Can someone recommend preferably free software for rotating videos?

I have seen the ones on cnet but would rather try something that users here have tested and are happy with. The app must not be limited by being free so no watermarks or short clips. It also would be good if it leaves the video in original format. In other words if my video is mpeg the rotated output will be also mpeg. I have downloaded Windows Desktop Essentials (recommended by some site) which now included Movie Maker which has the feature but it forces a rename of the video to "My video" on save which is stupid. It also converts the video to mp4.
Thanks for any suggestions.

 

While it's possible to keep the rotated video in the same format as the original, it's mostly not possible without having to re-encode the original video.
In short, the quality of the video will degrade after it's being rotated, whether you'll notice it or not.

IIRC the MP4 and MKV containers are able to use the ROTATE flag, but not all software players are able to parse it, much less hardware players.
The idea of the ROTATE flag is to have a rotated video of the original without having to re-encode.
That is, it's the player itself that renders the video rotated as instructed by the flag, meaning the original quality is preserved.

As for converter apps, I usually use either Freemake Video Converter, Handbrake, or Any Video Converter.
Freemake is the most user-friendly of the three, while the two others are not really newbie-safe, though more suited to experienced users because it's more configurable.

 

Thanks for the info. I also have used all of those converters and have Handbrake fine tuned to rip dvds to a comfortable compression vs quality level. As far as the ROTATE flag you mentioned then I do think it is probably not a popular way to do this as many people will have software that doesn't support this flag. I currently and for many years been a user of Klite codec pack which comes with Media Player Classic and I don't even know if it supports the ROTATE flag. Now the question is What software will do this?

 

MPC-BE is one of the players that properly support the rotate flag.
Don't know much else about others; all I ever use were that or MPC-HC.

MPC-HC's internal filters used to also properly support the rotate flag, but now that its latest stable uses LAV Filters 0.58.2 as its internal filters which, AFAIK, doesn't properly support the rotate flag, so dunno.

Anyway, why would you want the videos rotated?

 

Sometimes like an idiot I will record a vertical video as I'm used to doing that with pictures and I don't think about it that the video will play horizontal unless i rotate it like I do with my photo app. My cell has a sensor that will save orientation position so the videos are always the correct way. My old digital cam does not.