Rotate video in Photos for Mac

Rotate you video and it will show as you like in Photos

There is no way to rotate a video in Photos like you can rotate a photo. When you Control (right) - click on a photo you get these options in the contextual menu:

However, when you Control (right) - click on a video you get these options:

Even better, simply open the original file in QT7 (find it in the Photos Library package) and modify it as you indicated (Command-J, visual settings, rotate, and save). The rotation should show up nearly immediately in the Photos app. No exporting, duplicating, deleting, reimporting necessary.

You really have to wonder how this got left out. Seven year old QTpro does it instantaneously using TWENTY FIVE year old code. Obviously the photos app COULD rotate videos all by itself if Apple wanted it to. Perhaps someone should mention the idea: Feedback - Photos - Apple

rhodiad wrote:

Even better, simply open the original file in QT7 (find it in the Photos Library package) and modify it as you indicated (Command-J, visual settings, rotate, and save). The rotation should show up nearly immediately in the Photos app. No exporting, duplicating, deleting, reimporting necessary.

You really have to wonder how this got left out. Seven year old QTpro does it instantaneously using TWENTY FIVE year old code. Obviously the photos app COULD rotate videos all by itself if Apple wanted it to. Perhaps someone should mention the idea: Feedback - Photos - Apple

1 - NEVER make any changes of any sort to the structure or content of the Photos library - DO NOT open te library and modify any file including the originals of a video - doing so is a great risk and is likely to lose photos

2 - Photos is a photo manager with limited video support - for movie management use iMovie

LN

Just open the original movie file in QT rather than exporting a copy. Find the file in your Photos Library package, open, rotate, save.

No need to export or re-import so long as the file uses a codec that is natively compatible with both Photos App and QuickTime.

Ah right. Your photo collection has been put in a lockbox. *sigh*

Luckily, since, as you say, "Photos is a photo manager with limited video support" Photos neither notices nor cares when you open and edit and save the video file, it just displays it when requested.

But in general, yes. As far as this forum is concerned, don't muck around in Package directories. Or the Library folder for that matter. It's scary in there. Also, don't use the terminal. Danger.

export the original to the desktop, import to iMovie form there

LN

You can rotate the movie with Quicktime Player once you get the video out of the Photos library by either using the File ➙ Export Unmodified Original menu option or Option-drag the thumbnail to the Desktop.

you're loosing all the EXIF (date, geolocalisation, taken with.., etc) associated to the video by doing that 😟

videos do not have EXIF date generally - only Photos do

And if you export the original file you get exactly what was there - that is a bit for bit copy of the file on the camera so what ever it has your exported video has

LN

As Larry stated video files do not have EXIF metadata. Any location or keywords that might be added to the video in iPhoto or Photo can only be exported via an XMP sidecar file which will include description, title, keywords and location.. There's no way to include that in the file itself if exported as original. Then only an application that can use the sidecar file along with the video file to retrieve that information can put the two back together.

If the video file thumbnail is just dragged out of the Photos library to the desktop it will be converted to a m4v video file and that file will retain the IPTC description and keywords added in Photos (but not the title). Neither method will retain the location information.

If the video file is exported out as "Export video" with the checkboxes for Title, Location, etc. checked it will retain the keywords, title and description but not the location info. It will also be converted to a .m4v file in the process.

Is there anyway to re attach the "EXIF" to the file so that once I put it back in Photos, it works?

GtrQc wrote:

Is there anyway to re attach the "EXIF" to the file so that once I put it back in Photos, it works?

again

videos do not have EXIF data generally - only Photos do

LN

I know they don't have EXIF of course! But videos have a sort of EXIF attached to them *IN* the Photos app! I'm wondering if there's a way to attached them back in the app.

It's not EXIF metadata, It's IPTC metadata that was added by Photos. I know of know way to join the to back in Photos.

Movie/video files are a different breed of cat with very different metadata capability. You might ask in the iMovie or Final Cut Express forums about that.

Just tried this and rotated fine in QT on my Mac with 10.10. However the file converted automatically form a .avi to a .mov and doubled in size. Is this correct?

I also ticked on export to save IPTC? to a XMP, not sure what to do with this now though!

thanks