Vertical Videos...

[rpcrowe]

We have been receiving some videos from our Maltese Rescue Volunteers which have been shot with Ipads or other Pads in the vertical format. This results in a video lying on its side when I view it.

How can I modify this to a video which is not laying down but, stading tall. I do try to tell my volunteers to please shoot the videos with their Ipads in the horizontal format but, since most of them view the videos on the same pads as they shoot them, they still persist n shooting in the portrait configuration.

[stuck]

How can I modify this to a video which is not laying down but, stading tall.

'Proper' video editing software will allow you to do that. However before you rush out and spend money try Windows Movie Maker. Not the hotest video editing tool out there but it should already be on your PC. If it's not start here:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/w...er-get-started

Ken

[Manfred M]

The problems with video is that the format (dimensions and frame rates) have to match the output format. Refomating is something way over and above simple video editing and gets you into basic compositing; which you can think of as cropping the image one frame at a time and building a new video out of the crops. The crop does not have to be stationary, but can vary over time as you keep the centre of interest right in the frame. I use this tool for, amongst other things, removing video shake out of hand-held shots.

Much like cropping a still image, the downside is that you do throw a lot of pixels away, so the quality will deteriorate. That is less of a problem if you are looking at posting the results on the web where you can get away with smaller image formats, and I would imagine that video content coming from an iPad is going to be fairly marginal quality to begin with.

That being said, the only software that I use for this type of work is Adobe After Effects. It is quite pricey, requires a reasonably high end computer and video card as rendering video is quite intensive processor work. I suspect there must be other less expensive options out there, but I just don't know of any. Much like Photoshop is the "gold standard" for image ediiting, After Effects is the "gold standard" for compositing.

The least work and effort would be for the contributers to supply video in appropriate format. Playing hardball is really the only way you are ever going to solve this issue. "Thank you for the video, but unfortunately, it is not useable because you didn't shoot it the way I asked you to", would be my approach.

[Kris V]

Sony Vegas will do it - but it's rather pricey!