First, open your video in VLC. As you can see, our example is upside down, so we’ll have to flip it.
Open the “Tools” menu and select “Effects and Filters” or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+E.
In the “Adjustments and Effects” window, on the “Video Effects” tab, click the “Geometrotry” tab and select the “Transform” check box.
Select a rotation from the dropdown menu (we’re rotating ours by 180 degrees) and then click “Close”. You could use the “Rotate” tool if you want, but selecting a transform from the dropdown is simpler if you just need a basic rotation.
The video should now be correctly oriented. You can watch it right away if you want.
This change isn’t permanent, though. You’ll need to save this video in its new orientation for that. Open Tools > Preferences (or press Ctrl +P), and at the bottom of the preferences window, enable “All” settings. With all the settings shown, drill down to the “Sout stream” heading (it will be under “Stream output”), and then click on “Transcode.” On the right, select the “Video transformation filter” option (this replaces the “Rotate video filter” option from older versions of VLC) and then click “Save.”
Next, open VLC’s “Media” menu and select “Convert/Save.” In the “Open Media” window, click the “Add” button and choose the file you just rotated.
Next, click the “Convert/Save” dropdown at the bottom of the “Open Media” window and select “Convert.”
Select the save location and type a file name, and then click “Save.”
You shouldn’t have to change anything else. The default conversion profile should work well. Just go ahead and click “Start” to convert and save the file.
Note: If you have issues with audio after rotating the file, click the wrench-shaped “Edit Selected Profile” button to the right of the Profile box here. On the Audio Codec tab, select “Keep original audio track.” This time, VLC won’t try to transcode (convert) the video’s audio and will use the original audio. We didn’t have to do this, but at least one reader did—it depends on the file you’re converting.
You can now open your new movie file in any video application and it should play with the correct orientation.
Note: When you’re done rotating videos, you’ll need to go back into the VLC preferences and revert the options back to their defaults.