How to Export Videos in Premiere Pro

In this post we’re diving into exporting videos in Premiere Pro. Let’s say we have gathered our footage, performed cuts and edits, adjusted transitions, audio, and effects, and have come to the moment where it all comes together and we are ready to export our video and put it out into the world. In this post, we will focus on the simplest approach to exporting videos from Premiere Pro, perfect for beginners. You’ll find enough detail to help you export your first projects, without diving too much into advanced settings.

This step-by-step guide is based on my Premiere Pro Essentials Course. When you become a BYOL member, you gain access to this course as well as my 30+ additional courses on After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, and more. As a BYOL member you will also enjoy personalized support, earn certificates, and tackle exciting community challenges. Head here to sign-up!

The pressure is off, enjoy this step-by-step guide to bring your videos to life!

Is our video ready to be exported?

The Preview

We need to review our video several times and also run it by a few others to make sure we have achieved the viewing experience we are aiming for.  

The Checklist

We must ask ourselves a few questions before exporting our video in Premiere Pro. If we add this good practice to our workflow from the start, we set ourselves up for success going forward. Let’s begin with content.

Are all the clips in our sequence arranged as planned?

Did we apply the suitable transitions and effects?

Did we remove all unwanted cuts?

Next, we have Visual Style.

Did we check our sequence for color correction and is it consistent from start to finish?

Are we happy with the color grading and does it match our message and editing style?

Finally, we turn to Audio.

Is the audio volume consistent from start to finish?

Did we remove any unwanted noises in the background or any issues like pops or clicks in dialogue or narration?

Did we adequately balance dialogue, music, and sound effects?

If the answer to all these questions is “yes”, then we are ready to export our video in Premiere Pro!

Exporting a Video in Premiere Pro

Export Dialog Window

Our first step: telling Premiere Pro which sequence we want to export. We need to make sure that the Timeline window is selected, there will be a thin blue frame around it. If you have only one sequence inside your project, this should be enough. If you have more than one, make certain that you have the right one selected on your Project Panel.

Next, we have three ways to open the Export Dialog window, one of them, a cool shortcut: Command + M on a Mac or Control + M on a PC. Check out my blog post on Transitions for more awesome workflow gems!

You can also use the Tab “Export” from your top navigation bar, the one with the Home Icon.

If you are an old school drop menus user, you can go to File, then hover the mouse cursor over Export and click on Media.

Either way, we will land in the Export Dialog window. This is where we will adjust the output settings for our video and launch the process.

If we are not 100% sure that our sequence is all set for export, we can preview it again. We can never be too careful. We don’t want to find out that something was missing after long hours of rendering and encoding.

There are a lot of settings we can explore but this time we are focused on the basics. You can explore more advanced techniques, such as stabilizing video or Multi-cam in my Premiere Pro Advanced Course!

File Name

Set a name for your exported video. Make sure you define it in a way that you can easily identify from a group of other videos. I recommend adding dates and version numbers to file names, as these will help keeping track of things as we show the videos to clients or other people on our team for feedback and any required iterations.

As an example: Intro1-apr12-v1.(video format). If we make some changes and export it again the next day, we can name it Intro1-apr13-v2, and so on. We will not delete the first one at once, we may want to return to it and check what has been changed or present both versions for a final decision.

Location

Taking the time to organize exports saves a great deal of potential headache later down the road. We must form a method and keep it consistent all the way. Depending on the extension or complexity of our work, it is imperative to keep folders and files in proper hierarchy, applying a logic that joins the project as a whole.

As an example, we can create a top folder with the project’s name: “Dan’s Show”. Inside it, we can set a group of folders that form a structure: “Episode 1”, “Episode 2”, and so on. And inside each one of these, we can separate “unedited” from “edited” footage and add a specific location for exported videos, something like “Renders”.

Over time you will develop the best system for your workflow. It can be completely different from this one, it doesn’t matter, as long as it makes sense to you and any team members that collaborate on your project, and as long as you apply the same logic each time.

Preset

There are different default presets in Premiere Pro, all set to match up with different media devices and platforms’ requirements and to allow for optimized results with lower size files. For this guide, we will select Match Source – Adaptive High Bitrate. This preset will use some of the original source video’s settings and it’s compatible with the H.264 format that we will see next.

Format

This sets the video output format. We’ve all seen many different formats online, like .AVI or .MOV. For this example, we will pick the default one, H.264, a favorite for web, social media, and mobile devices. H.264 is actually the codec name inside the output visible format, .mp4, and it’s best for high quality and low file size results.

While exporting our videos, we must always confirm the video’s destination and purpose. Social media postings and window advertising screens have specific and different requirements. Study these as you edit your projects, choose the right one, and you will deliver the best product.

Hit that Export Button!

All we need to do now is click on the Export button and Premiere Pro will start working the magic of rendering and encoding our sequence into an amazing video – our very own edit! Hooray for us all!

Be patient while this process takes place. Depending on our project’s dimensions and complexity and our computer’s resources, it may range from minutes to hours, but the wait will be worth it for sure.

We will know the video is ready for presentation when a pop-up message appears on the lower right of our screen, letting us know that our “video was exported successfully” and its location in our computer.

 What 's Next?

Now that we know the basics to exporting a video in Premiere Pro, we can start building our portfolios and take another step toward a rewarding career as a videographer, content creator, or simply a director of home movies! 

When you become a BYOL member, you will gain access to my Premiere Pro courses as well as my 30+ additional courses on Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, Figma, Webflow, and more. As a BYOL member you will also enjoy personalized support, earn certificates, and tackle exciting community challenges. Head here to sign-up!

See you in class! – Dan