Category: Photo Management

Why Can’t the Users Just Rotate Their Screen?

We have a Kodak Zi6 video camera that we have been using to take home videos.  Today, we taped Clay taking some of his first steps, but we did it in portrait instead of landscape.  So, then, the next question is how can we rotate the video, so we don’t have to tell everyone to rotate their screen.

I found this post that suggested using Avidemux.  So, here is what I did:

First, simply open your video with the File > Open command or the Open button on the toolbar.  Next, you need to set the output formats that you want.  I found this post that suggested using MPEG-4 AVC (x264), AAC (Faac), and MP4.  Choosing the right format was rather difficult for me.  Here is what it looks like once you have made the choices:

Next, you need to use a Filter to rotate the video.   So, click the video filters button.

Next, double click on the Rotate filter in the list:

Now, choose your rotation angle:

The Rotate filter should move over to the Active Filters column and should show the rotation angle that you chose:

Now, you simply save your video using the File > Save command or the toolbar.  This will take a few minutes for your computer to process the video and write the file.  I chose an .mp4 extension.

Here is it processing the video:

So, that is it.  Please comment if you have suggestions.  I am still working out the best format to use for sharing with friends and family.  So, if you find something that is better, please let me know.

Resources

F-Spot to Shotwell

I still haven’t upgraded to Ubuntu 10.10 yet.  I have been procrastinating, but I have been reading about the new Shotwell.  Since I have been having issues with uploading to Facebook directly from F-Spot, I thought I would give it a shot.

To, upgrade, I basically followed the directions on the Shotwell website.  It is important to use the ppa:yorba/ppa repository because that will give you the new 0.7 version with the import from F-Spot tool.

First, I was excited to see that the Facebook upload worked with no problems.  Now, it time to get our vacation pictures uploaded!

I did notice that the tag features were not near as robust in Shotwell.  I didn’t see Event tags, People tags, etc.  Most importantly, I missed the feature of F-Spot where I could drag and drop tags to search on multiple tags.   F-Spot’s searching features far surpassed Shotwell’s.

That is just a first impression.  I need to spend some more time with it to get a better feel.