How to Export Stock Footage in Premiere Pro

The best way to export all your stock footage clips at once.

Ever wondered if it’s possible to export 50-100 clips all at one time? Is it possible to drop all of your footage clips into one timeline and export from there while you get to work on something else?

The answer is yes.

I’m showing you how in today’s post. I’m also sharing the other basic edits that I make to all my stock footage clips before exporting.

I’ll show you exactly how I quickly review, edit, and export several clips all at one time in Adobe Premiere Pro.

I made a video for those of you who prefer to watch or if you’d rather skip ahead, you’ll find the full instructions listed out below.


If you don’t have a copy of Adobe Premiere Pro yet (my favorite video editing program), you can try it out for free here.


1 | IMPORT + ORGANIZE FOOTAGE

1 – The first step in our editing process is to open up Adobe Premiere Pro.

2 – Drag your footage clips into project panel at the top left of your screen.

3 – Once your footage has fully uploaded, go ahead and create some bins to organize your files. (Right-click ‘new bin’)

create new bin example.png

Here’s how I did mine:

-> Footage – 4K (holds original clips shot in 4k)

-> Footage – HD (holds original clips shot in HD)

-> Sequences (holds all sequences, including master sequences)

-> Sequences – 4K (holds all edited 4k sequences)

-> Sequences – HD (holds all edited HD sequences)

organize footage example.png

You should organize your footage in a way that makes sense for you. My camera shoots slow motion 120 fps in HD only, but real time 24 fps in 4K, so I have to organize my files into two different sets. This example only shows footage from one scene, you may have multiple, so feel free to expand how you set up your folders.

The key is that you do stay organized from the beginning as this will always speed up your workflow and keep things from getting lost in the mix.

2 | CREATE SEQUENCE TIMELINE + REVIEW FOOTAGE

1 – Next you’ll want to double click on each clip to view it in the middle Source Monitor.

source monitor example.png

2 – Press space bar to start playing your clip. Hit ‘I’ to set an in-point and ‘O’ to set an out-point. You can always just hit these buttons over again if you change your mind about the placement. Hit the ‘up arrow’ to jump back to your in-point.

3 – Once you are happy with your in and out points, go ahead and drag your clip (using the little film strip thumb nail at the bottom center) down to the timeline window at the bottom of your screen. This will create a new sequence for you. If Premiere asks you whether you want to change your sequence settings to match your footage settings, go ahead and click yes.

premiere timeline example.png

4 – Repeat this process for each clip, dragging it down in your timeline right next to all the other clips you’ve already placed there.


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3 | COLOR CORRECTION

1 – First open up Lumetri Color and Lumetri Scopes.

(Window -> Lumetri Color, Window -> Lumetri Scopes)

window to open lumetri color

2 – What is lumetri scopes? See image below.

This image shows the range of colors within your footage. The top is white, the bottom is black. The benefit to using something like lumetri scopes in addition to simply relying on what our eyes see is that it is not affected by the color balance of your computer monitor or by human error.

The scopes cannot lie. They are the most accurate representation of the true colors in your footage and will therefore translate correctly onto everyone else’s screen.

It’s important to rely on these first and foremost to ensure that your footage is correctly color balanced regardless of the monitor used to view it.

There are several types of scopes that you can use, but for our purposes, we are sticking with the waveform scope.

The range starts at 0 (black) and goes to 100 (white).

lumetri color example

3 – Using the lumetri color window (see below), adjust your whites and black settings to fall within the correct color scope numbers (whites under 90, blacks above 10).

lumetri color window example

4 – While you are in the lumetri color window, go ahead and make any other adjustments to your clips – white balance, exposure, etc.

5 – Copy and paste your settings (found in source monitor ‘effects’ window, as shown below) to your other clips.

lumetri color effect window

6 – Go through each clip manually and ensure that the settings look good before moving on to the next step.

4 | WARP STABILIZER

This will help stabilize your footage to eliminate any extra shakiness and make it look super smooth.

1 – Double click on your footage clip. Click on your effects tab in the upper left corner (Window -> Effects if you don’t see it).

2 – Click ‘Video Effects’ -> ‘Distort’ -> double click ‘Warp Stabilizer’

effects window premiere

3 – Set smoothness much lower than 50%, more like 4-10%. This setting doesn’t work for every single clip – it depends on the amount of motion in your footage and the crop of your subject. I find that very close up shots often don’t work. So be sure to watch through each clip and confirm that the footage looks good.

warp stabilizer settings

4 – You can copy and paste the warp stabilizer setting to the rest of your clips. You may need to manually click ‘Analyze’ for each clip until you see the ‘frame x of y’ moving.

5 | NEST + BATCH EXPORT FILES

More often than not, you are going to have 20 or more clips from every setting that you’ll want to export for stock footage. How nice would it be to set them all up in a queue to export for you instead of having to do each one by hand.

Here’s how you do it.

1 – You’ll need to nest each clip into its own sequence. Right click the clip and click ‘Nest’.

2 – This will bring up a pop up menu asking you to rename your nested sequence. Name this whatever you want your clip to be called. I prefer to name each of mine by hand, very specific to what is in the clip. This helps me once I get into Shutterstock, Pond5, or Adobe Stock. Since I have named my clips very specifically, I have no trouble remember what’s in them which helps with keyword selection.

rename nested sequence premiere

3 – The sequence will appear in your project panel. Make sure these are organized into a folder that is easy to find and remember.

4 – Once you’ve done this for every clip, go ahead and select the sequences. Click File -> Export -> Media

export footage to media encoder

5 – This will pop up your export settings. Here are the settings I prefer:

  • Format: Quicktime
  • Preset: Apple ProRes HQ (it says ‘custom’ when no audio is checked, this is fine)
  • No Audio
  • Video Codec: Apple ProRes HQ
  • Several options auto fill in as ‘based on source’ this is fine
  • Check ‘Render at Maximum Depth’
  • Check ‘Use Maximum Render Quality’

Once you are happy with your settings, go ahead and hit ‘Queue’ and this will automatically send your files on over to Media Encoder.

export settings for stock footage

6 – We are almost there! Once you are into Media Encoder, your screen should look something like what you see below. If you want to change the file destination, simply click on the blue colored text under the ‘Output File’ column. This will allow you to manually change the name and destination of your file if you wish.

media encoder menu example

7 – If you are happy with the destination of your final files, go ahead and click the green play button in the upper right corner.

YOU’RE DONE!

Your work is done! Congratulations, you now have time to go eat dinner, watch Netflix, or go to bed while your computer gets to work exporting all your files. When you wake up in the morning your files will be waiting for you to load them straight onto an ftp.

Be sure to check out my step by step guide for downloading and getting started with an ftp host. If you’re ahead of the game and have already done that, you may also find some helpful hints with the best way to come up with stock keywords here.

I hope you’ve found this tutorial helpful. Leave me some feedback below and let me know if you have any further questions.

How do you batch edit your footage? There are thousands of ways to skin a cat. I’d love to hear your ideas.

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