How to flip videos to make learning dance choreography easier.

As some of my belly dancers may know, I am currently cast to perform in the Perth version of Bellyqueen's 'Journey along the silk road' production. :) I am super excited! As I live in a regional area, most of my learning of choreographies for the shows comes from watching videos posted on youtube. Some of the clips are in front of mirrors and shot from behind which makes it easier, but some are not. Flipping the video footage of dances shot face on makes it much easier to get left from right as you can just mirror the dancers in the clip. It is not only big shows that flipping a movie clip is useful, if you are collaborating with anyone online, this simple trick can be useful. I realised from comments on the shows forums that not everyone knows how to this, so I thought I would share the quick method I use. You can also use video editing programs such as iMovie but it is a bit more fiddly - this way is fast and easy.STEP 1

• Go to youtube (or whatever platform you are sharing video clips from) and find the clip, copy the URL.

• Open another tab and load "youtubeinmp4.com" (if you don't like this one just do a search for 'youtube to mp4', there are several websites that do this - beware of ads, etc when using these sites) 

• Paste the URL into the field and hit 'download mp4' , in the case of this program it takes you to another page where you can select other formats you  may want it in. I always use mp4.

Now you have a copy of the clip on your own computer.

STEP 2

• Open QuickTime player (this is available for both Mac and PC) and open the clip (if it didn't automatically open for you on download of above clip).

• Go to 'File' and 'Duplicate' if you want to keep the original view as well. OR skip this and go straight to

• 'Edit' and 'Flip Horizontal'

• Next save the clip. This was a bit tricky for me as the name field kept being greyed out BUT if you try and close the clip it offers you the chance to save and re-name it.

And that's it - your clip is now flipped and you can mirror the moves - just be aware that if the dancers turn around at any time in the clip then following can get confusing :) Happy dancing!

If you are in Western Australia at the end of the month be sure to catch the fantastic show!   Do you have another method of flipping videos for dance? Please comment below.