I'm a novice user. Just installed Windows MM 2.0 (on my XP SP1 PC). One of the first features I took advantage of was the Rotate 90, from Video Effects, on an MPG from my digicam. It was taken in portrait mode but was being displayed in landscape mode - fast route to neck-ache! So I used Rotate 90 to get it back to portrait. But, although now teright way up, that has now changed the proportions, stretching the picture sideways. Is that a fundamental flaw with MM, or (more likely) am I not using it properly? How can I fix that please?

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Terry, West Sussex, UK

Remember that PAL resolution isn't square: you'll either get a stretched picture or black bars after a 90 degree rotation. Not sure if stretching is the inly option in WMM, but there is a rotate filter in VirtualDubMod (free) which you could use outside of WMM.

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Thanks, Marc. Yes, I'd expected to see black bars to left and right after rotating. Doesn't appear to be any option in WMM, or it's well hidden. Will find that alternative and try it.

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Terry, West Sussex, UK

Progress! Many thanks for getting me over that obstacle. Mind you, I'm still sort of flying blind...

Installed and ran Virtualdub. Looks bewilderingly complex to my novice eyes. But I opened the MPG and used Video|Filters|Add|Rotate. That gave me two apparently empty windows (Input and Output?) in top left corner of main window, with the latter being in the required vertical mode. Using File|Preview they both played simultaneously, and I was delighted to see that the right hand one was correctly proportioned.

I then used File|Save AVI, proceeded past the warning about large file sizes, and got an AVI file (without an extension, BTW; so I added '.AVI' myself. Is that normal?) D-clicking it in Explorer ran it OK

May I trouble you with a quick follow-up question? If I now want to 'merge' that 10 second AVI movie with another MPG of similar length (already in vertical mode, so need for rotation), what are the key steps please?

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Terry, West Sussex, UK