Workflows 5 min read
Portrait Video Playing Sideways on Desktop: Rotation Metadata vs Physical Rotation
A portrait phone video is usually landscape pixels plus a 90° rotation flag in metadata. Players that read the flag (most phones, modern desktop players) display it upright; ones that do not (some web contexts, old software) show it sideways.
Two fixes
- Metadata fix: rewrite the rotation flag, no re-encode — instant, lossless. Works whenever the target player honors metadata.
- Physical rotation: rotate actual pixels and zero the flag — re-encode required, but the result behaves identically everywhere including metadata-ignoring pipelines (some upload processors, old embeds).
Which to choose
If the video plays correctly on your phone but not on the destination, physical rotation is the durable fix — you cannot control which player the recipient uses. Metadata fix is for correcting files whose flag is simply wrong (e.g. lost during an earlier edit).