Flipping Images in Windows Movie Maker

When it comes to image control in digital video editing, it is incredibly common to want to alter and shape the actual construct of the video. This does not mean applying video effects in the conventional sense, but instead altering the very shape by rotating or cropping to fit your need. There are many visual rules, like the Rule of Thirds and Z-Axis, that are used by cinematographers and video editors to focus people’s attention and communicate things about space. One of these is a general avoidance of having numbers of images in a row that are all asymmetrical on one side. This happens often times in news and documentary film where people are interviewed and they are all sitting on the left side of the screen and facing the right. The best way to deal with this is to flip the image so that it is exactly the same but the main focus is on the other side. This process is allowed in almost every video editing program and is made especially easy in Windows Movie Maker.

If you want to flip the video horizontally you drag the video into the Timeline and then right click it. From here you select Video Effects from the right click menu. Go down in the left hand effects column until you find Mirror, Horizontal. Select that and hit the Add button in the middle to bring it to the right hand column. Once you click OK it will be applied to the clip.

The same principle is often true for flipping objects vertically, but this often is not the case for characters. This can be done for effect or to highlight disorientation, but each way is different. No matter what this is not to be used in any casual setting or simply to add energy to the sequence. To do this you again right click on the video clip and select Video Effects. Here you simply find Mirror, Vertical, and add it to the clip effects list in the right hand column.

If you are going to flip one clip from a particular scene you have to make sure that you do this for all of the clips so that there are no inconsistencies in the final video. You may want to go ahead and flip your base clips before chopping them up into smaller ones. This will lower the chance that some were overlooked during the editing process.