How can I rotate a video 180° with FFmpeg?

Question

I have a video that was rotated 180° when recorded. Is it possible to correct this with FFmpeg?

Answer 1

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tl;dr

ffmpeg will automatically rotate the video unless:

• your input contains no rotate metadata
• your ffmpeg is too old

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Rotation metadata

Some videos, such as from iPhones, are not physically flipped, but contain video stream displaymatrix side data or rotate metadata. Some players ignore these metadata and some do not. Refer to ffmpeg console output to see if your input has such metadata:

$ ffmpeg -i input.mp4
...
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'input.mp4':
  Duration: 00:00:05.00, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 43 kb/s
    Stream #0:0(und): Video: h264 (High 4:4:4 Predictive) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv444p, 320x240 [SAR 1:1 DAR 4:3], 39 kb/s, 25 fps, 25 tbr, 12800 tbn, 50 tbc (default)
    Metadata:
      rotate          : 180
    Side data:
      displaymatrix: rotation of -180.00 degrees

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Autorotation

ffmpeg will automatically physically rotate the video according to any existing video stream rotation metadata.

You need a build that includes commit 1630224, from 2 May 2015, to be able to use the autorotation feature.

Example

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c:a copy output.mp4

To disable this behavior use the -noautorotate option.

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If the input contains no metadata or if your ffmpeg is old

You will have to use a filter to rotate the video, and if any rotate metadata exists it will have to be removed as shown in the examples below:

Examples

Using ffmpeg you have a choice of three methods of using video filters to rotate 180°.

hflip and vflip

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "hflip,vflip,format=yuv420p" -metadata:s:v rotate=0 \
-codec:v libx264 -codec:a copy output.mkv

transpose

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "transpose=2,transpose=2,format=yuv420p" \
-metadata:s:v rotate=0 -codec:v libx264 -codec:a copy output.mp4

rotate

This filter can rotate to any arbitrary angle and uses radians as a unit instead of degrees. This example will rotate π/1 radians, or 180°:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "rotate=PI:bilinear=0,format=yuv420p" \
-metadata:s:v rotate=0 -codec:v libx264 -codec:a copy output.mp4

You can use degrees instead. One degree is equal to π/180 radians. So if you want to rotate 45°:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "rotate=45*(PI/180),format=yuv420p" \
-metadata:s:v rotate=0 -codec:v libx264 -codec:a copy output.mp4

When using the rotate filter, the bilinear interpolation should be turned off (by using bilinear=0) for angles divisible by 90, otherwise it may look blurry.

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Notes

• Filtering requires encoding. These examples make H.264 video outputs. See the FFmpeg H.264 Video Encoding Guide for guidance on getting the quality you want.

• Chroma subsampling. I included format=yuv420p since ffmpeg will attempt to minimize or avoid chroma subsampling (depending on the encoder, input, ffmpeg version, etc). This is good behavior in a purely technical sense, but most players are incompatible with more "advanced" chroma subsampling schemes. This is the same as using -pix_fmt yuv420, but is conveniently located in the filterchain.

• Copy the audio. The -codec:a copy option will stream copy (re-mux) instead of encode. There is no reason to re-encode the audio if you just want to manipulate the video only (unless you want to convert to a different audio format). This will save time since encoding is time consuming and it will preserve the quality of the audio.

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Rotate upon playback

Alternatively you can rotate upon playback and avoid re-encoding. ffplay will automatically rotate:

ffplay input.mp4

If there is no displaymatrix side data or rotate metadata then you can use filters:

ffplay -vf "hflip,vflip" -i input.mp4

...or refer to your favorite player. Most players worth using, like VLC, have this capability.

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Getting ffmpeg

Older builds of ffmpeg do not include filtering capabilities. See the FFmpeg download page for several options including convenient builds for Linux, OS X, and Windows, or refer to the FFmpeg Wiki for step-by-step ffmpeg compile guides.

Answer 2

FFmpeg changed the default behavior to auto rotate input video sources with "rotate" metadata in the v2.7 release in 2015.

If you know your script or command will never run on FFmpeg releases older than 2.7, the simplest solution is to remove any custom rotation based on metadata.

For other cases, you can future-proof by keeping your custom rotation code and adding the -noautorotate flag (this is supported in older versions which were still maintained at the time).

Answer 3

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -filter:v "transpose=1,transpose=1" output.mp4

Did the trick for me. I am not sure why the transpose filter does not provide a possibility to rotate 180 degrees at once, but whatever.

Check the documentation for more information.

Answer 4

Media players that use FFmpeg as a decoding backend can also utilize all of its filters. See this screenshot with "Offset & flip" filter.

Alternatively, if you want to re-encode your video, check out Rotating videos with FFmpeg on Stack Overflow.

Answer 5

At the end you'll find the two consecutive FFmpeg commands that successfully rotated my video to the correct orientation. It seems to me the purpose of hflip and vflip in FFmpeg, is, at minimum, confusing, and contrary to what I expected.

