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Portrait Orientation


The EXIF data as used in places like JPEG files has an a ORIENTATION field which tells software whether to display it in landscape or portrait mode.

I would like to know how to display a video in the JW Player in portrait mode.

I am shooting a Nikon D7000 which uses H265 in a MOV container.

31 Community Answers

Ethan Feldman

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

Unfortunately the player doesn’t have a way to distinguish between portrait/landscape.

JW Player

User  
1 rated :

Has any thought been given to providing a configurable option to enable this? Even if your player can't decode the MOV header (I know there are some Flash limitations here), I've seen it done in with a modified Flowplayer to just pass in an orientation value and have it rotate the playback viewport. Would love to see this in JW Player so I could have a choice in which player to use (since JW seems to be so much better in other ways).

Remco van Bree

JW Player Support Agent  
1 rated :

Thought has been given, this is currently in the feature backlog: http://developer.longtailvideo.com/trac/ticket/1267

JW Player

User  
0 rated :

Are there any updates on this? We're planning to use JW Player as a front end to videos uploaded from iOS devices. Out of the 4 orientations we only confirmed 1 (landscape left) to work with JW Player.

JeroenW

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

Are you using the latest version of JW Player? In 5.7, we did add a feature that detects the rotation metadata from iPhone videos.

The setting to do the rotation manually is not yet scheduled for a release.

JW Player

User  
0 rated :

I'm using 5.9 and it doesnt seem to pick up the orientation of the .m4v videos saved from the iPhone - it plays back the horizontal ones fine - from the above it seems like it should pick up the setting automatically but all i get is a portion of the video in the upper left corne of the window playing back

see http://www.getsplash.com/action?id=Np2BVCc993j7

JeroenW

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

Could there be another issue at hand? I cannot get these videos to play in JW Player at all, likely because S3 is serving them with an application/xml mime type.

JW Player

User  
0 rated :

are you clicking on the link or trying to use the link as the video file? the link above is to a full page where I have embedded a jwplayer

JW Player

User  
0 rated :

apologies, i see what happened - i have protection on the page because we havent released video viewing to the public - fixed it so you can see it

JW Player

User  
0 rated :

oh, and I can play horizontal video fine from S3 so if there is a mime type mismatch its not effecting those

JW Player

User  
0 rated :

you should be able to test with this video file - i had to modify the sample page above because I am trying out a few video players - jwplayer is my first choice but if the m4v files cant be played in vertical orientation I have to find an alternative

http://s3.amazonaws.com/splashvideos/VT8NbVjyIu3z.m4v

JeroenW

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

Ah, the video is giving an “Access Denied” from S3. Looks like the rights on this file are not set to allow the “world” to view it.

JW Player

User  
0 rated :

Its set to allow a flash player to play it but not so it can be looked at in a browser raw - it worked on my page for horizontal but this video is oriented vertical and plays only a slice in the upper left hand corner. If you have a local jwplayer to test just point it to that url and is should load it fine - if not i can build a temp page somewhere

JW Player

User  
0 rated :

I'll just post here for future reference what feature I require and I imagine others will need as well if they want to play back iDevice videos in m4v format on the web without hand converting them.

> first, these videos when recorded in an orientation other than horizontal need to play back fully - right now they play back in a small wedge in the upper left and only partial video area - other players at least play them back accurately although laying on their side

> ideally would be able to read orientation and orient the player appropriately

> barring that we need a orient param to the player to force the video to play back a certain orientation - so i want to tell the player to flip the video 90 degrees clockwise

JW Player

User  
0 rated :

Anyone from longtail still on the thread? I'm about to spend more time on the web site again and decide on the player. I have one that can play back the m4v files well although vertical plays laying horizontal. A CSS rotate setting does get it to play vertically. I would much rather have a player that can actually figure out the orientation on its own.

Can jwplayer do this?

JeroenW

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

As your tests show, we don’t support this at present. We’ll look into it though.

JW Player

User  
0 rated :

I need to be able to show videos in both Landscape and Portrait mode. According to this thread the feature was "in progress". Has this been released and if so, how can I, through code, set the orientation?

Regards,
Joel.

JeroenW

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

Joel, do you have one or more examples of videos that are rotated? Preferably a small clip.

The issue is indeed not yet fixed. If we have example videos, we can look into it.

JW Player

User  
0 rated :

Same issue. My videos are incorrectly only showing in the top left corner. Is there any mention of this issue in the support pages or official documentation?

We're sending employees into the field with phones that record video. Most people hold their phones vertically (in portrait mode) and that is how they record video.

Is there a way to prep JW Player for portrait video? No workarounds? I tried setting the resolution identical to the video, and still no joy. It's a deal-breaker to require employees to re-encode videos before uploading. Well, I suppose I could always tell them they're "holding it wrong."

Remco van Bree

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

This is a Flash limitation; the Flashplayer simply does not obey the rotation flag, and our player hasn’t got access to the video file at this level.

You should either have a back-end that transcodes the video or indeed tell your people they’re holding it wrong, I’m afraid there are no other options.

JW Player

User  
0 rated :

Turns out there were other options. I implemented flowplayer. It seemed to handle portrait video just fine without the need for server-side transcoding or telling our people they are holding it wrong. Good luck on figuring out why your flashplayer doesn't obey the rotation flag. Perhaps you should tell JW player it is holding the file wrong?

JW Player

User  
0 rated :

Remco said :
bc.. tell your people they're holding it wrong


That soooo reminded me of this :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt9zSfinwFA

But really, handling vertical videos is important, I'm working on an artists gallery. He makes a mozaic mash-up of horizontal and vertical videos.
Launching them all at different times tells different stories. I like his idea and want to back his project with jw-player but can't at this time. It is really a shame.

Ethan Feldman

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

I would recommend using a server site tool such as ffmpeg to re encode the videos then.

JW Player

User  
0 rated :

I have encoded video from portrait to landscape using following ffmpeg command and it encoded successfully but it is still playing video in top left corner of Video player. Please get rid off this problem.

Following is the ffmpeg command i have used for rotate:
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf transpose=1 "output.mp4"








Ethan Feldman

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

I would try a different encoding. I used HandBrake on your file (you emailed me) and it fixed the issue. I don’t know ffmpeg commands though.

JW Player

User  
0 rated :

What setting are you using in Handbrake to do the conversion?

Ethan Feldman

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

I would use the defaults, nothing special needs to be done.

JW Player

User  
0 rated :

Ok Guys,

So to summarize JWPlayer respects the orientation IF the file as the correct information, otherwise there is no way to set the orientation manually.

Can you confirm my understanding?

Thx

J

Ethan Feldman

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

Yes. You need to re encode the files prior to playback with the player.

JW Player

User  
0 rated :

Thx Ethan!

Ethan Feldman

JW Player Support Agent  
0 rated :

Np

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