Upside down video images

[Michael_Wells]

Hello, I recently placed two videos from my IPhone 6s, via the Windows 10 PC, onto the WD TV Live Hub Media Center. The one captured in landscape is played upside down and the one recorded in portrait plays on its side. Both play and appear correct orientation on both the IPhone and PC.

I read a topic earlier about hardware corrections being required and not just a software upgrade to correct this anomaly. Has this / is this adjustment available now please? (I couldn’t see how to append this question on the end of the earlier query - sorry.)

Many thanks, (as my neck is aching!)

Michael.

[mike27oct]

I know the problem well, and there are solutions.

First, I want to say I have a WDTV Live Plus (older one like the Hub), so when I started to view iThing photos/videos sent to me I had the same problem. It is caused on Windows and other non-Apple devices, because there is data in the file that tells an iDevice the position of the camera relative to where the controls on an iDevice were positioned when the video was taken so an Apple device can get it right when viewed on the device. Older Windows and WDTVs did not have the “secret decoder” and are clueless.

Some of this is improved today, although my Win 7 sees the iDevice photos and videos in the same wrong orientation as WDTV, my Win 8 has no problem; same is likely for your Win 10.

Some mobile apps get it right, too. Examples are, the Roku app that can cast photos and videos in the iDevice to the Roku/TV. When the same photos and videos are copied to my new model WD NAS, and viewed from my Win 7 they are still whacked out, but viewed from NAS using the WD My Cloud app on an iDevice, the photos and videos are positioned correctly. So, the point being is, success in many cases depends upon what program or app you are trying to view them with, and on what equipment.

OK, these newer methods work well for me today, but say you can’t use these above options, and you want photos/videos that are only on your WDTV Hub (or attached drive) to show up correctly on the TV. The solution I used early on was to convert them with a free program I found called Free Video Flip and Rotate. It worked very well, but it meant rotating and re-writing quite a few video files.

The version on my PC is a few years old, so I just went looking for a current one, and I found it at the website of the maker, DVDVideoSoft. So download it at link below and install it on your PC. I see from the screen shot it now has the Help built into program; for my older version I needed to download a separate Help file.
Let me know how well it works for you.

http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/products/dvd/Free-Video-Flip-and-Rotate.htm

[Michael_Wells]

Hello Mike,
Thank you very much for your help with this. Clearly you’ve done some research into this in the past, painstaking trial and error no doubt!

Initially I was having no success with the free software you mentioned; but then I realised I’d downloaded the wrong one by mistake (!) and that “Free MP4 Video Converter” was not going to flip anything! I later got the right file and I have a success to report on the ‘upside down’ video, which is now perfect – so thank you.

I am however, still having a bit of trouble with the video which was recorded in ‘portrait’ mode on the mobile and was replaying on its side. Whilst I have requested the video to be rotated by 90 degrees, the resultant file just plays the music and it’s a blank screen? Any further thoughts as to what might be happening here? Even the PC doesn’t like replaying it, not just the WD box. Sorry to trouble you further.

Many thanks,
Michael.

[mike27oct]

Hmmm, well again, the name of the program is Free Video Flip and Rotate. Did you check the help file for any clues to help you?

Here is the URL link I have bookmarked in IE Favorites of the Help instructions of the older version I have installed on my PC. See if this can help:
http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/guides/free-video-flip-and-rotate.htm

I have never had a file that did not rotate to correct the orientation of video, so I cannot help further other than what I just said.

[Michael_Wells]

Thank you Mike. I had checked out the guide earlier but I feel I was doing it correctly. I’ll try a series of different file types as the output, see if it makes any difference.

Michael.

[mike27oct]

OK, here is some more help. (I had to dig way back to remember this; well, back to around 4 years ago when we were sent first pictures and videos of our grand daughter.)

Earliest photos and videos are on drive connected to WDTV. All photos were originally JPG photos from iPhone and all I needed to do was rotate them if need be – not all needed to be, and they all are still JPG files.

Videos that needed to be rotated were made from iPhone MOV files, rotated if necessary, and saved as WMV (Windows Media Video) files for playing via WDTV. In some cases, I saw both the MOV and WMV files of same video in the folder. MOV file was non-rotated, WMV was.

So, save your rotated MOV video files as WMV files and see if that helps. Good luck.

[Michael_Wells]

Thank you again Mike. I’m away from the wd box for a few days but will try WMV files when I can.

Michael

[Michael_Wells]

Hello Mike, I’m back in front of my PC and tried as you suggested with a great result! Thank you for being my ‘video guardian angel’! I’m very happy both videos play correctly via the WD box on the TV.

Yours,

           Michael.

[mike27oct]

Great! Saving videos as a Windows type of WMV file was the final trick. So, be sure to mark this case as solved at the forum. Who knows ,with enough solved issues I could win a trip to Hawaii from WD . . . NOT!