I need to rotate some short video clips taken with my camera in portrait mode. They’re currently showing on their side; how can I do this?

There’s a great little package that ships with Windows called Windows Movie Maker that lets you do just this. It a free video-editing tool that lets you put together movies and manipulate clips you have. If can be used for any video you have; whether it’s your son’s birthday party or you just showing off your new Dansko shoes. And it includes a number of different wizards and effect including, you’ve guessed it, an option to rotate your video. Here’s what you need to do:

Click on the Start button, choose All programs and then Windows Movie Maker. Once the package loads, click on the Import video link in the Capture Video section and locate the video you want to rotate. Drag and drop the clip into the timeline at the bottom of the screen. Click the View video effects link in the Edit Movie section of the Movie Tasks bar. Scroll down the list to find 3 different rotate options and drop the correct rotate effect onto the video in the timeline.

After your computer finishes processing the clip, go to Finish movie and Save to my computer. Enter a filename for the clip and save it on your hard disk.