Premiere Pro: Exporting and Replacing Audio

The parameters and their various options can be a little intimidating, but we’re going to break them down for you here and help you optimize your export.

Decide if you want to mixdown a video for reference using the AAF dialog. If enabled, Premiere will export an MXF video file next to the AAF, which could then be loaded into Pro Tools or another DAW. If you’d like to create a differently encoded video on your own, like an H264 MP4, leave this box unchecked.

Enable Breakout to Mono unless your audio engineer requests otherwise.

Enabling Render Audio Effects will permanently bake in any Premiere effects like EQ or Reverb. Usually, engineers will want to do this work themselves and it is best to leave it unchecked.

Sample rate should match your source recordings, which will usually be 48000 Hz.

Bits per sample should also be set to match your source material. If you aren’t sure, selecting 24 will retain quality.

Embed Audio or Separate Audio –– embedding audio allows the AAF to be packaged efficiently into a single file that is ready to share. Separating audio will place the audio files into a separate folder.

Format selection will be between Broadcast Wave (WAV) and AIFF (if you are using Mac OS). WAV files are the industry standard for lossless audio interchange.

Trim Audio or Copy Complete Files –– this selection either trims the audio files to only include the portions used in your timeline or sends the complete source files. This option is a tradeoff between file size and flexibility.

Handle Frames determines how much extra audio to include on either side of a trimmed clip when Trim Audio Files is selected. Increasing the handle size gives an audio mixer more flexibility to work with.