Here be some notes on the insane set of gymnastics I have to go through every time I fuck up and start recording video with my iPhone held vertically.
I do this a lot. I don't know why it happens. Often I am standing over something and recording it, and the phone doesn't understand that I actually mean to hold it horizontally.
Meta Questions:
Why isn't there a way to prevent the phone from shooting video in vertical format? Who does this?
Once you've blown it and shot a video vertically, why isn't there a way to rotate it right there on the phone?
Apparently QuickTime used to do this. It doesn't any more; you have to buy QuickTime Pro to make it happen. If on the other hand you're like me and have already spent a hundred bucks or more on Apple's sweet tasty all-in-one iLife suite, you must use iMovie. To do this, clear about an hour on your schedule and follow these sixteen easy steps:
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Import your video. To do this, you plug in your phone, stop iTunes from autosyncing everything--which will bring your system to a crawl--and wait for iPhoto to pop up and start munging through your picture. If iPhoto doesn't come up, you'll need to start it.
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Once you're sure your movie has been imported by iPhoto, fire up iMovie.
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Look for the video you just imported in your Media folder, which I sincerely hope is on the bottom right of your iMovie screen. If it's not there, you'll need to find it and open up Last Import, because that's where your movie clip should be.
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Swear, because the video you just got done importing into iPhoto is not there.
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Open up iPhoto and look in Last Import.
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Swear some more, because there it is. Right there under "last import." What the fuck, Apple? I mean, seriously? How could a movie I shot with an iPhone and imported with iPhoto not be instantly compatible with iMovie?
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Drag the movie from Last Import onto your desktop. This will make a copy, which you will want to delete later when we're all done.
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Bumble your way into the iMovie Import menu (currently this is in File: Import: Movies) and blindly guess about what you want it to do. (Do you want to optimize? copy? move? add it to an "event?" What the hell is an "event," anyway?)
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Import your movie. Say "no" if it wants to generate thumbnails or do anything else movie-related. You just want to rotate the damn thing.
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Create a new "project," again blindly guessing about what settings you want for it; go with the default none of anything.
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Select all of your movie clip and drag it into your new project. Hopefully it showed up as a new "event" on the bottom left side of iMovie.
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Click the clip to select it. It will have a yellow line around it if you do it right. If you double-click, you will get an "inspector" you'll want to "dismiss."
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Select the Crop tool, which is a completely mysterious square-ish thing, between a thing that looks like a skinny ice cream cone and a thing that looks like a lower- case "I" in a black circle.
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If you have successfully selected your clip, you should see the ominous phrase "Ken Burns" overlaid on a larger view of your clip, top right. (Who is Ken, anyway, and why does he burn?) Next to Ken are a pair of curved arrows, one pointing left and one pointing right. These are your rotate arrows; click one until your clip is oriented correctly.
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You must now "export" your "project" back down to a movie. You would think that a task like this would be in the File menu, but you would be wrong.
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To save your movie, you need to go to Share, then Export Movie. I export HD video, because that (as far as I know) is what my iPhone is shooting.