Showing videos in correct orientation

[LittleBlueBreeze]

Hi, I posted about this over on the Linux Mint Forums and got a pretty helpful response. It would be great to see videos play back in the same orientation they are recorded in on Apple devices! I'm a newer user to Linux Mint, and this really threw me for a loop the other night when trying to upload videos to social media.
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?p=2640612#p2640612

Thank you so much for the incredible work you all do! I donated a small amount to the project. Grateful to be on this journey together.

[cplittlfield]

I saw that thread and was confused (a side-effect of age, most likely 🤣 ). Is your problem with the icon orientation, the preview shown after you press the spacebar, or when the video is displayed in Celluloid, VLC, or FFmpeg? And you're saying it happens only when the video was recorded on an Apple device, and not on any other? And do these videos play correctly or improperly when shown in a browser?

I don't happen to have any videos that I know for sure were recorded on an Apple device, but all the videos I've checked are all displayed correctly as icon, as preview, and as actual running video. But it's entirely possible that none of them was recorded on an Apple device.

[LittleBlueBreeze]

Haha all good, I know there was a lot going on in that thread xD The icon orientation is fine, but Nemo-preview plays sideways, VLC plays sideways, and Celluloid plays correctly but the video is grayscale and there are weird horizontal rays coming in diagonally from the left side. Everything looks good once it's uploaded to social media, including through a browser. I don't have any other devices to test it with, but I can replicate the issue: it only happens when I record videos vertically from an iOS device. Strangely enough, horizontal videos seem to play back just fine.

[cplittlfield]

Wow, that is bizarre and totally wrong. I suppose it has something to do with Apple's video-recording app.

Given that you say such a video plays fine on social media, I suspect that if you re-downloaded the file, it would continue to behave correctly. My guess is that the social media sites have some code in their upload routines to identify and fix such files. I'd also be willing to bet there's an open-source conversion utility to deal with it, as well. Hmm . . . .

[LittleBlueBreeze]

Yes, when I re-download the video from social media it plays in the correct orientation, although it is still mirrored for whatever reason. I don't know why the video became mirrored after I uploaded it. Very strange!