Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 - Save(Export) Video [Tutorial]

Video tutorial showing step by step how to save(export) a video file from Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 as the format of your choice. Instead of saving the project, this shows how to save your project as a new video format like H.264/MP4.

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If you are new to Adobe Premiere you might
be frustrated to find that you can’t just
click “File” and then “Save as” to
save your new video clip as the format of
your choice. That is only giving you the option
to save the project. To create our new video
clip in the format of our choice. Click on
the “File” menu, then select “Export”.
We want to click the “Media...” link,
but it is currently greyed out. If you find
Media greyed out, click within the “Sequence”
pane to select it so it is surrounded in gold.
With it selected again click the “File”
menu, “Export”, and now select “Media...”.
You can also use the keyboard shortcut “Ctrl
+ M”. The “Export Settings” window will
open. The left pane of the window shows the
video clip to be exported. Just as when working
within Adobe Premiere we can move through
the video clip using the timeline under the
video. For the “Source Range” we have
several options. We can select “Entire Sequence”,
“Work Area”, or “Custom”. “Entire
Sequence” exports the entire video clip,
from the beginning to the end. “Work Area”
exports the selected work area from the Premiere
project. This is not necessarily the entire
clip. “Custom” exports a portion of the
video clip that you select. If we only wanted
to export a portion of this video, we could
drag the beginning and end time markers that
show up as grey triangles. Currently they
show up at the very beginning, and at the
very end, selecting the entire time sequence.
Let’s move the end time marker so that it
only exports about one minute of this video.
If we export now, it will only export this
small portion of the video that shows up between
the two grey triangles in gold. Currently
the time marker is showing up about halfway
through that we are going to export at about
34 seconds. The right side of the window shows
the “Export Settings” that will be used
to create our new video. The first thing we
need to determine is what format we are going
to convert our video into. If you aren’t
sure what video format to use, I would highly
recommend using the H.264 codec to encode
your video files into MP4 files. MP4 files
are pretty much the de facto high definition
video standard of the web today. Files encoding
using an H.264 codec, and an MP4 container
file, offer very high quality audio and video
while remaining relatively small in size.
Blu-Ray players use the H.264 codec because
of these advantages. Let’s click the drop
down menu next to “Format:”. This is the
list of available formats you can export the
video into. In looking through the list you
will notice video formats like H.264, MPEG4,
and AVI, but you may also notice audio only
formats like MP3 and WAV. If only want the
audio portion from a video clip you can simply
select an audio only format here and save
it. We want to create a H.264 format file,
so we will click to select H.264. Let’s
click the drop down menu next to “Preset:”.
Here we can see a list of preconfigured presets
for the video quality settings. Here there
are custom settings for iPod and iPad size
screens, TiVo, Vimeo, YouTube, and regular
HDTV presets, among others. If you prefer
you can also create a custom preset. To get
the best quality final product it is best
to output your video file at the same resolution
that it was recorded at. This is a Full HD
video clip, so we are going to start out by
selecting a preset out of the HDTV set. Let’s
select this “HD 1080p 29.97” to start
with. This will create a very high quality
final product, but it will also create a very
large file. If we look by the “Estimated
File Size” this one minute that we are going
to export here is going to be about 233 MB.
Now by selecting the preset we did, we chose
it to use basic video and audio parameters;
among these, because it is full HD at 1080P,
it’s using a video resolution of “Width
1,920 pixels” and a “Height of 1,080 pixels”.
We also have a “Frame Rate” of “29.97”
Frames Per Second (FPS). Now if we scroll
down a little bit, we can see the “Bitrate
Settings”. A higher number makes the quality
higher and the size larger. Currently it is
set on 32 Mbps minimum and a maximum of 40
Mbps, which is huge. Let’s drop this down,
so that we’re not using up unneeded space
on the computer. Let’s change the “Target
Bitrate” from the high number that it is
now to “5”, and let’s change the “Maximum
Bitrate” to “8”. This will give us a
high quality final product that is of a more
reasonable size. We can now see that this
one minute video clip, instead of being 233MB,
will now only be 37MB, but the quality will
still be very good. You can adjust the bitrate
until you are satisfied with the size of the
file. The minimum I would go is “.7” for
the “Target Bitrate”, and “1.2” for
the “Maximum Bitrate”.Let’s select a
name and location to save the new file. We
do this next to the “Output Name:”. There
is currently a name listed. If we click on
this it will bring up a save window. Let’s
simply select a location, this is just a test.
Click the “Save” button. We can now see
that it is going to output as “Test.MP4”,
into the folder we selected. The last thing
we are going to look at is the “Bitrate
Encoding”. Currently it is set to “VBR,
1 Pass”. This means it is going to encode
the file using a Variable Bit Rate on the
fly as it scans it one time, or one pass.
To increase the quality of the exported video
we can change this to “VBR, 2 Pass”. “VBR,
2 Pass” means that it will encode the video
using a Variable Bit Rate, where it scans
the file on the first pass, and uses that
data to fine tune the variability of the bitrate
on the second pass. This will make the final
video quality better, but will make it take
much longer to render. Now that we have everything
setup correctly, let’s export the video
clip. We have two options to export the video.
The “Export” button. This will export
the video and render it using Adobe Premiere.
This will make Adobe Premiere unusable while
the video is exporting. If you click “Export”
it will immediately begins exporting the clip.
The there is the “Queue” button. This
will export the job to “Adobe Media Encoder”.
You need to have “Adobe Media Encoder”
installed for this to work, but it’s included
in CS6. If you export this to Media Encoder
then you can continue to work with Premiere
while the video is exported to the new format.
This is the method that I use. Let’s click
the “Queue” button. The “Adobe Media
Encoder” window will open. We’ll see the
video that we’re exporting here. In this
case our name is JAGSunSets with the date.
We can see that it’s an H.264 codec, using
custom settings, and we can see the output
file path and name. We have already setup
all our export settings, but if we wanted
we could change them by clicking on the “Custom”
link. This just opens back up the export settings
window, and we can go through and change our
settings as we like. If we are happy with
our settings, and we are, we can begin to
export the file by clicking the “Start Queue”
button, which is this little green arrow.
At any point if we like we can click the “Pause”
button. We will see under “Current Encode”
it shows a preview of the video, the processing
step, and the “Elapsed Time”, and “Estimated
Remaining” time. We can also see at the
bottom a list of the currently set export
settings like bitrate, frame rate, and so
on. Depending on the speed of your system,
and the settings you set, the length of the
video, the time it will take to render the
video will vary. As you can see if you look
over in the top right hand corner here, I
have an 8 core system and all the cores are
pretty much maxed out. This is only a one
minute video clip, and we’re keeping it
at the same resolution just lowering the bitrate
a bit, and it’s expected to take about 6
minutes to do that 30 seconds. To open up
the folder we can just click on the video,
and it will reveal the folder. This is our
converted video
clip in MP4 format. You should now have the
necessary information to be able to export
a video from Adobe Premiere CS6.