How to rotate a video with FFmpeg

The transpose filter turns the picture a quarter at a time and swaps the width and height, so a 1920×1080 clip comes out 1080×1920.

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "transpose=1" -c:a copy output.mp4

transpose=1 turns 90° clockwise and transpose=2 turns 90° anticlockwise. The values 0 and 3 also flip the picture as they turn (0 is anticlockwise plus a vertical flip, 3 is clockwise plus a vertical flip), which is rarely what a sideways phone clip needs.

Add :passthrough=portrait (as in transpose=1:passthrough=portrait) to leave clips that are already taller than they are wide alone. That’s handy when you run one command over a mixed folder.

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "hflip,vflip" -c:a copy output.mp4

Flipping both ways gives exactly the same picture as a half turn, in a single filter pass. transpose=2,transpose=2 produces an identical result; in our test the two outputs matched frame for frame. The frame size doesn’t change. For phone clips that only play upside down somewhere, see fixing an upside-down video.

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

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

hflip mirrors left to right, which un-mirrors a backwards webcam or selfie recording (why recordings come out mirrored). vflip mirrors top to bottom. To flip and turn in one pass, chain the filters with a comma, for example -vf "transpose=1,hflip".

MP4 and MOV files can carry a display matrix that tells players which way up to show the picture. Changing it rewrites a few bytes in the file’s header and copies the video stream untouched, so it takes seconds and costs nothing in quality.

ffmpeg -display_rotation:v:0 -90 -i input.mp4 -c copy output.mp4

-display_rotation is an input option, so it goes before -i, and it counts anticlockwise: -90 shows the video turned 90° clockwise, 90 turns it anticlockwise and 180 turns it upside down. It replaces any rotation already in the file rather than adding to it, so for a phone clip that already carries a flag, give the final orientation you want; 0 clears the flag.

The option arrived in FFmpeg 6. On current builds the older -metadata:s:v:0 rotate=90 trick only writes a text tag that players ignore, which we confirmed on 7.1. There is also -display_hflip to flag a mirror image, but fewer players honour it, so use hflip for anything you’re going to share.

Browsers, VLC, QuickTime and phone galleries all respect the flag. Some older TVs, hardware players and editing apps ignore it and show the stored orientation, so re-encode with transpose for those. Rotating without losing quality explains the trade-off in more detail.

Any -vf filter means the video is encoded again. FFmpeg’s default for MP4 is libx264 at CRF 23, which is fine for sharing but softer than a phone original. Set the quality yourself for a closer match:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "transpose=1" -c:v libx264 -crf 18 -preset slow -c:a copy output.mp4

A lower CRF means higher quality and a bigger file; 18 is usually indistinguishable from the source. -c:a copy keeps the soundtrack bit for bit. Add -movflags +faststart if the file will play from a website, so playback can begin before the download finishes. To keep an iPhone HEVC clip in HEVC, use -c:v libx265 -crf 22 -tag:v hvc1; Apple’s players need the hvc1 tag.

• Turned twice. FFmpeg applies a source’s rotation flag before your filters (autorotate). If you add -noautorotate, the original flag is copied to the output on top of your transpose, and players turn the picture again. In our test that produced a portrait file still flagged −90°. Leave autorotate on, which is the default.
• Still sideways after a flag change. The player ignores display matrices. Re-encode with transpose so the pixels themselves turn.
• The turn looks backwards. -display_rotation counts anticlockwise while transpose=1 is clockwise. If a metadata change goes the wrong way, swap the sign.
• No sound in the output. Some sources have audio that MP4 can’t hold as it is. Replace -c:a copy with -c:a aac -b:a 192k.

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "rotate=3*PI/180:fillcolor=black" -c:a copy output.mp4

The rotate filter takes radians, so multiply degrees by PI/180; positive values turn clockwise. It keeps the original frame size, so the corners of the turned picture are cut off and the gaps are painted with fillcolor. To zoom past the gaps, add scale and crop after it, or use the Straighten slider with Fill in the tool above, which works out the zoom for you (straightening a tilted video).

In Windows PowerShell, from the folder with the clips:

Get-ChildItem *.mp4 | ForEach-Object { ffmpeg -i $_.Name -vf "transpose=1" -c:a copy ("rotated-" + $_.Name) }

In Terminal on macOS or Linux (bash or zsh):

mkdir -p rotated && for f in *.mp4; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -vf "transpose=1" -c:a copy "rotated/$f"; done

Both leave the originals alone. Swap in any of the filters above, or the -display_rotation … -c copy form for a lossless batch.

For a clip or two, the tool at the top of this page does the same jobs with buttons. With the default settings, Turn right and Turn left write the rotation flag like -display_rotation (lossless and almost instant), Mirror is hflip, Flip vertically is vflip, and Maximum compatibility under More options bakes the turn into the pixels like transpose. It runs in the browser on Windows, Mac, Linux and Chromebook, and nothing is uploaded.