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LESSON 20 Exporting Frames, Clips, and Sequences
Working with Adobe Media Encoder
Adobe Media Encoder is a stand-alone application that can be run by itself or can
be launched from Adobe Premiere Pro. Working
from within Adobe Premiere Pro,
after you choose your export settings and click OK, Adobe Media Encoder adds
your export to its queue.
In addition to sequences loaded from Adobe Premiere Pro (like the second file in
the batch shown in the previous figure), Adobe Media Encoder can also encode
from several sources.
For example, it can encode stand-alone files of multiple formats added to the batch
by choosing File > Add. The final file in the batch shown in the previous figure was
added via this technique.
You can also import and encode compositions from Adobe After Effects by choos-
ing File > Add After Effects
Composition, and you can import sequences from
Adobe Premiere Pro by choosing File > Add Premiere Pro Sequence. The third file
in the previously shown batch is an Adobe Premiere Pro sequence loaded from
Lesson 15-5.prproj.
You can also create watch folders by choosing File > Create Watch Folder and then
assigning a preset to that watch folder. Source files dragged into the folder later will
be automatically encoded to the format specified in the preset.
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You choose a Format/Preset
separately with each approach, and once the encoding
tasks are loaded into Adobe Media Encoder, administration is straightforward. To
change any encoding setting, you click the target task and then the Settings button
on the right.
You can add, duplicate, or remove any tasks by using
the like-named buttons and
drag any tasks that haven’t yet started encoding to any place in the queue. If you
haven’t set the queue to start automatically, click the Start Queue button to start
encoding. Adobe Media Encoder encodes files serially,
rather than in parallel, and if
you add any files to the queue after starting encoding, they’ll be encoded as well.
Speaking of setting the queue to start automatically, this is a critical new feature
to the Adobe Media Encoder CS5 that you control in
the Preferences dialog by
choosing Edit > Preferences (Windows) or Premiere Pro > Preferences (Mac OS).
Specifically, check the “Start queue automatically when idle for:
x
minutes” box,
dial in the desired delay time, and Adobe Media Encoder will start encoding auto-
matically after the specified time expires. This is a critical enhancement to watch
folder functionality. In previous versions, you had to
click Start Queue to begin
encoding, which prevented unattended operation. Now, if you have access to a
designated shared folder on a network, you can encode files immediately without
any action on your part—a very significant enhancement.
You can also preview while encoding via the “Preview while encoding” check box,
which is a nice option that lets you check for errors
during encoding and supple-
ments the encoding progress bar to let you know how your encoding is progress-
ing. You can also use the Preferences dialog to select a default output folder and
many other options.