Changing default ingest & encoding presets in Premiere Pro

Welcome back, in this one we're going to make an Ingest Preset. It's kind of two parts, you make-- we know what a proxy is, and we know what ingesting is. So what we're going to do is, create both a preset for what we want our proxies to be; it's called an Encoding Preset. We want the proxies to be a certain kind of format and a certain size, and we're going to learn about - if you don't already know a really great codec - an intermediary codec for proxies, called Apple ProRes, also we're going to look at how to do an Ingest Preset, which is pretty quick, which is basically just applying that new proxy encoding format to our files. We need to do both, did that explain it? I don't know. Let's jump into the class, and hopefully I can explain it better as we go. 

Actually, before we get started as well, we're going to learn how to put a word on our proxies, to make it a bit more obvious. We've been looking the blue button down there, it's hard to know that it's on, look, proxy, proxy text, making it a little bit more clearer; right, now let's start. 

First up I've opened up Adobe Media Encoder. So what we're looking for is, down in Preset Browser here, this + button, if you can't see it, go to 'Window', open up 'Preset Browser', so there's two options here, Encoding Preset and an Ingest Preset. Remember, encoding is kind of what the proxies are going to look like, the quality, the size, and Ingest Preset is kind of more the file management side. 

So you can do one, you can just jump straight to the Ingest, if you are happy with those presets, that were originally in Premiere Pro, in the last video. We'll do both of them, you have to do the encoding first if you are going to do it, so let's look at that. So this encoding preset is going to be called Dan, I always, I don't know why, it's-- I wanted something very obvious compared to the other presets. So this one is my Dan, it is 720p. I'm going to make it smaller than my original footage. I'm going to use Apple ProRes, if I can type it out, there you go, and what I like to do is write 'PROXY' at the end, in capital letters. 

You can use the same encoding preset here for your export. I don't want to use this for exports, just kind of like my working files. So in the format it'd be really common to use the QuickTime, and it would be really common to use ProRes 244 for a proxy. Why not my h.264 with the mp4s? Because it makes the file sizes really small. Well your computer, you know, Premiere Pro finds it really hard to work with those, that codec h.264, yes, it makes the file size really small, but it's compressed so much that the editor, which is Premiere Pro, finds it hard to work and edit that file, whereas QuickTime, and this codec Prores 244, okay, 422, file size is larger but it is an accessible codec. My computer, with my hardware and the software, really likes editing it even though it's bigger, strange. 

So that's what I'm going to use for my proxy preset, and I'm going to go into 'Video', and I'm going to go down here. You can't change the quality for ProRes, the directs are fixed, and we don't want to compress it, but what we might do is the height and width. We might say, what we might say, I'm definitely going to do this, 720 is the height, I want it to be smaller so that it runs faster. Now what else would I change in terms of my proxies? Nothing, it's small, it's a good easy codec, and the one thing you might do though, is under Effects, and come down to--

I want to add a 'Name Overlay' to my proxies, and I'm going to say 'Prefix and Suffix' only. It's just going to add text over the top of my video, to say proxy, 'Proxy', and it's just going to add text to the center, to the top left, to the bottom right. I'm going to put it into the top left. You can offset it and play around, with the size and stuff, once you've done a little test, but let's click 'OK', and I'll show you what that does. Let's click 'OK'. 

So we've created our encoding preset for proxies, now let's talk about the ingest. You can jump straight to ingest if you like, if you're like, “Actually I'm happy with the presets that Premiere Pro give us,” I'm that person, but this is advanced, and we need to see how to do it all. Let's create an ingest preset, this is where you definitely might go, and change, and create your own. I'm going to call mine my 'Dan's Ingest', you might give it a project name or a client name, or some sort of film documentary that you're working on. I'm going to say, it says Transcode files to the destination. What we're really meaning is, creating proxies. 

