You captured a great impromptu video with your iPhone — only to discover that it’s either upside down or in the wrong orientation. Can you fix it? Of course, you can! In fact, for most videos shot on iPhone, this is an easy fix. But for others, you may have to do some additional editing. If you’re having trouble figuring out how to change the orientation of your video, read on. We’ll show you how to flip and rotate a video on iPhone and cover everything you need to know to make these edits without a lot of fuss.
Flip, rotate, or mirror a video: What’s the difference?
First, some brief explanations are in order. For one thing, what’s the difference between flipping and rotating a video? And what about mirroring? Are these terms interchangeable?
When you rotate a video, you are essentially making 90-degree turns until your video is exactly the way you want it. Flipping a video is the same as mirroring. It’s a horizontal or vertical reflection of your video.
How to rotate a video in 3 easy ways
Rotating your video is a useful trick to know how to do it. Using a few different apps, you can make vertical videos horizontal, and vice versa. It’s especially valuable if you are posting a video to social media and find that you filmed it in the wrong orientation. If you do find yourself in that situation, here’s how to fix it.
1. Rotate your video in iPhone Photos
The native photo editing app on iPhone makes it easy to rotate videos as well as photos:
Open the Photos app on your iPhone and tap on the video that you want to rotate.
Select Edit.
Press the crop icon at the bottom of your screen.
Tap the rotate symbol in the upper-left corner (it looks like a square with an arrow in the corner).
Continue tapping the rotate icon until the video is positioned the way you want it.
Tap Done. Your rotated video will be saved in your photo library.
2. Rotate the video in iMovie for iPhone
iMovie is a simple video editing app that is free to download in the App Store. It has a few more tools for editing videos than the native Photos app and is particularly useful when you are stitching more than one clip together to form a longer video. Here’s how to use iMovie to rotate your iPhone videos:
Download iMovie and open it on your iPhone.
Tap the + and choose Movie.
Select the video clips you want to add to your movie.
Tap Create Movie.
Your video clips will appear on the screen. Scroll through your movie until you come to the clip that you want to rotate.
Hold your thumb and forefinger on the screen and rotate them clockwise or counterclockwise.
When you’re satisfied, tap Done.
3. Turn a video on iPhone using Video Rotate + Flip
Video Rotate + Flip is a free app that is incredibly easy to use for rotating and flipping your videos. Here’s how to use it:
Download Video Rotate + Flip and open it on your iPhone.
Tap on the arrow to choose a video clip to rotate.
At the top of the screen, you will see several icons that you can use to rotate or flip your video. Choose one of the first four rotate icons.
Once you’ve rotated your video, tap Save Video to Library.
Can you turn a vertical video into a horizontal one?
Yes, but you will lose some of your footage, so there’s a chance that some videos won’t come out the way you want them to. Here’s how to change the orientation of your video using iPhone Photos:
Open the Photos app and choose the video that you want to resize.
Select Edit.
Press the crop icon at the bottom of the screen.
Tap the resize icon in the upper right (it looks like several rectangles inside of one another).
Choose an aspect ratio from the bottom of the screen and tap the landscape or portrait orientation under your video.
Drag your video within the cropped parameters and scroll through to make sure that your subject still fits within the frame.
Tap Done when you are happy with the results.
How to flip or mirror a video on iPhone
Flipping your video will create a horizontal reflection, which can be useful in some situations. Here are two ways to accomplish this.
1. Flip your iPhone video in iOS Photos
Open the Photos app and choose a video that you want to flip.
Select Edit.
Press the crop icon at the bottom right of the screen.
Tap the flip icon (which looks like a triangle with an arrow on top of it).
Tap Done.
2. Flip your video with Video Rotate + Flip
This method uses the same video editing app that we used to rotate a video, Video Rotate + Flip:
Download Video Rotate + Flip and open it on your iPhone.
Tap the arrow to import a video.
You can choose to flip your video vertically or horizontally by tapping the corresponding icon (triangles) at the top of the screen.
Tap Save Video to Library.
Now, you’ll never have to wish you could flip or rotate your iPhone videos. You can do it quickly and easily using an app you already own, or you can download an app to get the job done for free.