Horizon Fixer Extension

Effortless horizon leveling in Adobe Premiere Pro: The Horizon Fixer plugin can be used to correct tilted footage by simply drawing a line that follows the horizon similar to Lightroom’s Straighten Tool. The extension automatically adapts the zoom level to prevent black bars. Stabilizing the horizon if the camera tilt changes over time is likewise very simple: You can enable the keyframe feature to fix the horizon. The extension will automatically interpolate and correct the horizon between keyframes.

Getting a straight-line horizon is often challenging. Badly calibrated gimbals or or handheld shots often lead to footage where the horizon is not straight. Optimally you’d use a level (which certain tripods do include) while shooting. Straightening the horizon in post-production can be cumbersome. 

However, the Horizon Fixer Plugin for Adobe Premiere Pro makes the process of correcting a crooked horizon very easy. Similar to the Straighten Tool known from Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop’s Camera Raw Filter you can draw a line that follows the horizon and the extension will automatically correct your video or image.

Before after comparison after leveling the horizon of a clip in Adobe Premiere Pro using the Horizon Fixer extension

When simply rotating the image using Premiere Pro’s rotate functionality you will see black bars in the corners. This extension however automatically calculates the optimal zoom level to avoid black bars. This way you won’t loose precious footage. When enabling keyframes the extension will automatically zoom in and smoothen the zoom level between keyframes. This way the scale is always optimized.

If the tilt of your footage changes over time you can enable keyframing. Simply correct the crooked horizon at the beginning of the clip and let it play for a couple of seconds or frames. If the horizon is not straight anymore you can correct the horizon again and the extension will automatically fix all frames between the two keyframes.

If the tilt of your clips changes a lot, for example when filming from a boat or handheld the automatic scaling might lead to a quick change of zoom levels. To address this issue this plugin offers a feature called constant scale. When enabling this functionality the extension automatically determines the maximum zoom level needed to stabilize the horizon of this clip and sets the scale to this maximum zoom level.