Premiere Pro Rotation Bug with iPhone Video After File Renaming

[Jeena22389650a1ho]

Hi everyone,
I'm encountering a strange issue with Premiere Pro when it comes to iPhone video orientation and file names, and I’d appreciate any insights.
Here’s the scenario: I record video on my iPhone and make sure to let the phone settle into the correct orientation (usually horizontal) before I start recording. Most of the time that works fine. Occasionally, if I have to start recording really quickly, the phone doesn’t catch the orientation in time and the video ends up sideways.

To fix this, I’ve been rotating the video directly in the iPhone’s native camera app before transferring it to my Mac. When ingest the footage to my Mac using the Image Capture app, it actually creates two versions of the video: one with the original file name (with the incorrect, original sideways orientation) and one with an extra “E” in the file name that includes what I thought was a hardcoded rotation and any other edits. For example, I will end up with IMG_0001.MOV & IMG_E0001.MOV

Here’s where it gets weird: if I import the file with the “E” in the name into Premiere Pro, the video shows the corrected orientation. But if I remove the “E” from the file name before importing, Premiere Pro shows it in the wrong orientation again, like it’s ignoring the rotation metadata unless that “E” is present. This is confounding to me, since I thought the E in the filename indicated that iPhone edits were hardcoded into a new file.

I really want to keep my file names consistent without that extra letter, because it messes up my file organization. Does anyone know if there’s a way to make Premiere respect the rotation without relying on that “E” or if there’s another workflow to solve this? Any insights into why Premiere behaves this way would be awesome.
Thanks a lot!

[R Neil Haugen]

How about just rotating it in Premiere? Easy and fast ...

[Stan Jones]

@Jeena22389650a1ho,

As Neil says, the most common solution is to rotate on the timeline or to use a source clip effect so that clip is rotated whereever it is used. But some users really want it to look correct in the Source Monitor, and that solution does not work.

The alternative is to change the clip before importing. For some clips, I use exiftool to change the rotation flag. Very simple, and can be done as a batch. But I have not found a method for all such issues.

> I’ve been rotating the video directly in the iPhone’s native camera app

There are a lot of settings in the iPhone that may affect this. I'll try to play with this. But it would help if you can share one of your clips - an original and "E" version.

Stan