Exporting to Video

One of the most important decisions we can make is what format we will use. Currently our project cannot be viewed by anyone without Premiere Pro installed. We will need to export it to a standard video format so that people can view it. There are many video formats available, and each of them have specific strengths and weaknesses.

Some formats offer the capability of small file sizes but reduced quality, while others offer high quality, but also higher file sizes. But we also have to keep the content of our video in mind.

H.264 is the current video standard for most web based video. It is the format that generally gives the best compression to quality ratio. Many video sharing websites use this as their standard format. The H.264 format will produce a file with the.mp4 extension.

If you want to keep your video at the highest possible quality, then AVI is a good format to use. It does not use compression, so it creates a very high quality file – however, this also means that the file size for the video will be very large.

Today we will export to H.264, but feel free to explore other formats like WMV and MPEG-2 for different purposes.

Exporting video in Premiere Pro is fairly straightforward. Once we are comfortable that our project is ready we can export to video.

Let's export our video now. We'll need to be in Premiere Pro to do this.

Step 1. Switch to Premiere Pro, if necessary.

Step 2. To begin exporting our video, from the menu bar,

Click File, Click Export, Click Media...

After a moment, the Export Settings dialog box appears. Here is where we can select all of our options.

Step 3. To export to H.264, in the Format field,

Click, Click H.264

Now we will be producing a file in the.mp4 format.

There are many presets that we can take advantage of that will change things like the video and audio quality and the size of the frame. However, today we can use the default NTSC DV format since it matched the size of our video. When exporting your own video, try to choose a format that matches your video size, and if possible, your intended viewing device or site. Premiere includes many presets that exactly match many mobile devices and video sharing sites.

There are many settings we could work with and change in this dialog to alter the preset, but for today's purposes we can simply use the defaults.

Let's select a location to save our file.

Step 4. To select a save location, in the Location field,

Click the existing location

The Save As dialog box appears. Premiere has already selected the same location that our project file is located, so we can accept this choice.

Step 5. To approve the location,

Click

We can continue to change settings in this dialog box, but let's go ahead and begin the exporting process.

If we click the Export button, the program will immediately begin saving our video. If we wanted to export multiple videos, however, we could click the Send to Media Encoder button. This will send the file to Adobe Media Encoder and allow us to export multiple videos at the same time, whenever we're ready.

Let's click the Send to Media Encoder button.

Step 6. To queue the video, in the Export Settings dialog box,

Click 

After a moment, Adobe Media Encoder opens. This is a program that will allow us to convert video formats, and export our Premiere and After Effects projects to standard video formats.

One major advantage of this method is that our video will export in the background, and we can continue to use Premiere Pro. Otherwise, we must wait to use Premiere Pro until the video is finished exporting, which  may take an extended amount of time for high quality video.

Step 7. To export the file, near the top of the Queue panel in Adobe Media Encoder,

Click

Since this is a relatively short file, it should only take a few minutes to export.

Once it is complete, we can locate and view our file.

Step 8. View the video in your media player of choice.

We've completed today's project, and can close Adobe Media Encoder, Premiere Pro, and After Effects.

Step 9. Close Adobe Media Encoder.

Step 10. Close Premiere Pro.

Step 11. Close After Effects.

Note for MacOS Users - To close Media Encoder, Premiere Pro, and After Effects, from the Menu bar, Click the program's name, Click Quit.