Export

When your film is ready, export it as a file you can share, upload or hand on for finishing.

Open the export screen

Click Export in the top bar, choose File > Export…, or press ⌘ E on Mac or Ctrl E on Windows and Linux.

The left side shows the first frame of your film, its size, length and frame rate, and a list of presets. The right side holds the settings. The bottom line estimates the size of the file.

Export a video

1. Pick a preset on the left. It fills in the format, resolution and quality for you.
2. Check the File name. It starts as the project's name, and the extension for the format is shown after it.
3. Check Export to. The first time, this is your Movies folder on Mac and your Videos folder on Windows and Linux. Click Change… to pick another folder.
4. Change any other settings you need (see below).
5. Click Export, or press ⌘ Return (Ctrl Enter on Windows and Linux).

While it exports, the bottom line shows how far it has got and how long is left. Click Run in background to close the export screen and keep working; the export carries on, and you can follow it under the bell icon (Background jobs) in the top bar. Click Cancel to stop it.

When it finishes, the bottom line says where the file was saved.

Presets

A preset only changes the shape of the file. If your project is widescreen and you choose Vertical, reframe the film for 9:16 before you export rather than after.

Settings

• Format: the kind of file to write (see the next section).
• Resolution: 3840 × 2160, 2560 × 1440, 1920 × 1080, 1280 × 720, Project size, 1080 × 1920 or 1080 × 1080.
• Frame rate: Project rate, or 24, 25, 30, 50 or 60 fps.
• Bitrate (H.264 and HEVC): how many megabits a second the video uses. Zornov suggests a value for the size and frame rate. Higher looks better and makes a bigger file.
• Quality (Zornov intermediate): how much detail is kept.
• Range: Whole sequence, or In–out range to export only the part between your in and out points. Set those with I and O on the timeline first; see The timeline.

The size estimate at the bottom covers the picture only.

Formats

What goes in the file

• MP4 files carry the sound mix as a stereo AAC track. If the mix is in surround, a 5.1 track goes in as well, and each dubbed language gets a track of its own. Each subtitle language goes in as a subtitle track, and Zornov also writes it beside the video as .srt and .vtt files. See Captions and subtitles.
• ProRes and DNxHR files carry the mix as uncompressed sound and a timecode track that starts at 01:00:00:00.
• Picture sequences are written into a folder named after the file name. ProRes 4444 and the 16-bit sequences keep the most detail for later colour work.

To hand the edit itself (not the picture) to another editing app, use File > Export OpenTimelineIO… instead.

Licence check

Before it exports a saved project, Zornov checks the licences of the media in your film. If something can't be used the way you are using it, the export stops and the bottom line says Licence problem with the reason. You can fix it in Library > Rights, or click Export anyway if you have decided it is fine.

The render queue

The queue renders exports in the background, one after another, so you can line up several versions and keep editing.

1. Save the project to a folder. The queue renders the saved project, and saves it for you when you add to the queue.
2. Open the export screen and pick a preset.
3. Click Add to queue.

The queue uses the preset you picked on the left. Its files go into the exports folder inside your project folder.

To follow the queue, click the bell icon (Background jobs) in the top bar. Under Render queue, each export shows its state: Waiting, Rendering with how far it has got, Paused, Done, Failed or Cancelled. Use the buttons beside an export to pause or resume it, cancel it, or run it before the others.

Quality check

After the queue renders a file, it checks it and shows the result next to Done: PASS, PASS with warnings or FAIL. The full report is saved beside the file as a .qc.txt file (and .qc.json). The check looks at the finished file, including:

• picture levels outside the legal range, and black, frozen or letterboxed frames
• flashing that could affect people with photosensitive epilepsy (this is a screening aid, not a certification)
• loudness, true peak, clipping, silence and a dead or out-of-phase channel
• picture and sound of different lengths

Fix what the report finds and export again.

Check before you export

A few minutes of checking saves a second export:

• Play the film through once with the sound on and once with it off.
• Set the loudness for where the film is going: open Sound (Shift X), go to Delivery, pick a Spec such as Streaming (−14 LUFS), then click Measure or Normalise. See Audio and mixing.
• Make sure titles and captions sit inside the safe area: click Overlays in the player's toolbar and turn on Safe areas.

The AI editor can also check the film for you and render to a platform's specification (such as YouTube, TikTok, broadcast or Netflix) with a quality check. See The AI editor.