Today I want to show you how to export 1080p HD videos for YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, your clients, et cetera, in the highest quality possible out of Adobe Premiere Pro. And to save you a bunch of time, I’ve created a set of free export presets that will give you every one of these settings immediately, without you having to dial anything in manually. They even come with instructions showing you how to import them into Premiere. You can download those for free right here.
The New Export Tab In Premiere Pro 2022
Let’s open up Premiere. I’ve got a project going with a 1080p clip on the timeline that I’ve edited, and let’s pretend this is a full video I want to export.
Once you reach that point you can either press Control M on PC or Command M on Mac, or you can go up here to this fancy new Export tab that Adobe added in the 2022 version of Premiere Pro.
If you do not see an Export tab, that probably means you’re on an earlier version of Premiere and your export setup is going to look different than what you see here. Good news though, I have an entirely separate walkthrough for exporting in the previous version of Premiere if that’s you.
Important Tip If You Are Exporting For YouTube
With the export settings open, here is where you may need to stop reading this and go read my 4K export settings guide instead. Because if you’re uploading your video to YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, or basically any other video sharing site, even if you did not film in 4K and you filmed in HD, I would still recommend upscaling your video to 4K whenever you export it.
The reason is that YouTube and the other streaming sites use a significantly higher bitrate when playing your video back if it’s in 4K, and the quality is going to be dramatically better than if you had uploaded the exact same video in HD. You don’t have to do anything fancy to make that happen either. You just edit on your timeline like you’ve already done, and then use my 4K export settings when you export.
So if that’s you, go watch the 4K export settings video instead of this one.
All that said, if you’re making a video for a client to use internally, or a video that does not need to be uploaded to one of these streaming sites at all, then I would just export in HD, and that’s what the rest of this is about.
1080P HD Export Settings
First, make sure the blue toggle next to Media File is enabled, and then over on the right you can name your video file. Let’s call this one hdvideoexport. Sure, why not.
Then click on Location and choose where you want the file saved. This one is very important, because if you don’t choose a location you are not going to know where your rendered file ended up, so pick somewhere you’ll actually remember and be able to find.
With that done, click the Preset dropdown and select High Quality 1080p HD.
Then for Format, instead of leaving it set to H.264, scroll down and select HEVC (H.265), because that’s the newer video format and it’s going to give you the highest video quality.
At this point you’re probably thinking, this is great Matt, I’ll just hit Export down in the bottom right and I’m good to go. But remember I told you at the start that I want to give you the best possible settings, and by default Adobe is not going to give you the best. So we need to dig into the video settings by hitting this Video dropdown, and hold onto your beard, things are going to get a bit complicated. Trust me though, this part is really important and I’m going to walk you through all of it.
Starting off, for Frame Size make sure it is set to Full HD, 1920 by 1080. If these settings boxes are grayed out and you can’t select them, just uncheck the boxes next to them and then you’ll be able to change them.
Next, for Frame Rate make sure it’s set to 23.976, and set your aspect ratio to Square Pixels.
Now hit the More button, which is going to give you a whole lot more settings. This next part is really important. Make sure that Render At Maximum Depth and Use Maximum Render Quality are both checked, which is going to enhance the quality of your file. And you definitely want the highest video quality, because that’s why you’re reading this.
Next, under Encoding Settings, for Performance make sure Hardware Encoding is selected. If it isn’t available and your computer only offers Software Encoding, that’s okay, it’ll still work. But if you can select hardware encoding, do it, because Premiere is going to use your computer’s graphics card and your exports will be dramatically faster.
For Profile, set it to Main. There is an option for Main 10, but unless you’re exporting in HDR, which is a much more complicated workflow, 99.9% of people are just going to want Main and you’re going to be fine.
For Level, leave it at 4.1. And for Tier, hit the dropdown and change it to High, which is going to unlock your bitrate and let you export at an even higher quality. Lastly for HDR Graphics White Level, make sure it’s set to 100.
I did the same walkthrough for the other app over in How To Export 4K Video In DaVinci Resolve 18 For YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, & Clients and How To Edit & Export High Quality YouTube Shorts In DaVinci Resolve 18.
Now scroll down to the bitrate settings, and this is where things get really important, because your bitrate is the single setting that affects the quality of your exported video the most.
If you want the highest possible quality, for Bitrate Encoding select CBR, which stands for constant bitrate, meaning Premiere is always going to be exporting your video at the highest quality it can. Then set your Target Bitrate to 24 megabits per second, and for Quality select Highest (slowest).
Keep in mind that 24 is the bitrate I recommend if you’re exporting at 24 frames per second. If you’re exporting at 30 frames per second, I’d bump it up to 30 megabits per second, and for 60fps footage I’d export at 60 megabits per second. Basically, whatever your frame rate is, your bitrate number should match it, and you’re good.
Those are all of the video settings. Now go down to the Audio dropdown and make sure Audio Format is set to AAC, Audio Codec is AAC, Sample Rate is 48000 Hz, Channels is Stereo, and Bitrate is 320 kbps. These should already be selected by default, but it doesn’t hurt to check.
Congratulations, your settings are done and you’re about ready to export.
But if you want to save yourself from dialing all of this in every single time you export a video, you have two options. First, you can download my free presets, which give you everything we just covered and let you use it as a preset from now on. Or you can build your own by saving what we just put together.
To do that, go up to the Preset dropdown, click the three dots to the right of it, select Save Preset, and give it a name that actually tells you what it is later. I go with the format, the resolution, the frame rate and the bitrate, so something like h265, 1080p, 24fps, whoismatt.
Press OK, and from then on, any time you want these settings you can just go up to the preset menu and select it. Voila.
After that, all you have to do is hit Send To Media Encoder or Export down in the bottom right, and your video is done. That’s it.
Wanna Edit Videos Like A Pro?
Can I help you out even more though? I’ve put together a free guide called Edit Videos Like A Pro that walks you through some of the biggest tips I’ve learned as a video editor. These things took me years to learn, but you can use the guide to take a huge shortcut. You can download it completely for free right here.
The footage in this one is graded with my own color presets, which live at whoismatt.com/luts. If you don’t have Premiere Pro yet, you can download a free trial here. My full gear list is on kit.co, I have filmmaking courses if you want to go deeper, and if you film weddings, come join us in the Learn Wedding Filmmaking Facebook group.
Thanks so much for reading, and have a great day!