This answer is simply a summary of the comments provided by LordNeckbeard.

Rotating without encoding

Rotating without re-encoding is not possible unless:

• your input is MJPEG
• you rotate upon playback

Rotate with encoding using the correct ffmpeg

To correctly understand the steps needed to this, one should start by reading or at least skimming this question:

What are the differences and similarities between ffmpeg, libav, and avconv?

Summary: avconv is a fork of ffmpeg, debian maintainer chose avconv, you have to compile the correct ffmpeg from source.

The next step would be compiling the correct ffmpeg from source as is detailed here:

Compilation guide of ffmpeg for Debian

The final step is using the commands found in other posts:

How to flip a video 180° (vertical/upside down) with FFmpeg? or Rotating videos with FFmpeg

Summary: ffmpeg -vfilters "rotate=90" -i input.mp4 output.mp4

There are several things that you've touched on in your question:

1. There is almost no chance that you will able able to rotate without reencoding. The exception to that rule (MJPEG codec) has already been pointed out, but it's unlikely that you are using it, so it goes beyond the scope of this question. I will mention that the reason for this ability is that JPEG can be converted via metadata. Thus if you'll be able to find a container which has the metadata rotation, you'll be able to rotate, but none exist (or are wide spread enough) so far.

   an update: This answer now provides a way to losslessly rotate MP4 container.

2. If it took your hours to rotate and reencode 3 minutes of the video, then the problem can lie on an enormous resolution. And i mean huge! Can you please provide the output of the avprobe original.mp4 so that it can be ascertained.

3. Libav versus FFmpeg debates are very counterproductive (you can see that by the amount of fud posted here already). Basically what has happened was a split of the project with some developers going one way and some another, the fact that FFmpeg project has managed to keep the name is just a fluke and it makes no sense to call one project original and another a fork. The differences between projects are mostly in the development style and on the philosophy. If you would characterise FFmpeg as more Open Source and Libav as more Free Software, you'd not be all that mistaken. Rational people hope that eventually the developers will come to their senses, and maybe not merge the projects, but cooperate to the larger extent. When Ubuntu came out originally, on every Debian GNU/Linux chat there were huge messages along the line of "Ubuntu is NOT Debian!!!!!!!", but now the situation has calmed down and both sides are quite happy with one another.

If you just want to change the metadata such that mediaplayers that consider the flag play the file rotated, try something like:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c copy -metadata:s:v:0 rotate=90 output.mp4

as found elsewhere on stackoverflow.

Rotation=0 fixed my issue. I started recording video in portrait mode, realized my mistake and immediately turn my phone to landscape to continue recording. My iphone had marked the video as portrait for the entire video.

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c copy -metadata:s:v:0 rotate=0 output.mp4

Fixed it.

FFmpeg and similar programs change the metadata even with the -map_metadata option. exiftool can read the rotation matrix and rotation flag, and since version 10.89 also write it as described below.

To get true lossless (incl. metadata) rotation, I couldn't find a solution, so I grabbed a hex editor (eg HxD) and analyzed the rotated video files.

True lossless rotation of MP4:

• open mp4 with hex editor and search for vide to find the metadata of the video track

• some rows above (for my files mostly 9, sometimes 12) you should see trak...\tkhd

• in between there should be an @ sign (HEX 40)

• in the two rows before it the rotation matrix is stored

• no rotation:

   00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
  00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
  40
  

• 180°:

   FF FF 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
  FF FF 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
  40
  

• 90° cw:

   00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 FF FF 00 00
  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
  40
  

• 90° ccw:

   00 00 00 00 FF FF 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00
  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
  40
  

Alter the file as you need it, and it should be rotated in players that support the rotation flag (most current players do).

In case your video contains stereo audio, this is obviously not switched, so in case you want the sound to match with video rotation (180°), you need to switch the left and right channels.

ExifTool lossless rotation:

Source.

Set rotation to 270°:

exiftool -rotation=270 FILE.mp4

Add 90° to existing rotation value:

exiftool "-rotation<${rotation;$_ += 90}" FILE.mp4

One Line Solution

npx rotate-video --source=/sourceVideoPath --destination=/Users/destinationVideoDir --extension=MP4 --angle=270

Note: You need to install FFMPEG CLI first install