Exporting from Premiere Pro for the Internet

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When exporting your film for a professional screening, such as those hosted on campus, you generally want to use the highest quality export of your film, with less consideration for the size of your video file (See the 2 Pop Article about Exporting a ProRes .mov from Premiere). However, when uploading content to an online video hosting service, such as YouTube or Vimeo, file size and the amount of video data streaming from your video file (video bitrate) becomes a larger factor. You can upload a ProRes file to Youtube (and if you have good internet access, it may not even take that long); however, if file size and upload speeds are an issue, it is recommended that you export videos meant for the internet with different file settings than for professional screenings.

This information is published by Google in YouTube’s recommended upload encoding settings

First, be sure you have set In and Out points in your timeline. These define where your film begins and ends.

Choose Export > Media… from Premiere’s File menu. 

Be sure Media File is selected.

Under Settings, click next to File Name to name your movie.

Name your file according to the Film/Video Standard Naming Convention.

LastNameFirstInitial_MyMovieTitle_YYYYMMDD

Example: DisneyW_Spamtasia_19401113_HD_24_Stereo_Internet

It is a good idea to add _Internet to the file name of this export, to make it clear at a glance that this file was exported for the internet.

Click on the file path next to Location and choose a folder on a local drive that has at least 1 GB of free space available for each minute of your finished film. (For example, if your film is 2 minutes long, make sure you have at least 2 GB of space.) The actual file may be smaller, depending on content.

Video Settings

Open the Video Settings tab by clicking the dropdown arrow next to “Video”

Uncheck the checkboxes next to Frame Size, Frame Rate, Field Order and Aspect. Make sure they are set to the settings shown below (This will change the Preset option to Custom):

  • Frame Size: Full HD (1920 x 1080)
  • Frame Rate: 24
  • Field Order: Progressive
  • Aspect: Square Pixels (1.0)

Click on …More and check the rest of these settings:

  • Render at Maximum Depth (checked)
  • Use Maximum Render Quality (checked)

Under Bitrate Settings, choose:

  • Bitrate Encoding: VBR, 1 pass
  • Target Bitrate (Mbps): 16

Audio Settings

Open the Audio tab, and make sure the settings are as follows:

  • Audio Format: AAC
  • Sample Rate: 48000 Hz
  • Channels: Stereo
  • Bitrate (kbps): 320

Below the video preview, set Range to Source In/Out. The number at the right of the timeline tells you how long your final movie will be. A summary of your settings will be shown.

When you’ve confirmed your settings are correct, click Export to render your movie. (Or click Send to Media Encoder, if you want to render it there instead. The end results will be the same.)Watch the exported movie all the way through to be sure your picture, sound, effects and editing are all correct before uploading your film.

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