The file merlin.mov is a copy of a video I took on my iPhone, first uploaded to Dropbox, and then downloaded to my laptop, running Ubuntu:

uname -a

Output:

Linux gazelle 3.13.0-135-generic #184-Ubuntu SMP Wed Oct 18 11:55:51 UTC 2017 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

I know I should've been able to mount my iPhone via USB and copied the files directly, but that didn't work; my laptop would recognize the iPhone was connected, but it wouldn't mount its filesystem, and I got no prompt on my iPhone to "trust" the laptop.

The command I used to copy from Dropbox to my laptop was this:

cp ~/Dropbox/Camera\ Uploads/Video\ Nov\ 02\,\ 9\ 41\ 55\ AM.mov \
        merlin.mov

The original file is Video 1920 x 1080 Codec HEVC/H.265 frame rate 30/sec, bitrate 8140 kbit/s, Audio Codec MPEG-4 AAC audio Channels Stereo, sample rate 44100 Hz, bitrate 85 kbit/s. When I play it on my iPhone it's oriented properly, and the sound is synchronized.

When I play it in videos on my laptop it's both upside down and reversed horizontally, and the sound isn't synchronized. Here's partial output from "ffmpeg -i merlin.mov":

Metadata:
rotate          : 180
creation_time   : 2017-11-02T14:41:55.000000Z
handler_name    : Core Media Data Handler
encoder         : HEVC

Here's the first line of output from "ffmpeg -version":

ffmpeg version 3.3.3 Copyright (c) 2000-2017 the FFmpeg developers

The following left the playback inverted both vertically and horizontally, though it did convert to MPEG-4 video (video/MP4) and synchronized the sound:

ffmpeg -i merlin.mov -vf 'hflip,vflip' merlinhflipvflip.mp4

The following inverted vertically so the playback is upright, synchronized the sound, and converted to MPEG-4, but it left the horizontal incorrectly flipped end for end (this isn't a typo; I did specify 'hflip'):

ffmpeg -i merlin.mov -vf 'hflip' merlinhflip.mp4

The following flipped the horizontal to the correct orientation, but it left the playback upside down:

ffmpeg -i merlin.mov -vf 'vflip' merlinvflip.mp4

The following didn't seem to have any effect whatsoever:

ffmpeg -i merlin.mov -vf 'hflip' merlinhflip.mp4
ffmpeg -i merlinhflip.mp4 -vf 'vflip' merlin2stepA.mp4

I also tried this, based on a command I found at superuser.com. It successfully synchronized the sound, and converted to MPEG-4, but both horizontal and vertical orientation remained incorrect:

ffmpeg -i merlin.mov \
        -vf "rotate=PI:bilinear=0,format=yuv420p" \
        -metadata:s:v rotate=0 -codec:v libx264 \
        -codec:a copy merlinrotate.mp4

I also tried this, which didn't work either in terms of correcting the orientation:

ffmpeg -noautorotate -i merlin.mov merlinnoautorotate.mp4

The following two-step process finally got what I wanted; vertical and horizontal both flipped, sound synchronized, and format converted to MPEG-4 (again, this isn't a typo; I used hflip in both commands):

ffmpeg -i merlin.mov -vf 'hflip' merlinhflip.mp4
ffmpeg -i merlinhflip.mp4 -vf 'hflip' merlin2stepB.mp4

Answer 6

Following is a Bash script which will output the files with the directory structure under "fixedFiles". It transforms and rotates iOS videos and transcodes AVI files. The script relies on having installed both ExifTool and FFmpeg.

#!/bin/bash

# Rotation by 90 degrees. It will have to concatenate.
#ffmpeg -i <originalfile> -metadata:s:v:0 rotate=0 -vf "transpose=1" <destinationfile>
#/VLC -I dummy -vvv <originalfile> --sout='#transcode{width=1280,vcodec=mp4v,vb=16384,vfilter={canvas{width=1280,height=1280}:rotate{angle=-90}}}:std{access=file,mux=mp4,dst=<outputfile>}\' vlc://quit

# Allowing blanks in file names
SAVEIFS=$IFS
IFS=$(echo -en "\n\b")

# Bit Rate
BR=16384

# Where to store fixed files
FIXED_FILES_DIR="fixedFiles"
#rm -rf $FIXED_FILES_DIR
mkdir $FIXED_FILES_DIR

# VLC
VLC_START="/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC -I dummy -vvv"
VLC_END="vlc://quit"


#############################################
# Processing of MOV in the wrong orientation
for f in `find . -regex '\./.*\.MOV'`
do
  ROTATION=`exiftool "$f" |grep Rotation|cut -c 35-38`
  SHORT_DIMENSION=`exiftool "$f" |grep "Image Size"|cut -c 39-43|sed 's/x//'`
  BITRATE_INT=`exiftool "$f" |grep "Avg Bitrate"|cut -c 35-38|sed 's/\..*//'`
  echo Short dimension [$SHORT_DIMENSION] $BITRATE_INT

