Exporting the Completed Video

Now that the video is complete, it can be exported. Premiere Pro provides so many options for exporting video that it's almost overwhelming. You can publish to all popular media formats. You can export a single frame, a series of frames, a clip, a sequence, or a whole movie. You can publish audio only, video only, or both. You also have complete control over the quality and size of the finished project.

When exporting video in Premiere Pro, we're given a number of different options for exporting. We'll be exporting the project using the Media option.

Step 1. To export the completed video project, on the Menu bar, 

Click File, Point Export, Click Media...

The Export screen appears:

Since we're publishing this video for the web, we will use the format called H.264, as it creates a file that's optimized for web use. The encoding format H.264 will create an .mp4 file that we can then upload to a video hosting site.

Step 2. To choose the H.264 format, in the Export Settings panel, if necessary,

Click the Format drop-down, Click H.264

At this point, we could choose a video preset which would adjust the size and quality of our finished video — however, the default preset will work for our needs today.

We could also specify a location for where Premiere Pro will save our exported video to, as well as change the name of the file.  By default, Premiere Pro saves exported videos in the same folder as the project is saved in and names them with the same name as the sequence being exported, so we'll stick with that.

NOTE: If you need to change the file name or location where the file will be saved, in the Output Name field in the Export Settings dialog box, Click the file name, navigate to where on your computer you wish to save the file, assign the file a new name, then Click Save.

Now we're ready to export the video. There are two methods we could use to export the video — we could simply press the Export button at the bottom of the Export Settings dialog box, or we could send it to the Adobe Media Encoder queue.  Let's send the completed video to Adobe Media Encoder's encoding queue.

Step 4. To open Adobe Media Encoder and add the video to the encoding queue, in the bottom right corner of the Export screen,

Click 

Adobe Media Encoder loads, and our video is added to the queue.

Using Adobe Media Encoder

Adobe Media Encoder is a professional software application that is part of Adobe Creative Cloud. While you can open and use Adobe Media Encoder by itself, it also works in conjunction with Premiere Pro to encode video projects.  Adobe Media Encoder allows us to queue up a number of different video projects, then export them all at once.  We'll only be exporting one video at this point, but the steps performed today can also be used to have Adobe Media Encoder encode multiple videos at once. Let's start the encoding process for the video we created.

Step 1. Switch to the Adobe Media Encoder window, if necessary.

Step 2. To export the video, in the upper right corner of the Adobe Media Encoder window,

Click 

Adobe Media Encoder begins encoding the project.

You can see the progress next to the project's listing in the queue, as well as in the Encoding panel at the bottom of the screen. When the video is finished exporting, a green check mark will appear in the Status area in the queue. Depending on your computer's setup and resources, this project may take quite some time to encode. Because of this, we have placed a completed, published movie in the PremierePro_Basics folder.

If the movie finishes rendering in a reasonable amount of time, you can view it using the media player of your choice. Otherwise, you can watch the completed version that's been saved with the exercise files. Once Adobe Media Encoder has finished exporting your video, you can close it as well as Premiere Pro.

Step 3. Close Adobe Media Encoder.

Step 4. Close Premiere Pro.