Best Adobe Premiere Export Settings for Youtube – In-Depth Guide with Tips & More

As an online course creator, one of the best things you can do to build your brand and increase your reach is to start a youtube channel. 

Youtube videos can be quite challenging to make so today, we will go over the best Premiere Pro export settings for Youtube. 

Feel free to refer back to this post any time you’re wondering what the different options within Premiere’s export settings mean as we’ll go over all of them extensively. 

Before You Click “Export”…

Creating video content for your online course can be challenging if you don’t know where to start. We have compiled a complete guide that will make this daunting task easier for you.

Before you actually go to the export menu and start exporting your video to upload to Youtube, you need to set in and out points. 

What are in and out points? Well, they determine which part of your timeline is supposed to be rendered and which part isn’t. 

Parts that aren’t included within these points will not be a part of your final exported video. 

You should see that your selection will be highlighted as shown below: 

Once you’ve made the appropriate selection, you press Ctrl + M to open up the export menu in Premiere Pro.

Understanding Export Settings in Premiere Pro

When you compile and edit your first video for Youtube and click export, you may be overwhelmed by all the different settings you see.

There’s no need to panic though as it’s not as complicated as it seems. 

Let’s get into it: 

Resolution

The resolution of your video refers to the number of pixels within each dimension (length and width). 

All you really need to know is that the higher the resolution, the better the video quality will be.

1080p is the standard resolution that most Youtube creators tend to use but you can upload them in 4K as well if you have the hardware for it. 

Important note: If your camera’s highest resolution is 720p, do NOT export your video in 1080p as you’ll have lots of empty space within the final video. 

Frame Rate

If we refer to the definition of video, it’s a series of still images displayed in rapid succession. 

These still images are referred to as “frames” and the number of frames appearing on the screen within one second (frames per second or fps) is known as the frame rate.

Most Youtube videos are filmed at frame rates of either 24 fps or 30 fps.

Video Codec 

The video codec is the encoding that compresses the video once you export it in Premiere Pro CC. Different codecs affect the video’s quality in different ways. 

While you can really read into what different video codecs do, we don’t need to worry too much about this as Youtube recommends that you use H.264.

Profile 

You can think of the profile as the “engine” that’s running the encoding for your video. You can choose between baseline, main and high. 

For Youtube (as well as in most other cases), you’ll be choosing high. 

Level 

The level is preset that is needed for different combinations of resolutions and frame rates. 

It needs to be appropriate for the resolution you use because if it’s too low, you may not be able to export at higher resolutions. 

For a 1080p video, a level of 4.2 is usually appropriate. 

Color Depth 

Color Depth plays a role in reducing artifacts when a lot is happening on the screen. 

For setting the color depth to 32-bit (the best option), simply check the “Render at Maximum Depth” box. 

This will increase the time it takes to export videos but it will ultimately be worth it if you want the best video quality. 

Bitrate 

Bitrate settings are important to look at because it’s related to compression. If you choose the wrong settings for bitrate, you could end up with a video file that’s very low quality. 

You can choose between CBR, VBR 1-pass, and VBR 2-pass for your bitrate encoding in Adobe Premiere Pro. 

CBR means that the exported video plays with a constant bitrate throughout. This is not suitable because online platforms for video such as Youtube compress your videos. 

Thus, you need to counter that by selecting a higher bitrate than you normally would. 

We recommend using the 2-pass variable bitrate or VBR 2-pass with a target bitrate of 15 and a maximum bitrate of 40. 

Some people like to boost their target bitrate all the way up to 35. While we don’t recommend it, you can experiment with it to see if it gives you better results.

Finally, you should check the “Use Maximum Render Quality” box at the bottom. Using maximum render quality will ensure your video is of the highest quality. 

When you export video at a higher bitrate, it will take longer to render and the file size will be much bigger. That’s the price you’ll have to pay if you want the best quality for Youtube.

Sequence Preset 

Sequence preset in Adobe Premiere pro refers to the settings you use within your footage when editing it. 

Your sequence settings should match your source footage for the best results. 

You can do this by ticking the “Match Sequence Settings” in the Export Settings field as shown below:

Audio Export Settings in Premiere Pro 

To start off, the audio format as well as the audio codec that you should be using for Youtube is AAC. 

Next, set the sample rate to the highest it can be which is 48,000 Hz, and the Channels to “Stereo”. 

You want stereo audio quality because “Mono” sounds weird in some audio setups and “5.1” is meant for surround sound systems. 

Next, you want the audio quality to be set to “high”, obviously. 

Finally, you need to set the best bitrate possible which is 320 kbps and you want to set the precedence to “Bitrate”. 

And with that, you’re done with your audio settings for Youtube. 

The Best Export Settings in Adobe Premiere Pro for Youtube 

Now that we’ve gone over every aspect of Adobe Premiere Pro’s export menu, let’s summarize what the best export settings are to upload on Youtube:

Video Settings 

Here’s the summary of the best video settings as well as best render settings for Youtube: 

Audio Settings 

To export audio at a high quality in Adobe Premiere Pro, you should be using the following settings:

These are the best export settings that will ensure that once you’re finished editing, you’ll export the highest quality videos for your Youtube channel.

Important Note: We recommend that you learn more about bitrate settings and explore them if you’re going to be uploading videos to platforms other than Youtube. Different bitrate settings may do better on other platforms than they do on Youtube.

Wrapping Things Up…

Export settings in Adobe Premiere Pro CC can be very overwhelming when you first try to export a video. 

We hope that the basic video settings along with the audio and rendering settings that we’ve outlined have helped you understand what everything means. 

While Adobe Premiere Pro can seem difficult to get the hang of, you can clearly see that it has a lot to offer once you actually start learning what each aspect is for. 

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