a video, correctly orientated rather than sideways, on a landscape display device (as distinct from a special vertical or rotatable monitor) without empty space on either side is an obvious impossibility. And Avidemux seems a red herring. You simply do it in MEP. Of course, PIP and other possibilities for final presentation exist too.

Hi Terry.

Yes, of course, you're right.  What you have done is to increase the resolution of the image, without increasing its size on screen.

I hope Marcus will come back on this and let us know if he now accepts that it is totally impossible to present ALL the content of a portrait image and have it completely fill a landscape screen and not have black borders!

As I intimated before, I also think the mention of Avidemux is a complete red herring.  It rotates an image/video in exactly the same manner as MEP/VPX does.

Hi John, Terry, Emmrecs,

First of all I apologise for the words I used to describe what I wanted and what I did. It appears things have been interpreted differently then I thought it would be creating confusing at your end.

So after reading what you guys wrote I've been playing around with VPX after seeing the results you guys get being able to rotate the movie without additional black borders on the side.

What I did was:
Setting the width and height to 720*1280 (even though VPX will say it wants to adjust the resolution because the source is 1280*720), rotate and then export at 720*1280.

Or setting the w/h to 1280*1280, rotate and then export to 720*1280. Somehow it all reduces the IQ of the movie.

So what I've set to do is to edit my movie at 1280*720 and then have Avidemux rotate it. It is an additional step but at this time I am at loss why rotation/exportation reduces IQ and adds black areas on the side.

My confusion is the initial movie settings and the export resolutions coupled with exporting to MP4 format.

Also I see that you John exports to WMV. When I export to WMV then I don't get the black areas on the side. 

It is not my wish to add additional content in landscape mode into the portrait rotated movie. I film people performing something in portrait mode with my smartphone and want to watch it back on my pc without having to lay on my side ;)  I use VPX to see if it is easy to rotate, edit, enhance contrast etc because oftentime more content is recorded in between then necessary and I want to cut it out  cleanly.

So for me there is no need to have the movie displayed in landscape mode in the end. I know this is impossible because of the difference in resolution or without adding black borders.