I got an exceptionally cute video of Kazon today.

But there’s a problem.

I was paying attention to him and not to the camera.

He’s in the video.  In fact, he’s almost perfectly centered in the video.  You really couldn’t ask for a better shot of this particular event.

So what’s the big deal?

Your generous host was holding the camera sideways.

Very much unlike photographs, videos don’t rotate well.  In fact, Quicktime won’t rotate them at all, and Movie Mangler Maker squashes the whole thing because it changes the original width to equal the original height—so far so good, huh?—but leaves the original height as the new width instead of similarly reducing it.

WTF is that about?

Instead of being rotated accurately, it becomes smashed from top to bottom and the entire aspect ration is thrown off.  The result looks positively horrible.  Thanks, Microsoft.  Brilliant feature you got there.  But hell, at least you have the feature (albeit implemented feebly and rendered unusable).  Apple didn’t even bother to put that feature in their software.

I’m not sure what I’ll do with it.  It’s really a cute video and I’d love to share it, but either way I go will provide a less than stellar experience.

Gosh, I can be so daft sometimes.