Rotate Video by 90 or 180° with a Keyboard Shortcut in Premiere Pro
Whether you’ve shot your video in portrait mode and Premiere Pro displays it in landscape, or if your footage is upside down, rotating videos by fixed angles like 90 or 180 degrees is a common task. Unfortunately, rotating videos in Adobe Premiere Pro can be a bit tedious since a dedicated keyboard shortcut does not exist in Premiere Pro’s keymap. Fortunately, you can add this functionality through a script and assign it to a hotkey using the ExtendScript Hotkey Manager. Don’t worry if you have no scripting experience. The steps below are straightforward and easy to follow.
Alternatively you can also add rotate buttons to the Premiere Pro UI if you install the Rotate Video Toolbar.
Step-by-Step Guide
In this tutorial, we’ll be creating four small scripts to rotate videos by 90 and 180 degrees, both clockwise and counterclockwise. To assign keyboard shortcuts to these scripts, we will be using the ExtendScript Hotkey Manager.
1. Install ExtendScript Hotkey Manager
The required plugin can be installed from Adobe Exchange or the Creative Cloud Desktop App: ExtendScript Hotkey Manager | Adobe Exchange
2. Create the first Script
Use the following script to rotate your video clips. This script can be adapted to rotate by 90°, -90°, 180°, or -180° by changing the last line. You can also adapt it to rotate by any other value. Use positive values to rotate clockwise and negative values to rotate counterclockwise.
function rotateClip(clip, angle) {
var videoComponent = clip.components[1];
var rotationParam = videoComponent.properties.getParamForDisplayName("Rotation");
var currentRotation = rotationParam.getValue();
var newRotation = currentRotation + angle;
rotationParam.setValue(newRotation, 1);
}
var project = app.project;
var selectedClip = project.activeSequence.getSelection()[0]; rotateClip(selectedClip, 90); By changing the last line, you can adapt the rotation to any desired value. By changing the second-to-last row, you can affect what is rotated. The code currently rotates the first item in your selection. You can also change the script to rotate the clip under the playhead, all selected clips, etc.
You can download pre-made JSX files for each rotation:
The script will only rotate the first clip in the selection and it can be easily adapted to rotate all selected clips depending on your preference.
Assigning Hotkeys
Next, assign these scripts to hotkeys using the ExtendScript Hotkey Manager:
- Open ExtendScript Hotkey Manager: Launch the application and open the extension from the extension menu.
- Add New Hotkey: Click on the “Add New” button.
- Record Hotkey: Click “Record Hotkey” to assign a hotkey. Press the desired key combination when prompted.
- Edit ExtendScript: Click “Edit ExtendScript” to enter custom ExtendScript commands or select a .jsx file.
Your script is now mapped to the selected hotkey and can be executed within your Adobe application. For detailed instructions, refer to the ExtendScript Hotkey Manager Guide.
You can now conveniently rotate your videos by using hotkeys. Would you like to enhance this process by automating rotation based on metadata, labels, and other criteria? The ExtendScript Developer tools are available to facilitate the development and debugging of your Extendscript.
ExtendScript Hotkey Manager
Assign keyboard shortcuts to any ExtendScript Script in Adobe Premiere Pro
