 I'm going to show you how to export video using Adobe Premiere. I'm using Premiere 5.5. Depending on the version you're using, you should have an interface that looks somewhat similar. First, select the footage or sequence you wish to export. You can click on the timeline. When you do this, you will notice the gold highlight indicating that it is the active selection. You may also click on either footage or sequence from inside your project window. When you click on a clip or sequence from the project window, you will notice a lighter shade of gray indicating it is the active selection. Once you've made your selection, move up to the menu bar and the file dropdown and select Export, then select Media. Or you can hold down Control or Command and M. Once you do this, a new dialog window will appear. You will want to check the Source Range dropdown menu. You will notice it indicates Work Area. This is the default. In this case, I've defined a work area in the actual sequence or timeline. If we were to export using this setting, we would only be outputting this portion of the sequence or raw footage. This indicates we would only be exporting 8 seconds and 17 frames. You can manually override the work area selection by inputting new in and out points on the slider. To do this, simply scrub through the footage. When you find the desired point, click on the Set In Point icon so that you set a new in or out point. You will notice the Source Range will now display Custom. You can get an indication here of the exact time of the portion of the clip that you would be outputting. You see we would be exporting 8 seconds and 11 frames. This is a great feature to use if you had raw footage and only wanted to output a single shot or series of shots. The third setting is Entire Sequence. In this case, this is the option we want to select. We can now see we would be outputting the entire sequence or 29 seconds. This happens to be the length of the spot I have edited together, so we're good. Next, we will move over to the Export Settings area. It will default to display the last settings you used. It appears I was outputting a file to be ingested into Avid, an MXF OP1A in the XDCAM HD 50-bit format. We will be selecting our format in a second. First, if you are using Premiere 5.5 and higher, you have a very useful tool. It is the Match Sequence setting. By selecting this option, Premiere will look at your original source and output it using its native format codec and size. Whenever possible, you want to output footage in the highest possible quality. Using this option would achieve this. In fact, you would not be transcoding the footage at all. You would be copying the original or trimming the undesired portion. If you cannot export a file in its native format, be it for size considerations or simply because the end user or playback platform can't accept whatever native format your footage or sequence is, I recommend using H.264. What we want to do in the export settings box is select H.264 in the format dropdown. Once we do that, Premiere looks at the source clip. Here you can see it is telling us that our source is 1920 by 1080p and 29.97 frames per second. Once you have selected a format or in this case a codec, Premiere will then select from the list of pre-programmed output options and select the setting most closely resembling the source. Here it is telling us of the available factory settings our clip most closely resembles HDTV 1080p 29.97. You can see here there are a wide variety of choices from iPads to YouTube HD. Use these presets if you wish to output something other than what is recommended. We're going to use Premiere's recommendation. It's a good starting point. We'll change one setting in the second area here. Make sure the video tab is selected, then scroll down to bitrate settings. We have three options in the bitrate encoding dropdown menu. I will discuss all three options, but first I want to show you the setting that I would recommend when the size of the file you're exporting matters. We want to select VBR or variable bitrate to pass. When you select VBR, you will have to input two numbers. The first being the target bitrate. Let's set that to 10 megabytes per second and a maximum 50 megabytes per second. These two parameters tell your encoding software to try and export a file that is 10 megabits per second. But if you need to, go ahead and use up to 50 megabytes. Using VBR, our transcoder will analyze the footage. During shots where there is not a lot of motion or a rapid scene changes, it will transcode at 10 megabytes. However, in frames that do have a lot of motion, like a missile shoot or a hockey game, it will use a higher bitrate, with 50 megabytes per second being the ceiling. A two pass will play through the entire clip. The first time only analyzing the clip, then it makes a second pass where the actual transcoding will occur. For this reason, a two pass endcode will take twice as long as a VBR one pass or CBR. For a VBR one pass, you would still input the two parameters, a target and a maximum, but the analyzing and adjustment are made on the fly. A VBR two pass will normally result in a better looking file. We can always get an estimated file size down here. Using a VBR two pass with a target of 10 and a maximum of 50, our file would be 35 megabytes. If we were to output this file in its native format, it would have been a file that was slightly under 300 megabytes. We have reduced the file size by almost 10 times. That would certainly make transferring this file via FTP to DMA Navy or Chinfo via Lighthouse a lot more reasonable. If saving file size wasn't your concern, or if time was more important, you would want to use a CBR or a constant bitrate. Using this option, you will only input one number and it will output a file using that parameter. Let's set this back to the settings we want to use. A VBR two pass at target of 10 and maximum of 50. Next, we always want to check what our file looks like before we export it. We can do that by coming over here. You will notice source is selected. This window is displaying the original file. We always want to take a look at what our file will look like when it's outputted. To achieve that, select the output tab. Now the window displays what the exported clip will look like after the settings you have selected or modified are applied. You will want to come down here and scroll or scrub through the footage. Always ensure that you're not seeing subjects that are tall and skinny or short and fat. If they are, you are probably about to output a file that is anamorphic and we don't want to do that. You will want to come up to the output name. Click on this. It will, by default, use the name of your clip or sequence. You can override that by entering a new name. You can also select where you want the file to be saved to. It defaults to where you last outputted a file. Here we see it's going to our desktop. That's fine. We always want to know where to find our file. We are ready to pull the trigger on this in code. Before we do that, let me show you one other option. If you come down over here to the right of the preset dropdown, there's an icon that looks like a floppy disk. If we click on it, you have the option to save the setting we have just customized. I recommend saving your settings. It will save time next time when you need to transcode a file or in case you transcode a file and play it back and discover there's a problem. You can come back to the setting you used and make a slight variation and try to export it again. Once you have named your user preset, click on OK. It will save it to the user settings or top portion of the preset dropdown. Here you can see the setting that we just saved. I wanted to show you a few user settings I have pre-saved. There are all slight variations on the VBR2 pass with a target of 10 and a maximum of 50 that I have created and saved. Here are a few other options. If we were to use a target of 20 and a maximum of 50, our file would be 69 megabytes. A target of 30, a maximum of 50, would result in a file that is 104 megabytes. All that from a file that was originally 300 megabytes. It's always going to be a judgment call on your part. If you're on a boat or in the middle of nowhere trying to use a mobile hotspot, you're going to want to use a VBR2 pass with a 10 to 50 range. If you're at headquarters and have a great pipeline, you'll want to send either native format or at least a VBR of 30 to 50, or even a CBR of 50. Let's set this back to the settings we want to use. A VBR2 pass at target of 10 and maximum of 50. Let's pull the trigger on this export. H.264 is a very complicated transcode. What this experience is, it takes two to one to transcode an H.264 file. A minute file will take two minutes to transcode. In this case, we have a 29 second clip that will take a minute to transcode into H.264. Because we're using two pass, it will take twice that time, or two minutes. After a moment, Premiere will give you an estimated time to finish, and you can see it saying approximately two minutes. I'm not going to make you watch this entire thing. Let's pass forward and show you the final product. A file that has been reduced from 300 megabytes to 35 megabytes. It's still HD and looks great. I hope this helped. Thanks for watching. Check it out at www.ah.mil. Four sailors, five sailors.