Transcoding is a word, if you're not sure, kind of like creating a file, kind of a transitional file, like an in-between file, that's what a proxy is. It's kind of like something that I'm working on, it's not what I started with, and it's not what I'm going to end up with. It's trends-- what did I say, it's a transition format. So transcoding just means, I'm going to make this in between format. What they really mean is, proxies here, where is it going to go, if you leave it blank, just leave it blank, because then every time you use this preset, it'll ask you where to go, rather than forcing it to go somewhere. 

You can change that; what kind of format? We know that QuickTime is better for our proxies, and there you go, right at the top there's the proxy that I made. You can use some of these other ones, remember, I said you don't have to create that encoding preset. It's kind of cool, we've added that text over the top, so that might be worth just doing that, but you can see here, you might just use that 422 proxy, it's a great, great preset, already made. 

All right, that is it for our ingest. A lot going on there, the weird thing now is, ready for witness, click 'OK'. Premiere Pro doesn't know where that is, I don't know why. So what we need to do is, in Premiere Pro we need to bring in our ingest presets, so we go, 'File', 'Project Settings', 'Ingest Settings', and we're like, great, was that the one I just made; copy and create, I'm just going to go, instead of copying I'm just going to go 'Create Proxies', and I'm going to say, let's use my preset that I just made, what is that, where's my preset? 

So we can add a preset, and then you get lost in the kind of wilderness of your computer. So how do we find it? It's a .epr, which is great, the easiest way probably to find it, is to go back into Media Encoder, there's my ingest file, Media Encoder knows where it is, so I can right click it and go, to reveal yourself, preset, there you are, it's in like crazy file format, yours on a PC will be different, but use this method to find it. Copy and paste it somewhere you can find it nicely. You could just copy it to Desktop, I'm going to actually just select the name of it, and copy the words from the name, and in Premiere Pro, I'm going to say, on my Macintosh HD, go and find that file, please. Kick back, relax, there it is there, however you get it in there, it only has to be done once. 

So now it's a preset that I can use forever, it's going to bring in my proxies, it's going to turn them to Apple ProRes 422, and it's going to put, a watermark on them as well, which is cool. So let's actually go and do that, let's click 'OK'. So I've got my ingesting turned on, click 'OK'. I'm just going to drag a footage in. Where did I say it was going to go? I didn't tell anybody, do it every time, told you. Let's go to 'Project Settings', 'Ingest', when I do create my ones, put them, not same as project, let's go somewhere random. I'm going to put them in my Exercise Files, into my 'Footage', and hopefully into 'Proxies'. Cool. 

So let's drag something in, let's find something random on the machine, and when I say random, we'll use something from the exercise files, from a future part of this course. Let's grab Mix Butter, I was going to drag it in, it's going to start generating my proxy, in the background, through Media Encoder, oh, so fast, good work. You can see it made it a .mov. Let's have a look at where it put it. So it put it inside my Exercise Files, I told it to go inside my Footage, there it is, Proxy. Let's have a look at it. 

I'm going to both open it up on my finder, let's have a look. Can you see, it says Proxy. That's a bit loud. You can see there, it's kind of burnt in a proxy, and where it's quite useful is, let's say that I'm in Premiere Pro now, so I've brought it in, I'm going to add it, I'm going to create a sequence from it, there we go. Watch this, I'm doing it, and you're like, "Oh, where's that proxy thing gone?" Didn't we just add that? Remember our proxy switch, proxy, nope, wrong button. The one next to it, they look similar, come on, toggle proxies, on, off, on, off. 

So it's a visual cue to know that you're working on those proxies. Remember, in the earlier videos, we had to kind of zoom in to see the quality difference, if you do decide to use h.264 for your proxies, but now that we've learned about the QuickTime Apple Prores 422, my suggestion would be to use that, for your proxies for now on. 

All right, so we know what a proxy is, we know how to ingest things, and we know how to make our own custom ingesting bits. In our case we used QuickTime, and we added a little watermark. All right, let's get on to the next video.