Rotate Digital Camera Videos with Windows Movie Maker

Several questions came through this week (for both Mac and PC users) on how to rotate video clips shot with digital cameras. Apparently there's a whole crowd of people titling their digital cameras sideways this week. :)

For anyone with a Windows computer, rotating movies is easily done using Windows Movie Maker. This is one case where the defacto video editor for Windows outshines Apple's iMovie. Mac users will need to install an additional effect before rotating video clips in iMovie. For Movie Maker users, simply add your video to the Movie Maker timeline and apply a Rotate effect to turn the video right side up. Watch the video to see this in action.

Roxio Easy Media Creator and Pinnacle Studio Ultimate both fail miserably by not providing this feature. If your digital camera records MOV files, be sure to convert your MOV file to AVI before attempting to rotate it in Windows Movie Maker. Most other camera formats should work as soon as you transfer the files to your PC.