This past weekend, I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to solve what I thought was a simple problem. I had taken some video with my Kodak EasyShare DX4580 digital camera and because of what I was filming, I’d turned the camera 90 degrees to get the whole shot in the frame. I shot four small videos, ranging in length from one and a half minutes to about five minutes. The videos turned out reasonably well, considering the camera is four years old and well-used. I intended to put the videos up on YouTube for my kids to share with their friends and cousins, like I have with others I’ve shot. Yeah, we’re hokey like that in my family.
So, I tried to rotate the videos 90 degrees so I could post them upright. Not an easy task. I first tried it using the Kodak EasyShare software I already had. I could rotate it for viewing, but it wouldn’t save it in the rotated format. So I opened the video in QuickTime and tried to rotate it there. I couldn’t do it there, either, unless I wanted to pay $29.99 for the “upgrade” to QuickTime to make it the Pro version.
This just rubbed me the wrong way. As much money as I’ve spent on Apple products over the years, and they can’t give me QuickTime Pro? Of course, I had no choice but to buy it so that I could rotate the videos, because despite intense searching, there really is no freeware or even shareware alternative to QuickTime.
In the meantime, I spent a lot of time and got pretty annoyed trying to solve what should have been a simple problem, only to eventually solve it by letting Apple charge my credit card another $30 for a simple upgrade. Way to go, Apple.