Exporting a video

Press the blue Export button on the top bar, or Ctrl+E.

Before it starts

The project is saved first, automatically. This is not optional and it is deliberate: an export is the moment you are most likely to be interrupted, and losing the edit that produced the file would be the worst possible time to lose it.

An empty timeline gets told there is nothing to export rather than writing an empty file.

The export window

One row at a time: the format, the frame rate, the output size, the quality, motion blur, whether to put the camera in a separate file, and which renderer to use. Each is explained in Export settings.

At the bottom is an estimate: how long the video is, roughly how long it will take to write, whether it will use the graphics card or the processor, and roughly how big the file will be. Read the size estimate if the video is going somewhere with an upload limit.

While it runs

A progress window shows what is happening. Autosave is paused while an export is running, and the footer says so.

It can be cancelled, and it says so when it has been, so a short file is never mistaken for a finished one.

When it finishes

You are asked whether to open the file. The answer is usually yes, because watching the exported file once, all the way through, catches things the preview does not: a blur box that stopped covering what it was hiding, a caption that runs off the bottom, music that was louder than you remembered.

How long it takes

On a machine with a graphics card, a three minute project is seconds rather than minutes. Without one, it is minutes. Both produce the same picture, and the renderer row in the export window tells you which one you are about to use.