How To Export Videos in Premiere Pro [Beginner’s Guide]

Welcome back to the fifth tutorial in our series – how to export videos in Premiere Pro. Previously, we’ve looked at how to import, edit, add transitions, and color grade.

Now, with your film trimmed, polished, and ready to roll, it’s time to look at how to export videos in Premiere Pro.

Premiere Pro Export Settings

When it comes to Premiere Pro export settings, there are a whole host of options and it can all seem a bit overwhelming, to begin with.

So, let’s break it down into some very easy steps. Firstly, before you begin to export videos in Premiere Pro, think about where your finished film is going to be shown.

If it’s on social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter, then you will want to change the compression settings for these platforms.

It might sound wrong to export your videos with a ‘lower’ quality but if you upload a large high-definition file, those types of sites will compress the quality automatically anyway.

Export Window

Firstly, to bring up the Premiere Pro export settings window, ensure your timeline panel is selected (it will have a blue outline around it).

Next, go to File > Export > Media. This will bring up the Premiere Pro export settings window.

Alternatively, with the timeline panel selected, simply press CTRL + M, or CMD + M if on MAC.

On the left-hand side of the window is the source, showing what your film will look like. You don’t need to touch anything on this side.

To the right, are all your export settings.

Firstly, ensure that format is H.264. Basically, H.264 uses a very efficient codec that provides high-quality videos and uses a minimal amount of bandwidth.

Choosing a Preset

Below this, you will find a drop-down menu for presets. As you can see, there’s a lot to choose from.

For example, if your film is going to be uploaded to YouTube, there’s a custom setting for YouTube 1080p Full HD, as well as Facebook and Twitter.

This is pretty much all you would need to do. By choosing a preset, you get Premiere Pro to do all the hard work for you!

Alternatively, let’s say your film is going to be shown at a film festival on a large screen. You’ll want to choose a preset such as High Quality 1080p HD, or even High Quality 2160p 4K if it’s shot in 4K.

Best Premiere Pro Export Settings

Below, we’ve put together a table of the most common delivery formats and their preferred export settings.

Each time you change the quality with the preset options, you’ll notice that the estimated file size at the bottom of the export settings window changes.

This is all down to the bitrate of the video…

Bitrate

Bitrate is basically the number of bits per second. The common symbol used for video is Mbps (megabytes per second). It generally determines the size and quality of the video file.

For example the higher the bitrate, the better the quality and the larger the file size.

By choosing a preset, the bitrate is automatically chosen for you but sometimes, you may need to alter it yourself.

To do this, go back to the Premiere Pro export settings video tab where you can alter the height and width of the resolution.

Scroll down until you get to bitrate settings. Using this slider, you can change the bitrate.

If you are looking for something really small in file size and don’t mind the quality being impacted, you should go for something between 1-2Mbps.

However if you’re looking for really high quality and don’t mind the file size being larger, move it up to something around 20Mbps.

Check Your Export Settings

It’s good to get to grips with this and experiment a bit. There’s often a sweet spot between quality and file size that needs to be found and it can take time to get right.

Before hitting export, it’s good to do a once-over and ensure that automatically-checked boxes inside the Premiere Pro export settings window (like export audio) are still checked.

Name Your File

Lastly, you’ll want to choose the file name and the location of where you’re exporting to.

To do this, go to Output Name and click the name written in blue and underlined.

This will open up a separate window where you can choose the location and type out the file name. We recommend using a name and file location that is relevant to your export.

In this example, we’re exporting a video about Istanbul so we will be calling it Istanbul 2020 and saving it to the edits folder in the Istanbul folder.

Export Video Project

Now, you’re good to go! Hit the Export button and leave your computer to it. A progress bar that estimates how long it will take should show in the center of your screen.

So, that’s the basics of how to export videos in Premiere Pro. As always, we recommend playing around with the different presets and settings so that you can identify what works best for you.

Also, remember to always bear in mind where the video is going to be shown. This has a huge impact on what your file size and quality should look like.