  if test "$ROTATION" != ""; then
    DEST=$(dirname ${f})
    echo "Processing $f with rotation $ROTATION in directory $DEST"
    mkdir -p $FIXED_FILES_DIR/"$DEST"

    if test "$ROTATION" == "0"; then
      cp "$f" "$FIXED_FILES_DIR/$f"

    elif test "$ROTATION" == "180"; then
      #$(eval $VLC_START \"$f\" "--sout="\'"#transcode{vfilter={rotate{angle=-"$ROTATION"}},vcodec=mp4v,vb=$BR}:std{access=file,mux=mp4,dst=\""$FIXED_FILES_DIR/$f"\"}'" $VLC_END )
      $(eval ffmpeg -i \"$f\" -vf hflip,vflip -r 30 -metadata:s:v:0 rotate=0 -b:v "$BITRATE_INT"M -vcodec libx264 -acodec copy \"$FIXED_FILES_DIR/$f\")

    elif test "$ROTATION" == "270"; then
      $(eval ffmpeg -i \"$f\" -vf "scale=$SHORT_DIMENSION:-1,transpose=2,pad=$SHORT_DIMENSION:$SHORT_DIMENSION:\(ow-iw\)/2:0" -r 30 -s "$SHORT_DIMENSION"x"$SHORT_DIMENSION" -metadata:s:v:0 rotate=0 -b:v "$BITRATE_INT"M -vcodec libx264 -acodec copy \"$FIXED_FILES_DIR/$f\" )

    else
      #$(eval $VLC_START \"$f\" "--sout="\'"#transcode{scale=1,width=$SHORT_DIMENSION,vcodec=mp4v,vb=$BR,vfilter={canvas{width=$SHORT_DIMENSION,height=$SHORT_DIMENSION}:rotate{angle=-"$ROTATION"}}}:std{access=file,mux=mp4,dst=\""$FIXED_FILES_DIR/$f"\"}'" $VLC_END )
      echo ffmpeg -i \"$f\" -vf "scale=$SHORT_DIMENSION:-1,transpose=1,pad=$SHORT_DIMENSION:$SHORT_DIMENSION:\(ow-iw\)/2:0" -r 30 -s "$SHORT_DIMENSION"x"$SHORT_DIMENSION" -metadata:s:v:0 rotate=0 -b:v "$BITRATE_INT"M -vcodec libx264 -acodec copy \"$FIXED_FILES_DIR/$f\"
      $(eval ffmpeg -i \"$f\" -vf "scale=$SHORT_DIMENSION:-1,transpose=1,pad=$SHORT_DIMENSION:$SHORT_DIMENSION:\(ow-iw\)/2:0" -r 30 -s "$SHORT_DIMENSION"x"$SHORT_DIMENSION" -metadata:s:v:0 rotate=0 -b:v "$BITRATE_INT"M -vcodec libx264 -acodec copy \"$FIXED_FILES_DIR/$f\" )

    fi

  fi

echo
echo ==================================================================
sleep 1
done

#############################################
# Processing of AVI files for my Panasonic TV
# Use ffmpegX + QuickBatch. Bitrate at 16384. Camera resolution 640x424
for f in `find . -regex '\./.*\.AVI'`
do
  DEST=$(dirname ${f})
  DEST_FILE=`echo "$f" | sed 's/.AVI/.MOV/'`
  mkdir -p $FIXED_FILES_DIR/"$DEST"
  echo "Processing $f in directory $DEST"
  $(eval ffmpeg -i \"$f\" -r 20 -acodec libvo_aacenc -b:a 128k -vcodec mpeg4 -b:v 8M -flags +aic+mv4 \"$FIXED_FILES_DIR/$DEST_FILE\" )
echo
echo ==================================================================

done

IFS=$SAVEIFS

Answer 7

In case your video doesn't have rotation metadata as explained in llogan's answer, you can add the metadata to rotate the video without re-encoding, and it should work in most places.

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c copy -metadata:s:v:0 rotate=180 output.mp4

(Command copied from this answer to another question in StackOverflow)

Answer 8

Here are the steps:

1. First open your video file in QuickTime. You can either fire up QuickTime first, go to “File” and then down to “Open File”. Or you could right-click the file itself, choose “Open With” and then choose QuickTime.

2. Once the video is open click “Edit” and you’ll then find the rotate and flip options straight below

3. Once you’ve locked the orientation you want, you then have to export your video with the new changes you’ve added. You’ll find the “Export” option under the “File” menu in QuickTime.

Choose the file settings you want to export as and click “Ok”, to kick off the export.

When the export operation is complete, you’ll find your new file where ever you chose to save it with the correct orientation!

This whole fix took me less than 5 minutes to complete, but depending on the length of the video, it could take much longer (or shorter, again, it varies).

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