Home Videos - EXIF rotation ignored?

[rpertusio 1]

Hi. I have home videos (recorded from phone) which have EXIF data showing "Rotation: 90"  (according to the ExifTool utility).

 

The Emby 'web' app (in Chrome for example) correctly rotates 90 degrees (to portrait, vs landscape)

The Empby Roku app does not. The image is not rotated.

 

This occurs with multiple videos.  Here are the results from the EXIF tool  (C:\Utilities\exiftool.exe' -rotation FileName.mp4):

Rotation                        : 90

(EDIT 1: Removed extraneous EXIF tool output)

(EDIT 2: Link to EXIF tool: https://sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/ )

Edited February 20, 2018 by rpertusio

[ebr 14905]

We are using the standard Roku player.  It wouldn't be too surprising if it doesn't support reading and responding to that information but we can try to investigate.

 

Thanks.

[Luke 37029]

A video with exif rotation? To be honest, I didn't even know this existed, but I guess it makes sense.

 

But as ebr says, we are using Roku's built in video player. We'll have to check the API for it and see if there's any metadata we can pass to the video player, but if not then this issue might actually need to be reported to Roku. Thanks !

[rpertusio 1]

Thanks for the replies!

 

Are you using roImageCanvas? See the "TargetRotation" attribute

https://sdkdocs.roku.com/display/sdkdoc/Content+Meta-Data

[ebr 14905]

Thanks for the replies!

 

Are you using roImageCanvas? See the "TargetRotation" attribute

https://sdkdocs.roku.com/display/sdkdoc/Content+Meta-Data

 

That's the old API (now deprecated) and for images, not video.

 

I was not able to find anything for the video player that we can control.  This is something the video player would probably just handle internally anyway - since it is already a part of the stream - but, apparently, it doesn't support it at this time.

[schlenk 0]

We take most of our home videos in portrait mode which are rotated counterclockwise 90 degrees unfortunately in the emby app (through Roku). Would be great to have these videos automatically rotate right side up! (as they do on my phone or computer).

[rpertusio 1]

It's not ideal, but for now, I've decided to just re-encode the videos so they're oriented the correct way:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14086164/auto-detect-rotation-and-rotate-video-accordingly-with-mencoder-handbrake-cli-o

[schlenk 0]

Many thanks for your help rpertusio.  I have about 2000 out of 4000 videos to theoretically flip....  Just so I am clear--that script only flips the ones that need to be flipped (i.e., portrait shots)?

[rpertusio 1]

@schlenk:   Yes, the script takes whatever the orientation is (via "EXIFTool" utility) and sets the Handbrake command-line to encode at that rotation.  (So, if it's 90 degrees, 180 degrees, 270, or any other... it will pass that value to Handbrake.  This assumes all your videos have EXIF data with correct rotation data.)

 

The downside is that you're permanently decreasing quality (unless you find a trick in Handbrake to rotate without quality loss), OR you'll have to always store a "Roku" copy (eating up disk space) while you wait for Roku to read EXIF data in a future version of their player (if ever).

 

 

EDIT: Just check that your files indeed have EXIF data:

1. The tool: https://sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/

2. Rename: "exiftool(-k).exe" to "exiftool.exe"  (which permits it to run as a command-line)

3. Run it against a file: C:\Utilities\exiftool.exe' -rotation FileName.mp4

 

It should report something like.. "Rotation: 90"

Edited February 20, 2018 by rpertusio