How to Flip a Video in iMovie: Mac and iPhone Solutions

Liza Brown

Jun 17, 2022• Proven solutions

“Can you flip a video in iMovie? I have a video that I shot on my iPhone, but I wanted to change its orientation in iMovie.”

If you also have a similar thing in mind and would like to flip a video in iMovie, then you have come to the right place. You might already know that iMovie is the inbuilt video editor in Mac that can be used to do all the basic edits. Therefore, if you want, you can also use iMovie to flip or rotate your videos. In this post, I will let you know how to flip a video in iMovie using its Mac and iOS app.

Part 1: How to Flip a Video in iMovie on Mac?

Mac users might already be familiar with iMovie, which is a timeline-based inbuilt editing tool in Mac. Using it, you can easily load a video, rotate it, or flip its orientation. Since the overall interface of iMovie is a bit complicated, you might not find the exact solutions upfront. Therefore, to learn how to flip a video in iMovie on your Mac, you can follow these steps:

Step 1: Load the Video to Rotate on iMovie

To begin with, just launch the iMovie app on your Mac and click on the “+” icon to load a new iMovie project.

As the new project’s interface would be loaded, you can click on the “Import Media” button to browse the video of your choice. You can also drag and drop the video from the Finder to iMovie’s interface here.

Once you have loaded the video on iMovie, you can drag the thumbnail to the timeline section at the bottom to start editing.

Step 2: Automatically Rotate the Video

After adding the video to the timeline, you can simply check its preview on the Viewer window on the right. Now, to rotate the video, you can just select the clip and click on the crop icon from the toolbar (above the preview section).

Here, you can click on the Rotate Left or the Rotate Right button to automatically change the orientation of the video in arbitrary directions. You can also apply the Kens Burn effect from here to gradually rotate the clip.

Step 3: Use the Flip Filter in iMovie

Apart from that, you can also use the flip filter to mirror your video. To do this, you can just select the video and click on the Filter and Effects button from the toolbar (above the Viewer). As the list of filters would be displayed on the side, just select the “Flipped” filter to implement it.

This will simply mirror the video’s orientation that you can check from the Preview window of iMovie.

Part 2: How to Flip a Video in the iMovie iPhone App?

Apart from the Mac app of iMovie, you can also use its iOS app to rotate the video. Ideally, you can just use your fingers to rotate the video’s orientation in arbitrary left or right directions. To learn how to flip a video in iMovie on your iPhone, you can follow this simple drill.

Step 1: Load the Video to Rotate on the iMovie App

Firstly, just launch the iMovie app on your iPhone and tap on the “+” icon to load a new iMovie project. Now, you can just go to the saved videos on your iPhone and load the file you want to flip.

Step 2: Manually Flip the Video in iMovie

Once the clip is loaded in the iMovie app, just select it, and tap on the crop (scissors) icon from the top. Now, you can use your fingers to manually flip the video left or right via a circular white icon on the thumbnail.

When the video is flipped, you can save the changes and export it in the desired format on your device.

Part 3: How to Flip a Video on Mac with the Best iMovie Alternative: Wondershare Filmora

Since iMovie has limited options, you can consider trying Wondershare Filmora, which is an advanced video editor. The application features a user-friendly interface and is fully compatible with all the leading macOS versions. It also offers a direct option to rotate, flip, or crop any video. You can even access a wide range of transitions, filters, overlays, captions, etc. that are available in Filmora.

To flip your video on your Mac with the help of Wondershare Filmora, you can go through these steps:

Step 1: Load the Video You Want to Flip on Filmora

To start with, you can just launch Wondershare Filmora on your Mac and click on the Import Media icon to browse and load any video. You can just drag and drop any media file to the interface of Filmora from here.

Step 2: Rotate or Flip the Video on Filmora

After loading the video, you can drag and drop it to the timeline at the bottom. Now, just double-click the video’s icon from the timeline to get a dedicated editing panel. From here, you can go to the “Video” tab and expand the “Transform” option.

Now, you can just go to the “Rotate” section and set up a preferred degree of rotation (like 90 or 180) to get the desired results. Similarly, you can also click on the Flip option to change the orientation of your video (like upside down or left to right).

Step 3: Export the Video in the Desired Format

That’s it! Once you have got the desired results, you can just click on the “Export” button from the top. This will let you save the flipped video in the format and resolution of your choice wherever you like.

There you go! After reading this post, you would be able to flip a video on iMovie quite easily. As you can see, I have listed a detailed tutorial on how to flip a video in iMovie on iPhone and Mac. Besides that, if you want to get better results, then you can also use Wondershare Filmora to rotate or flip your videos. There are also several other advanced features like audio ducking or motion tracking that you can easily use on Wondershare Filmora.

Liza Brown

Liza Brown is a writer and a lover of all things video.

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