Sideways video is one of the most common small annoyances in casual recording. A phone held the wrong way during a quick clip, a screen recording captured in the wrong orientation, or a file exported from another tool with its rotation metadata stripped can all end up needing a real rotation rather than a metadata flag a player might or might not respect. This tool physically redraws each frame in the corrected orientation, so the fix works everywhere the file is opened, not just in players that honour a rotation tag.
Everything happens locally. The video is decoded by the browser's own media pipeline, each frame is drawn rotated onto a canvas, and MediaRecorder captures that canvas in real time to produce the output file, so a private clip never has to be uploaded to a server just to turn it right side up.
Why some sideways video does not fix itself
Many phones record video in whatever physical orientation you were holding the device, then store a small rotation flag in the file's metadata telling a compliant player to display it upright. That system works well until a file passes through software that ignores or discards that flag, at which point the video plays back sideways or upside down everywhere, even though the raw pixel data was never actually wrong to begin with.
A video rotator that only edits metadata cannot fix that case, since there is no flag left to edit or the destination software never reads it in the first place. Physically redrawing every frame in the corrected orientation, which is what this tool does, produces a file that displays correctly regardless of whether the player pays attention to rotation metadata at all.
- Use a video rotator when a clip plays sideways or upside down in every player you try, not just one.
- Choose 90 or 270 degrees to correct a video recorded in the wrong landscape or portrait orientation.
- Choose 180 degrees when a video was recorded completely upside down.
- Rotate before uploading to a platform that does not reliably respect orientation metadata on its own.
How rotating 90, 180 and 270 degrees changes the frame
Rotating by 180 degrees keeps the same width and height, since the frame is simply flipped end over end, with what was the top left corner becoming the bottom right corner. Rotating by 90 or 270 degrees swaps width and height entirely, since a landscape frame turned a quarter turn becomes a portrait frame and vice versa. This tool calculates the correct output canvas size automatically based on the rotation you choose, so the exported video is never squeezed or stretched into the wrong shape.
Every pixel from the source frame is preserved during the rotation, since this is a geometric transform rather than a crop, so no part of the picture is trimmed away in the process, only repositioned into its rotated location.
This video rotator redraws pixels, since a metadata flag would not display everywhere
The audio track, where the browser can capture it from the source alongside the video, is carried through into the recorded output. Playback happens in real time while MediaRecorder captures the canvas, so processing a rotation takes about as long as the video itself runs, the same real time constraint every canvas based recording tool on this site shares.
The output format is WebM rather than the input container, since a browser can decode formats such as MP4 that it cannot reliably re encode without a licensed codec, while WebM with VP8, VP9 or Opus is what MediaRecorder can actually produce. If your workflow specifically requires MP4 output, a further conversion step outside the browser will be necessary after rotating here.
Why does turning a frame sideways take an entire canvas rewrite?
Once the source file is loaded into a video element, a canvas sized to match the rotated dimensions is created, and on every animation frame the video's current picture is drawn onto that canvas after the context has been translated and rotated by the chosen angle. The canvas is then captured as a live MediaStream through the captureStream method, combined with any audio track available from the source video, and handed to a MediaRecorder instance that writes the encoded output as the video plays.
This entire pipeline runs using standard browser APIs, translating and rotating the same canvas context that is already local to the tab before each drawImage call, so producing a rotated frame never depends on anything beyond the page you already have open.
How to rotate a video
- 1
Add your video file
Drag a video file onto the drop area, or click it to browse. MP4, WebM and MOV are all accepted.
- 2
Choose the rotation angle
Pick 90, 180 or 270 degrees depending on which way the video needs to turn to look correct.
- 3
Rotate the video
Press rotate. The video plays in real time while every frame is redrawn at the new angle and recorded.
- 4
Download the rotated WebM
Download the result once recording finishes. It plays correctly in the new orientation everywhere.
Related tools worth bookmarking
Sources and further reading
- MDN: HTMLCanvasElement.captureStreamThe browser API this tool uses to turn the rotated canvas into a recordable video stream.developer.mozilla.org
- W3C: MediaStream Recording specificationThe specification defining how MediaRecorder captures a stream into an encoded file.w3.org
- WebM ProjectThe open format and codec suite that MediaRecorder writes the rotated video into.webmproject.org
Frequently asked questions
Common questions about the video rotator.
MediaRecorder captures the canvas as the video actually plays, frame by frame, in real time, since there is no faster way in a browser to force a video element to decode every frame in sequence. A two minute clip therefore takes about two minutes to rotate, the same real time constraint every canvas based video tool on this site works within.
A 180 degree rotation keeps the same width and height. A 90 or 270 degree rotation swaps width and height, since turning a frame a quarter turn changes it from landscape to portrait or the reverse. No pixels are cropped in either case, only repositioned.
Yes, when the browser is able to expose an audio track from the source video through its capture stream, that track is combined with the rotated video track and recorded together into the same WebM output.
Yes. This tool runs entirely as a web page using your browser's own video decoding, canvas drawing and MediaRecorder features, so there is nothing to install and no account to create to rotate video online.
Browsers can reliably encode WebM through MediaRecorder but cannot reliably produce MP4 without a licensed codec built into the page, so WebM is the honest output format here. If your destination strictly requires MP4, convert the rotated WebM file using separate software after downloading it.
Drop the clip into this tool, choose 90 or 270 degrees depending on which way it needs to turn, and process it. This is usually the quickest way to fix sideways video that a phone recorded in the wrong orientation, since the correction happens in the browser with no extra software needed.
Yes. Choosing the 90 degree option turns the frame a quarter turn clockwise, while the 270 degree option turns it a quarter turn the other way. Pick whichever one makes the preview look upright, since the correct direction depends on which way the original recording was tilted.
Yes. Choosing 90 or 270 degrees will flip video orientation between portrait and landscape, since a quarter turn swaps width and height entirely. A 180 degree rotation keeps the same orientation, landscape or portrait, and only turns the picture upside down.