Rotate video in Windows 7

A colleague emailed me a video that needs to go to our website. Unfortunately, the orientation was wrong (in landscape mode when it should be in portrait mode). I had a feeling this was taken using a mobile phone.

But this was a challenge that needed solving and I was not about to back down. I Googled a solution and came up with one for VLC Media Player (which I have) but I think it's for an older version and the menu system has changed a lot since then. The other solution is to use Windows Live Movie Maker (which comes as part of Windows 7).

So I went through that route!

I opened the video by right clicking on it and choosing "open with > Windows Live Movie Maker"

I immediately recognized the Rotate button on the toolbar, so I clicked that...

And voila! The video is now on the correct orientation.

I saved my file by clicking on the File button at the top left then clicking "save Movie > for Computer".  This saves to only one format, the Windows Media Video file (.wmv) which, thankfully, can be played by VLC Media Player.

I believe the Windows Movie Maker of the older Windows OS versions is also capable of this little trick, the location of the menu might be slightly different.  Though I hope not as changed as that of VLC's.

A side-effect to this process is file size.  My 3MB video file ballooned to 10MB!