Convert phone shot videos to Landscape from Portrait

Norm loves Vera

Joe wants Trump to burn
SoSH Member
Dec 25, 2003
5,370
Peace Dale, RI
I am putting together a video from various types of phones/video cameras with about half of them in portrait and the rest in landscape.  Is there free video editing software to convert the portrait videos to landscape?  I don't want to just rotate 90 degrees as that just has the video sideways.  I have windows 8.1 and Movie maker installed with no luck.  I hope I don't have to crop anything.
 
This will be a compilation of videos shot of Special Olympics USA athletes competing this summer at World Games and each video has an athlete or team saying "Welcome" in a different language.  I am the head coach for SO USA Powerlifting.   For various reasons, I am stuck with the video's I have now.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.
http://specialolympicsusa.org/2015/
 
 
 

Norm loves Vera

Joe wants Trump to burn
SoSH Member
Dec 25, 2003
5,370
Peace Dale, RI
lol..I gave explicit instructions to have all video shot in landscape with a few second pause before and and after their athletes gave the greeting and still, about half were in portrait and about 4 second long total.  frustrating.  So there isn't any way to convert thru cropping?
 

jayhoz

Ronald Bartel
SoSH Member
Jul 19, 2005
17,368
I don't know what software to suggest, but in theory you could crop.  Assuming a 16:9 aspect ratio of the original...the 9 dimension becomes the 16 and 5 of the 16 becomes the 9.  That means you have to be able to get the content you want from less than 1/3 of the vertical dimension of the video and be prepared for the resolution to drop.
 

ifmanis5

Member
SoSH Member
Sep 29, 2007
63,777
Rotten Apple
jayhoz said:
I don't know what software to suggest, but in theory you could crop.  Assuming a 16:9 aspect ratio of the original...the 9 dimension becomes the 16 and 5 of the 16 becomes the 9.  That means you have to be able to get the content you want from less than 1/3 of the vertical dimension of the video and be prepared for the resolution to drop.
This doesn't work. You have to zoom in too far or stretch it or a combo. Unless they were shooting 8K it'll look like garbage.
Most common options are black vertical pillar boxes or throw it on a background that's 16:9. Most people like to do a blurred version of what's on screen as the background with the live video on top. Watch any news program and you'll see what I mean.
 

SumnerH

Malt Liquor Picker
Dope
SoSH Member
Jul 18, 2005
31,900
Alexandria, VA
You're fitting a square peg in a round hole.  You either need to pillarbox, crop/tilt-and-scan, or some combo of the above.
 
You want to do this all inside whatever video editing program you're using to put together the whole video, so that you're only reencoding them once on the final render. You don't want to first convert the videos to portrait (reencoding) and then bring them into the video editor (reencoding again when you render), as you lose some quality every time you reencode.
 

Norm loves Vera

Joe wants Trump to burn
SoSH Member
Dec 25, 2003
5,370
Peace Dale, RI
Yeah.. this was a cluster as the people taking the videos were local coaches and parents who got instructions from Head coaches via the phone or email.. I moved the deadline by another 2 weeks and sent out an example video of what we are looking for. I am hoping atleast 10 videos of the 18 assigned will be usable.  Knock on wood.