Shotwell rotated a video

[Matt Morgan]

I'm on F22. I recently used Shotwell to bring a bunch of photos and videos
in from my Android phone.

I shot one of the videos in portrait mode. Shotwell brought it in rotated
90 degrees, and wouldn't rotate it back--the "Rotate" option seems to be
available only for still images, not videos. I can find discussion online
regarding this fact--that Shotwell doesn't offer manual video rotation--but
nothing about the initial rotation upon import.

I was able to use mencoder to rotate it back, but with some loss of quality
it seems.

How do I get Shotwell not to do this--any ideas?

Thanks,
Matt

[Tim]

Allegedly, on or about 02 August 2016, Matt Morgan sent:
>  I shot one of the videos in portrait mode. Shotwell brought it in
>  rotated 90 degrees, and wouldn't rotate it back--the "Rotate" option
>  seems to be available only for still images, not videos. I can find
>  discussion online regarding this fact--that Shotwell doesn't offer
>  manual video rotation--but nothing about the initial rotation upon
>  import.
>  
>  
>  I was able to use mencoder to rotate it back, but with some loss of
>  quality it seems. 
>  
>  
>  How do I get Shotwell not to do this--any ideas?  
I have to wonder, did it really rotate it, or is it simply naturally
sideways?  i.e. On a some cameras, if I rotate the camera and take a
photo or video, there's no knowledge that I've rotate the camera, and no
data stored with the picture that it's sideways.  When the files are
viewed, as-is, they look rotated (because, unlike when you're looking at
what you're filming, as you're filming it, the viewing screen hasn't
been turned at the same time as the camera).

This also happens with cameras that are smart enough to recognise a
rotated camera, but only do so at the start of a clip (start recording,
and then rotate the camera, and they don't get un-rotated each time you
twist the camera around).

If you view that file, or others, with something else, are they shown
sideways until you do something about it?

To be honest, I've rarely used shotwell.  Importing my photos into some
feature-limited database has never seen sensible.  Come the next system
update, I've got to deal with moving a database over, as opposed to
simply keeping a collection of picture files.  And, at least on my older
systems, shotwell is really considered a *photo* manager.  *But* it does
say that it supports video files handled by gstreamer.  So rotation of
video probably depends on those codecs.

For playing videos, I tend to use SMPlayer (a GUI for mplayer), and you
can rotate video playback on the fly.  It just changes the playback
rendering, without modifying the files.  It *can* remember the settings
that you've used during playback, per file, but it stores them in its
own settings files.  It is a feature that *you* control, though, it does
not automatically orient video the right way up for you.

To be clear:  Most video recording systems, whatever the actual camera
is, take the picture in landscape format (wider than tall), and record
it in that fashion (*some* mobile phones being an exception).  If you
twist the camera around, the pictures and recordings are still handled
in that manner, all that changes is some extra data is recorded that
says which way up the camera was.  The intention being that the player
will twist the picture around in the opposite direction, to compensate.
I'm yet to come across a video player that automatically does that.

Fun and games ensue when you try and view these videos on things like a
tablet which has its own auto-rotate feature.  You turn the screen
around to view a twisted video the right way, it then rotates its own
display around because you rotated the tablet.

-- 
[tim@localhost ~]$ uname -rsvp
Linux 3.9.10-100.fc17.x86_64 #1 SMP Sun Jul 14 01:31:27 UTC 2013 x86_64

Boilerplate:  All mail to my mailbox is automatically deleted, there is
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that spreads.

[R Mercado (sky.com)]

Hi,

On Tue, 2016-08-02 at 09:39 -0400, Matt Morgan wrote:
>  
>  I was able to use mencoder to rotate it back, but with some loss of
>  quality it seems. 
>  
>  How do I get Shotwell not to do this--any ideas? 
>  
>   
I don't know about Shotwell, but I once used vlc to rotate a video.
I did not notice any loss of quality. I forgot the steps, but from
memory it was relatively easy.

Regards,

RM

[Tim]

Allegedly, on or about 03 August 2016, R Mercado (sky.com) sent:
>  I once used vlc to rotate a video. I did not notice any loss of
>  quality.  
In the effects and filters, there's a couple of options for rotating the
clip that's currently playing.  They simple affect how the clip is
played, with modifying the clip.

You can also save and convert files (re-encode them), that also has an
option for rotating the image.  This will create a permanently rotated
file.  However, in most cases, you'd be creating a new file, and if you
didn't want to keep the original, you'd have to get rid of it, yourself.

-- 
[tim@localhost ~]$ uname -rsvp
Linux 3.9.10-100.fc17.x86_64 #1 SMP Sun Jul 14 01:31:27 UTC 2013 x86_64

Boilerplate:  All mail to my mailbox is automatically deleted, there is
no point trying to privately email me, I only get to see the messages
posted to the mailing list.

America, you've had a Bush show you that any idiot can become president,
don't let a Trump prove that any asshole can.